Sometimes the best thing to do with a project task is to start it…<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Sounds a daft thing to say, but there’s sometimes a danger of over-planning and over-analysing a task, instead of actually getting on and doing it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
I can think of two personal examples. A few years ago I was managing a complex set of interfaces between two systems. One of our suppliers was reluctant to sit down and talk about it because they wanted more preparation. However, we gained more from a rough and ready two hour meeting with everyone round the table than we would have done from a couple of weeks planning. The supplier was generous enough to agree this as well.<\/p> \r\n\r\n
My other example concerns a web tool which had been discussed for a long time at high level, to the extent that everyone thought it was a difficult task. Again in a couple of hours, by talking about some detail and the sort of data we wanted to display, we were able to take a big step towards understanding what we were trying to do, and realise it wasn’t quite as hard as we thought.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Sometimes you just need to start talking about something – it’s pretty certain that talking discussing some detail will focus thoughts and help get a clearer idea of what it is you’re trying to do.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Here’s a great quote on the subject:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\u201cWhatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Aside: This quote is generally, but incorrectly attributed to Goethe, but in fact was introduced as part of a “very free translation” from Faust by John Anster in 1835. Now you know…<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes the best thing to do with a project task is to start it… Sounds a daft thing to say, but there’s sometimes a danger of over-planning and over-analysing a task, instead of actually getting on and doing it. I can think of two personal examples. A few years ago I was managing a complex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-management","tag-linkedin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonbattersby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}