PROJECT MANAGEMENT
4 Steps to Establish Priorities for Project
In this blog, we will go through the four steps that every project manager should go through for prioritising the task for reaching the project objective more effectively.
Every project consists of multiple small tasks within it comprising of content, development, marketing, distribution, and whatnot. But some jobs are more important than others and need to be prioritised.
An excellent project manager needs to know which tasks have a more significant impact and how much resources and time should be allocated in the same and hence, should know which task to prioritise.
A project manager has to make calculated campaign steps, and to do that, here are the four steps that I use to set my proper priorities, make sure I’m operationalising towards that one specific objective, and making strategic decisions.
The four steps that we will be going through in detail are as follows:-
- Look Back
- Deep Dive
- Objective Key Results (OKRs)
- Date Map
Look Back
You have to start by looking back, and this is important to set the right priorities because what you do is you look back, and you figure out, “okay, what have we done in the past that’s worked? What have we done that hasn’t worked for us?”
The next thing we need to learn while looking back over the previous projects is what the things that can be improved and what are some overall changes (addition or subtraction in the tasks) we need to make when we go and set about creating this next campaign are?
What Went Well?
- Team coordination was great
- Team members got to learn new skills
- Hit targets for the launched campaign
What Was Tricky?
- Budget Allocation was a little unsatisfactory and had to compromise on our end.
- Managing new requests with pre-planned campaigns
What Will We Do Differently?
- Build-in buffer time for new requests
A sample of look back looks like this.
You don’t have to invest a lot of time in this step, just sit down with your team members and think about what went well, what was tricky, and then what you would ultimately do differently next time you’re setting out to achieve your marketing goals.
Make sure to note down every single point as this table would help you to not repeat the same mistakes and you can refer to this anytime you want.
Deep Dive
Once you’ve made a similar table, and have a basic knowledge of what you’re going to do and what needs to be skipped, that’s when you deep dive.
That’s when ultimately you as a team and on your launch squad go into the details of what you want your project to look like for the next quarter or the next year or for this particular campaign, whatever objective you’ve set out to achieve.
It’s essential that you go into details overall in setting your strategy, but that you don’t focus too much on the nitty-gritty details, you don’t spend all your time here focused on writing out the complete overarching plan and strategy because that will come later.
Instead, you just got to come prepared with some great ideas and answers to questions that might come up.
Nonetheless, it does help if you make some proper steps and draw diagrams. Then it’s also what we’ll see after is essential too once you’ve created this overarching plan to score them, and this is an adaptation overall of the TICE framework. (Read more about this in the article -
Alexa Hubley, a legendary Project Manager at CXL Institute, doing the ‘deep dive’ process.
Objective Key Results
Once we have looked back at our previous projects and have gone through the whole process of our campaigns, now is the time to build our objectives and set the key results.
Now, this is the screenshot of what you would find if you would type “OKR” in the google search bar, but this is how at least I set my objectives and key results.
Objective: I start by defining three to five critical objectives per quarter. On the company, team, or personal levels. I like to keep my goals ambitious, qualitative, time-bound, and actionable by the person or group.
Key Results: Under each Objective, I usually define three to five measurable vital results. I try to keep my Key results quantifiable and achievable. They often lead to objective grading and are challenging to achieve, but are not impossible. OKR results can be based on growth, performance, or engagement. I often try to keep them as numerical (quantitative) as possible, but they can also show if something is done or undone (qualitative), so a binary zero (0) or one (1).
The thing you should keep in mind is that your key results should be achievable by your team and should have small wins incorporated within the more significant task to keep the team motivated. On the other hand, the objective can be a little overachieving and ambitious.
So as you can see, the objective is more of like an overarching, high-level goal. Then the key results are the real nitty-gritty way of how you’re going to measure those to accomplish your overarching strategy and make sure that your project-managing yourself towards getting to a place that’s effective and successful.
Date Map
Once we have set our objectives and key results, the only task left in our hands is figuring out how you’re going to slot that into the time that your team, the limited time box that your team can provide, and dedicate to achieving those goals.
You can create an excel sheet as a form of a calendar, and plan out weekly tasks, dedicated to accomplishing that initiative, and then ultimately, when and why you and your team think they’re going to focus on one thing over another when it comes to every single week.
You should also slot in everybody’s vacations into consideration as well as when things are going live, as you might need more hands-on-deck then.
What this does is it helps us see when we’re launching too many things at once or not launching enough.
Recap
So overall, in this blog, we learned why we need to look back at our previous projects, deep dive in the nitty-gritty of the project, establish OKRs, and finally scheduled it out on a date map.
This process will help you stay on top of everything and ensure your team’s being responsible for what they need to do every week. It also gives you excellent visibility and ultimately helps you solve those problems that could arise between scoping, attribution, and resourcing.
Thank you so much for going through this blog.
Let’s connect if you want to know more about Project Management or Growth Marketing. You can reach out to me at LinkedIn at Shreyansh Goel or email me at shreyanshgoel16@gmail.com.
