The New year’s Resolutions. – Project Management process groups

 

The beginning of a new year is always shown as an opportunity to reflect our goals or resolutions fulfilled and unfulfilled throughout the year.

I’ve reviewed my goals from last year, both professional and personal, and I’ve realized, that I have fulfilled them all. Why? Simple, consciously or unconsciously, my personal life is managed as a project. Giving importance to all different process groups, I’ve achieved all my 2016 goals. Then I’m ready to start 2017 completely clean.  

If you continue reading, you’ll discover how I’ve managed the different process groups during last year. 

Initiating Process Group

During December 2015, I began to review my lessons learned, and objectives. Then I created a project charter. 

Planning Process Group

This is the key process; some of us started the year with an enthusiastic spirit, with a huge list of joys and good intentions, ambitious goals. However few people achieve this goal, and this is due to the following

• We recycle goals from one year to the next. This leads to professional and personal stagnation.
• We procrastinate. Basically, because we have defined goals and objectives that do not motivate us.
• We do not have a plan and we simply define general goals.

By following the next key tips, you will get a correct right way to plan your goals.

• Take your time to elaborate a plan thoroughly. Do not plan your goals quickly, spend time just like you would in your daily professional project.
• Create a clear categorization of your goals (Personal, Professional, Education, Entertainment, Health ...) and include a deadline for each goal. Do not leave everything for December 31st.
• Define goals that really motivate you, for example, if your dream is to play the Spanish guitar, because you’ve seen at the campground your neighbor singing around the campfire, but it really does not motivate you, the most likely is that around mid-year, you deprioritize that goal to focus on another.
• Use positive statements. Try to change expressions like “I want to stop procrastinating in my free time”, to something like “I want to do an outdoor activity once a month”
• Specify and detail all the objectives. Ambiguous objectives will give us ambiguous results. Example, Studying for the PMP Certification vs. Dedicating 1 hour to prepare the PMP Certification.

Executing process group

When you already have the objectives set, and a good implementation plan. It is time to focus on realization. Always try to pursue one goal at the time, although you can execute in multi-task mode, remember that you’ll lose efficiency and quality in pursuing your goals. Prioritize and do not stop monitoring and controlling.

Monitoring and controlling process group

Depending on the goals and deadlines that you’ve, do not forget to check and review weekly or monthly the status of your goals.

When you are reviewing the objectives, some risks that you didn’t include initially will appear, maybe you’ll have to lead with cost problems, then take in mind…you have to manage your project Go2NewYear as a professional project, you must revieww and check that you are taking care of all knowledge areas.

And if you're not getting your goals, what happens? Well, the same as in a project: it has to re-plan and execute accordingly.

Closing process group

Before to closing, remember, document lessons learned for each goal and CELEBRATE, CELEBRATE!!

Did you celebrate your goals in 2016? Do you have a plan for 2017?