How to manage small projects at work early in your career

TLDR: Small projects are a great way to prove yourself. However you need to make them simple to manage with a light set of processes, as you will be busy with your day job. You must also be laser focused on risks, listening to your gut to avoid them derailing your project.

At some point in the first few years of your career you are likely to be given a small project by your boss. Getting given your first project at work can be exciting. You have a chance to prove yourself, and you get to do work that is different to your normal day to day.

But projects can be intimidating, especially early in your career.

Managing projects is different to what most people do at work. The goals are often unclear and you need lots of people in the organisation support your project to make it successful.

When I first started working on projects I was sent on several courses to prepare me. Almost universally they were useless. They were targeted at fulltime project managers, and expected too much process for a first time project manager.

The purpose of this post is to tell you how to manage small projects with the minimum of fuss.

What is a Small Project?

Small projects are managed by 1 person for less than ½ of their working week. This person could be a fulltime project manager with lots of other projects or someone with a fulltime job and a project on top.

Smallish projects are defined by them not being your primary focus. You need to manage them with this in mind.

You will be managing this project in short interspersed and distracted chunks of time. You are unlikely to live and breathe this project, and will need to manage it accordingly.

• The project is not important enough to have someone fulltime working on it, you will likely need to convince other people in your company to support what you need.
• If its not important enough for you to be dedicated to it fulltime then it sure as hell is not important enough for other people to pay attention to it unless you make them.

Some other features that are common in small projects that can help you identify them:

• Have been given to a junior person or are part of a portfolio for a project manager
• Timelines < 12 months
• Budgets <$USD200K

To give some concrete examples here are some small projects that I was given in the first 4 years of my career.

• Updating the safety documentation and training for ~5 axel grinders.
• Managing the ISO Quality reaccreditation for a 100 person factory.
• Trialling the use of Ipads on the shop floor in a factory to replace paper.

So after all that introduction, what are the best ways of managing a small project.

What to do when first starting the project

• Write a 1 Pager/Charter: Write down the project GOAL, WHY are you trying to reach the goal, the TIMELINE , the PEOPLE involved, and the biggest RISKS you can think of. After it is completed have a meeting with your boss to check if they agree with your summary. This will likely need a few rounds of iteration to get something everyone is happy with.
• Ask Around: Check with your boss and teammates if anyone has done a similar project before that you could talk to. If there is make sure to speak to them and see if they have any guidance for you.
• Create Simple Documentation: Using the timeline from the 1 pager/charter set up a very simple Gantt chart in a spreadsheet. I wouldn’t even use formulas, keep it as simple as possible. In the same spreadsheet have a separate tab for a To Do List. Keep all actions related to the project in this List.

How to Manage the Project on an Ongoing Basis

I could talk about principles of how to manage a project. But instead I think a list of key actions you should take to run your project on an ongoing basis.

• Hold Regular Meetings: People may not like them but regular project meetings are necessary. They drive accountability and prevent tasks from dragging over months. They should be every 1–2 weeks, and need to be led by the project manager.
• Meeting Management: Displaying meeting competence is critical, especially early in your career. The easiest way to do this is by. Having an agenda which you review at the start of the meeting with everyone. The agenda can be as simple as bullet points in a word document, but it needs to be there. Some people will say you should pre-distribute an agenda but this is hard to maintain with regular meetings.
• Own the Notes: Send meeting notes out to all attendees within 15 minutes of a meeting finishing. These notes need to clearly highlight any actions agreed upon in the meeting. This is a strong signal of competence and is appreciated by busy people in your project.
• Stakeholder Management: Be clear with the stakeholders and update them frequently in some form. I recommend sending a mass Friday afternoon email/Slack update to everyone involved in the project. These should be skimable by a busy person. Do not use these messages to assign actions. Send actions in separate specific emails to individuals.
• Escalating Blockers: If someone in your project is missing deadlines you need to escalate, but appropriately. The usual best course of action is to talk to them by themselves to understand the reason for the miss. If deadlines keep being missed you need to escalate to your manager or their manager. If you are unsure what to do I would approach your manager first and ask for their advice.

The final big thing we should talk about are risks and how to manage them.

Managing Risks and Trusting Your Gut

Risks are a critical element of project management. Normally project managers are told to make a risk register and continually update it. This is too heavy a process to work for a small project instead you should Trust your Gut.

Trusting your gut is about being honest with yourself about risks, and then acting upon them.

Nothing kills small projects like a risk that you knew about but thought you could push off. This is the hardest thing to manage as a project manager, but you need to address the problems head on at the start

Lets look at some examples of risks that I have personally seen in projects, and knew they

• You have a member of your project team that is disengaged. They continually miss deadlines, and deliver poor work when they do complete their work. They are now responsible to deliver a critical part of a project, which if missed could cause the project to fail. Your gut is telling you the project timeline is at risk of slipping.
• The customer has asked for a challenging technical requirement to be included in the final product. You have raised this with the technical team but more experienced team members tell you not to worry, as these requests always get made and customers always change their mind. Your gut is telling you this customer won’t change their mind.
• You can’t get agreement on what the project goal should be. Sales say it should be sales growth, operations say it should be cost reduction, marketing say it should be improved data analysis. You are now 2 months in and you have no idea if the project will make anyone happy. Your gut is telling you this project is going to end in failure!

How to deal with risks you feel in your gut

As you become more experienced you will be expected to foresee these kinds of risks and prevent/manage them by yourself. However at the start of your career it is fine to reach out to your boss to help work your way through the issue.

Before talking to them you should do the following process to think through the risk and potential solutions/mitigations.

1. Write the Risk Out: Before talking to anyone you need to be able to clearly explain the problem so someone else can understand it. Remember this project is not even your fulltime job, your boss is going to be even less up to date on the details than you are. Make it as easy for them to understand the problem as possible.
2. Spend 5 Minutes Thinking: Set a timer on your phone for 5 minutes and think about solutions/mitigations to the risk you have identified. No cheating and no cutting the time short. You have to spend 5 minutes by yourself thinking of different ways to make this risk less of a problem. By doing this you will hopefully avoid missing an obvious answer that will make you look foolish for not considering it earlier.