As an industry, we celebrate and share the good stuff. Meanwhile, the ‘less said about that the better’ stuff is swept out of sight… for obvious reasons. But through writing these articles, we came to realise that we perhaps learn more from the myths, misunderstandings and screw-ups than from the successes. And so our articles started to become useful little summaries to answer questions from planners. And planners, in turn, found them good jumping-off points for client discussions on similar real-life issues. Your first milestone is to finish the content calendar, which shows all topics for the year. The deliverable is a sharable version of the calendar. Both the milestone and the deliverables should be clearly marked on your project schedule. Timeline and schedule Many of us start our mornings with dozens of things we need to get done, only to realize at the end of the day we haven’t crossed any of them off. Project plan vs. agile project: Agile project management is a framework to help teams break work into iterative, collaborative components. Agile frameworks are often run in conjunction with scrum and sprint methodologies. Like any project, an Agile project team can benefit from having a project plan in place before getting started with their work.

You may be thinking: “How can I achieve all my goals if I only focus on one task per day?”. In Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky discuss the sneaky phenomenon of busyness without productivity. In between meetings and ad-hoc requests, it can feel like we’re on a treadmill we can’t get off. oThe threat from competitors is largely a matter of size. Your biggest competitors will be the biggest brands in the market. Even if you think they’re in a different segment.Alternatively, if you’re opting for pen and paper productivity, simply star, highlight or underline the most important task on your to-do list in your notebook or daily planner. Project plans set the stage for the entire project. Without one, you’re missing a critical step in the overall project management process. When you launch into a project without defined goals or objectives, it can lead to disorganized work, frustration, and even scope creep. A clear, written project management plan provides a baseline direction to all stakeholders, while also keeping everyone accountable. It confirms that you have the resources you need for the project before it actually begins.

January 1 - December 31: Content will be written by Brandon and Jamie, and edited by Nate, throughout the year Use a task manager like Todoist to mark the Highlight for your day as high priority and move it to the top of your list. In being honest about how our days went and how we’re faring on our big goals, we can fine-tune our daily planning for better results. Hectic days might mean we need to prioritize more effectively or find a way to delegate work. Missing daily planning sessions might mean they’re too long and could benefit from a more streamlined approach. If we’re not moving towards our goals, it may mean we have too many or we’re not adding them to our days with enough frequency or intention. We might simply like pen and paper while we’ve forced ourselves to try a shiny new app. Whatever the issue, work to resolve it by modifying your daily planning process.Two of the main reasons for campaign failure were the catastrophic failure of intelligence which allowed the Germans complete strategic surprise, and the dominance of German airpower. Why were these things allowed to happen? Again a forensic examination of the anatomy helps our understanding, and in both cases institutional and systematic failure mixed unhappily with human error and the frailties of human nature. So, they trash among other things CRM and loyalty programs, most quantitative and pre-test research, and the bulk of social media and digital marketing. That’s just a random selection.

app_quote_featured]“The first step...is deciding what you want to make time for. Every day, you’ll choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar.”[/app_quote_featured] Read: Creative production best practices from Kerry Hoffman at ClassPass Write your next project plan like a pro Personal and professional split. Use a digital system for your professional tasks and a planner for your personal tasks. This can be a helpful method if you dedicate working hours to striving for professional goals and dedicate your evenings to personal tasks and self-growth. In the same vein, you might use a task manager during the week and a journal on the weekends. At the start, they talk about how we should all learn from misunderstandings and screw-ups. But in the whole book, there’s only one article where they themselves admit they got something wrong. And even then, it’s a pretty lightweight example.The original inspiration for the book was a set of articles that they wrote for Admap over 6 years. In these they set out to bust a lot of myths and nonsense that swirl around marketing and communications by using evidence-based approaches and interesting examples to make their points. Kerry Hoffman, Senior Project Manager of Marketing Operations at ClassPass, oversees all marketing projects undertaken by the creative, growth, and content teams. Here are her top three strategies for managing project plans: During this process, make sure to define the various roles and responsibilities your stakeholders might have. For example, who is directly responsible for the project’s success? How is your project team structured (i.e. do you have a project manager, a project sponsor, etc.)? Are there any approvers that should be involved before anything is finalized? What cross-functional stakeholders should be included in the project plan? Are there any risk management factors you need to include? We don’t want it to be clever. We just hope that it’s useful – on your desk, coffee-stained and well-thumbed.

In time, this process will become second nature and you’ll naturally draft a single to-do list with only “Urgent and Important” and “Non-Urgent and Important” tasks on your list. Peter Bergman, an executive coach and the best-selling author of 18 Minutes, suggests setting a regular timer to refocus ourselves: Readjust your plan It’s amazing how often clients happily commit huge sums of money with no clear objectives. Even when objectives are specified, they’re often incredibly vague. One company recently spent millions of pounds without defining their objectives any more clearly than to ‘sell a shedload of X’. For example, a goal for an event might be to host an annual 3-day conference for SEO professionals on June 22nd. A success metric for that goal might be having at least 1,000 people attend your conference. It’s both clear and measurable. Free cross-functional project template Step 3: Clarify stakeholders and rolesThe How Not to Plan of 2018 is a manageably sized handbook which leaves room for your scribbles and notes and can be read as a guide or used as a constant helpful reference point. Despite this knowledge, we often fail to prioritize planning where it matters most: our daily lives. Getting started in the morning without a clear plan sets us up to fail. Project planning is the second stage in the project management process, following project initiation and preceding project execution. During the project planning stage, the project manager creates a project plan, which maps out project requirements. The project planning phase typically includes setting project goals, designating project resources, and mapping out the project schedule. What is a project plan? oDon’t just use the definition that’s been used for years. Markets are less segmented than you think. You compete with every brand in the market to some extent.