Work Process, Quality, and such…

It’s been an interesting few months. In a nutshell, I’ve had to seriously rethink my approach to projects. I’ve had to retool how I budget, how I communicate with coworkers, and most importantly, improve the quality of my work.

For some reason, thinking about “meta” work is challenging. Bear with me.

Down the “process” rabbit hole! (in randomly ordered bullet points)

• Quality is not secret sauce that gets added to a project when it’s done.
• Quality should be defined with specific outcomes before the project begins.
• A project should be atomized into its components – materials, process, outcomes, purpose, budget, …
• Without an understanding of the phases/components of a project, there’s too much mystery. In my case, there wasn’t ever a quality control part of projects – just kind of a “looks good to me, I guess I can stop.”
• When projects have been teased apart into their components, a big picture can emerge. For example: when a timeline is part of every project, then it’s easier to see if projects are consistently running over or under time.
• With a project template, there is the opportunity for modification. Things change: If there isn’t an overlying structure for projects, adding components to projects becomes more haphazard. Because of where I work, I should consider things like regulations, grants, whether volunteers can or should work on the project, et cetera. I am not capable of remembering to check all of those components when I’m flying by the seat of my pants – but I can add new components to a template.

Without further ado, my template:
Project Template

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