Project Planning: Finish Strong

Only the project leader can be certain the project will finish strong. Without a strong finish, future projects will become more difficult to manage and harder to recruit volunteers. Let’s look at three different ways we can ensure that your project will finish successfully.

Prioritizing Tasks

Take the time to prioritize tasks throughout the project. Not only will this prevent the project from derailing, it will also ensure that only the highest priority tasks have the attention of your team. As you approach the end of your project, you can add lower priority tasks as time allows, knowing that the most critical tasks have been given focus.

I’ve experienced projects where low priority tasks were given the most attention – those were the projects that were headed toward failure. The only person that can prevent this is the project leader. Keep your team focused, remind your team of the big idea for the project, and stick to it.

The Final Touches

Have you ever seen a project end quickly as it approached a hard deadline? It isn’t always a pretty sight, especially when the team is scrambling to get things done, sacrificing quality to meet the deadline. While not always possible, experience has demonstrated that spending a little more time to get it right will often be rewarded. This extra time is what I call “applying the finishing touches” and often separates a project that looks like it was disorganized from one that looks thought out, managed, and successfully delivered. Make sure what you deliver is neat, organized, and clean. It will give your team, along with those that experience your project first hand, a sense of professionalism.

Leave a Legacy

The project isn’t done when you deliver on the final goals. Often, there will be documentation and training to be done. If part of your project team will be remaining to continue some of the work, then they may need minimal documentation or training practices. Build into your plan the time to train new team members for ongoing project maintenance, along with documentation on operating your project’s deliverables. Don’t let yourself get so focused on deadlines that you forget to leave a proper legacy for others.

Taking these three steps will help ensure your project finishes on a strong note and will demonstrate your ability to lead a project fully from start to finish. Next, we’ll discuss project reviews and rewards as we wrap up this series on project planning.

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