Project Management 101

My intent of writing this is not to get too involved in heavy project management language but to put togeather some helpful tips.

1. Excel is your best friend. You will always need a tracking sheet nothing heavy, no tool, no enterprise blah blah..just a small excel sheet. It works like a charm.
   
2. Use some form of an enterprise tool. There will be a time when you need more than Excel, something everyone can see. Something like Sharepoint. The sooner you embrace something like that the better. It helps to share information, it helps to keep things on track and it helps to keep order.
   
3. Metrics: Sooner of later someone is going to ask how are we doing ? Where are we ? Also metrics give some sense of achievement and accomplishment. Start collect basic data and start representing the data in graphs. Hard to believe but the senior the person looking at your metrics more colors and graphs he / she likes :)
   
4. Reporting: There are different audiences for different reports. Know the difference, might lead to frustration. You might think I am giving so much detailed info and putting so much hard work but your boss might think its too detailed I only need high level. (been there done that :) )
   
1. For Executive Reports: Approach should be a high level Project / Product , When it will launch, Status, High Level Dependencies
   
2. For Project Level: Project, Tasks, Dates, Status, Project Level Dependencies, Resources etc.
   
5. Habit of writing Meeting Minutes. Its surprising how many people overlook the importance of writing Meeting Minutes, but its an important tool of keeping yourself organized. It also helps in documenting the next steps many times discussions are done but no one concludes the next steps. Basic Template of Meeting Minutes (what I follow):
   
1. Attendees:
   
2. Agenda:
   
3. Conclusion /Discussion
4. Action Items (next steps)