Just-in-Time PM #21: Workflow Strategies

Now it’s time to look at the JIT Project Manager’s toolkit. How do we put these ideas into practice in our day to day work?

Through Workflow Strategies, a set of practical techniques for executing modern projects. Here is the full list, according to whether they work better for small or large-scale projects, and what kind of situation they are best suited for.

Capture
Organize
Share


Scale
Planning
Offloading
Tracking
Metadata
Linking
Searching
Adapting
Structuring


Small
Archipelago of Ideas
Color Commentary
Meta-Plan
Naming Conventions
Interlinking Notes
Advanced Search
Dial Down the Scope
Sentence Hacking


Large
Headings First
Status Summary
Temporary Tags
Tag Hierarchy
Table of Contents
Brainsweep
Context Switch
Function Follows Form

We are now in the crucial execution stage, where all our previous efforts at capturing, summarizing, and organizing packets of knowledge will pay off. It is in this final stage that we see whether the intermediate packets we’ve created end up being valuable.

Execution is also the most ambiguous stage, because people’s individual circumstances tend to diverge quite a bit. Whether you are an accountant or an airline pilot makes a big difference when it comes to applying what you know.

That’s why Workflow Strategies are less of a process, and more like a toolkit. The 16 individual strategies are each designed for a particular situation or problem to be solved. In the same way that different tools in your tool chest are suited for different jobs.

These Workflow Strategies are designed to help us execute our projects more effectively. They are standardized procedures that help us move faster, save our progress, and produce work of higher quality. They rely on having clearly summarized packets of knowledge (through Progressive Summarization) organized according to actionability (with P.A.R.A.), allowing us to combine those packets into valuable deliverables right at the moment they’re needed.

Here are the 16 Workflow Strategies we’ll cover in this chapter:

Archipelago of Ideas
Headings First
Color Commentary
Status Summary
Meta-Plan
Temporary Tags
Naming Conventions
Tag Hierarchy
Interlinking Notes
Table of Contents
Advanced Search
Brainsweep
Dial Down the Scope
Context Switch
Sentence Hacking
Function Follows Form

In this article I’ll provide a brief overview of each strategy, with further guidelines and examples in the next article.

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