Go From Zero to Hero With First Principles

A weekly email like this is a great way to stay up to date. But it can’t teach you the fundamentals of leading successful projects from the ground up. That’s where the new course Project Management Unraveled comes in.

You’ll learn how to plan successful projects that wow clients from the first principles of project management. Built specifically for growth-stage businesses with real-world problems, not hypothetical corporate scenarios.

Give your career a boost and join 170 readers on the waitlist today here. By joining the waitlist you’ll have a chance to contribute to the course content, secure some bonuses for early adopters, or join Trish & Gijs to win free access to the course.

I’m giving away another free ticket next Friday to someone on the waitlist!

Speaking of first principles…

Define. Align. Plan. Build.

That’s what it comes down to. I know that different “schools” of project management have different phases. Some call it a brief, others are initiating.

It’s only semantics.

At the base of successful projects, you build a foundation that answers a set of questions. Questions like why, what, where, when, who, and how.

We’ve gone into each of these questions in detail in the past. Now it’s time to put them together:

1. Define

Projects solve a problem or capture an opportunity. A new project can come from many different directions: a client delivery, a strategic move to make as company, or the development needs of an existing product for example.

Where it comes from doesn’t really matter. What matters is that something unique and temporary has to be created that has specific outcomes and boundaries. At the start of a project, getting that as clear as possible is your first priority.

You’re trying to get as much information as possible, which leads to a definition document. This is not your plan yet - this is your starting point. The document answers questions like

• Why are we doing this?

• What are the constraints?

• What are we trying to solve?

• What is the definition of done?

• How will we measure success?

• What constraints are fixed vs. flexible?

Depending on your organization, this is either done by the project manager or by someone else. Involve only the necessary people and move fast to create a starting point for the next conversations.

2. Align

Once you have your initial facts on paper, it’s time to assemble and align. Based on the information you now have, you’ll start to assemble a team of people who can help you plan & build this.

Secondly, you align customers (internal or external), your sponsor, and other key stakeholders on what is about to happen.

As you can see by the arrows in the drawing, this is an iterative process. You’ll learn more in your aligning conversations that’ll help you nudge your project definition in the right direction.

As you assemble your team, new input and questions will help you get more precise in your definitions too. You shift to planning once all key stakeholders agree on your project definition.

3. Plan

Now that everyone agrees on what needs to be done under which constraints and you’ve assembled your team, it’s time to figure out how you’ll do this.

This is the part that most teams get wrong. You don’t know what you don’t know yet, and you have to get comfortable with that.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the more innovative or new the project is, the more you’ll discover as you build. You’ll have to adapt and fill in the blanks as you progress, and prioritize ruthlessly.

A perfect plan that’s 100% done before you start is fiction. It never happens.

This is where your leadership skills get time to shine. Your stakeholders will demand firm commitments, Gantt charts, and finite scope statements. But you have to protect your team here. Don’t commit to too many unknowns. Instead, take them along in your story of discovery, traction, and realism. Big goals, small steps.

As you start executing, you’ll discover new information. Planning is what sets you up to deal with those discoveries and changes. The value is in the homework, the analysis, the conversations, the experiments, and the decisions.

A plan is just a way of storing those conversations, and it’s not a static document. It’s a starting point that defines how you’ll achieve your goals within the given constraints.

4. Build

By now you’ve answered your fundamental questions. You know why you’re doing the project, what you’re building, and within which boundaries you’re operating. You have a good idea of the scope and how you’ll build it, and you’re clear on the first steps.

It’s go-time.

This is where the rubber meets the road. As a project manager, you’re performing a balancing act. You get new information, and it’s your job to decide what to do with it. Ignore it and stay the course, or adjust the plan?

Remember that the first goal of this phase is to deliver something tangible, the smaller the better. You’ll learn from that than from months of desk research.

Wrapping it up

People ask me all the time what the best framework or template for project management is. My answer is always “it depends”. The above steps apply, whatever execution method you prefer. Waterfall. Agile. Scrum. Prince vs. PMI. Pick your poison.

The same goes for tools. Should you use Asana, ClickUp, Monday, or Basecamp? The 80/20 answer is that it doesn’t matter. As long as you stick to the mainstream options, there are no “bad” tools.

What matters is the context of your company, the way you operate, and how you think. Because your systems, tools, and frameworks are a reflection of your thinking. Not the other way around.

And that thinking is where you can make a difference as a project leader.

If you think from the first principles of project management and build a foundation for your projects, you’re setting your team up for success. Regardless of the tools or frameworks you use to execute them.

Keen to learn more about building a solid foundation for your projects? I’m going deep into these steps in Project Management Unraveled. Join the waitlist today and start managing successful projects with confidence.

Until next week,
Jasper