Intake form for new projects, or at least projects to which I’m new.
Include things like:
- A three-sentence description of the project
- Who are 1-3 others who (1) understand and (2) can speak to the importance of the project and (3) my importance in the project landing?
- The opinion of these individuals should “matter”. That is, ideally they’re one or two promotion levels above me.
- Who are the stakeholders?
- Why is this project worth our time?
- Why does this project matter?
- Phrase in terms of arguing the importance of the project to a L+3 who doesn’t have prior context
- What is the timeline? What are the deadlines?
- What confidence level do we give this timeline?
- Are there sub-timelines?
- Assign confidence level
- For an existing project: Have we had timelines in the past which we’ve already overshot?
- How do we define success for this project?
- What are the milestones?
- Associated deadlines?
- How do we define success for this milestone?
- Can more than one person work on the milestones in parallel?
- What is the last 1%/10% of the project? (see below)
Also see Split “Lessons learned” into nodes.
Stages of a project
- First 10%: Understand: the project, scope, stakeholders, requirements, etc
- 80%: Do: the project (e.g. launch)
- Last 10%: Finish: All the finishing details