Keep the wheels of work turning

A documentation project has hardly begun when the first dark clouds start gathering. An employee is sick; the contact person at the customer is travelling. The submission date for the technical documentation is threateningly close. This is where project management matters.

Text by Martin E. Brüggemann Diana Rehberg

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Keep the wheels of work turning

Image: © auremar/ 123rf.com

Every project is different. There are different starting points, project targets and company cultures. The personalities and working methods within a team also contribute to the fact that the course always differs from project to project.

However, all projects have one thing is common: There is always something that works against the original planning. An important employee could suddenly become unavailable, leaving one work load uncompleted and this delays the rest of the work. Let go of the concept that everything will run exactly as you expect it to. Your plan is not a script for reality. It only reflects the information that you had at time X – no more and no less.

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