Last November, we were about to move to our new apartment in 4 weeks. The bathroom, living room were planned to be re-decorated completely and we planned to partially make kitchen and bedroom up. And we only had a small amount budget and we are both quite busy on our full-time job. But finally I think we are pretty successful on this project since following six things.
1. Good Plan
Stick to your budget, make a well plan according to your real needs and budget. Never trying to achieve more than reality. Clearly write down the items into a backlog with milestones/check points.
2. Clear Defined Scope
This should be part of the plan, but I separate it since it is critical to the whole project. If you really want to extend the scope, that means either the project will be delayed or you have to remove something from the scope finally.
3. A Good Team Lead
A good team is always required for any successful project. But a good team lead is much more important. A good team leader means a lot of things, like:
a. Accurate data of status which is also in time
b. Appropriated arrangement
c. Risks identified
d. Agile, frankly, without a great team lead (a good scrum master or project manager), you are not able to be real agile.
4. Choose Good Suppliers
During the whole decoration period, you need to buy lots of stuff. If time is not a matter, it will be pretty OK to find cheap stuff with good quality. But it’s not the case to me. So there are only two places where I bought things I need, they are IKEA and B&Q. IKEA almost always has goods in stock while B&Q almost has everything. Another great thing of this kind of supplier is that they sell at expressly marked price and I can easily manage the account.
5. Delegation
You have to delegate many things to the project/team leader, as they are good at the decoration and you should put your time and effort to the things you most concern. So look back to your project backlog and see what you must to do in person.
6. Compromise
No perfect. You have to make trade-offs. Make decisions based on the values not the feelings.
本文来自: 6 Key points of a successful project with fixed deadline