Session 04: Designing the Presentation

Hey there and welcome to this session of the PM Standards project where I am creating a repository for project management standards. In the last session I determined which standards were within and outside of the scope of the project. In this session I will determine how this “repository” should be made presentable.

To start, I will relay the list of elements discovered in the previous session:

• Project Anatomy
• Workflow (project-agnostic)
• Phases and Life Cycle
  • Need, Scope, and Your Compass Statements
  • Research and Analysis
  • Production
  • Review
  • Launch
  • Retrospective

Starting with the simplest media, a written document, this could look like a standard guide, right? Glossary of terms, high level project definition, and step-by-step template. My instinct is to make this bigger than that – I imagine an online system to help facilitate the process. But I’m not ready for that yet. In addition, there is a future plan to change whatever I create for this project into an official guide so the product could essentially remain a written document for now.

This document does not need to be a PDF. It could be online, like the very project notes you are reading. I could post them to the StoryHammer website but since I plan to eventually brand the project planning guides, it seems like a mismatch.

The press release that announced the launch of the Cryptiquest Projects website explained how this site would be used “as a repository for official guidelines, surveys, and other tools the company utilizes for project management which are available to the public for use. ” The only difference between then and now is that I didn’t have the idea to create a brand for the project documents. But I could brand them then put them on this site and either keep them as their own brand or rebrand the site. The site could use a makeover anyway, to be honest.

Regardless, it sounds like this site could host the project management standards until the official guide is created.

Okay. It sounds like what I’m looking at is a page (or group of pages) on this site that serve as a repository for the project management standards.

Now may be a good time to identify objectives and deliverables for the next leg of the project. The goal was listed as follows:

Phase 2 Goal: To present the repository content in a way that helps aid the project management process

That’s pretty broad. According to the limitations of this project I am the target audience so this project needs to be presented in a way that helps aid the project management process for me. While that might sound like a trivial point it is important since I have only really considered how to display this content for ease of implementation, not for use.

Let’s explore in what way this project would best help me in the project management process. Having a template for the Kick-off would be easier. Having a form for it would be even easier. It would be great to have some sort of form for the objectives and stuff and then those objectives would show up on each subsequent sessions as an aside. Though they wouldn’t really show up while I’m writing these session posts as they would just display on the page post.

The other problem with forms is that they are too limiting. Not every project is the same though with a form I could have options to turn specific parts on/off – have them all available and deactivate those that are not applicable.

I don’t see how having a form would be any easier than just using a template though. I’m picturing a basic step-by-step instruction for creating phases and then templates for those phases. That sounds good enough.

So what are the objectives? The repository needs to be presented in a way that helps me in project planning. So the repository should be easy to navigate. It should be easy to edit. It should be easy to access and the parts should be easy to use. Maybe instead of having objectives, I just need to add a rule to the documentation that permits enhancement requests via Action Items during sessions.

Objectives for Phase II

• The repository includes rules for enhancements.

Deliverables

With the method and location set, now there is the matter of creating the documentation and implementing the system.

1. Documentation
   1. Draft Instructions
   2. Draft Templates
   3. Draft Project Terminology/Anatomy
2. Review
   1. Send to Confidants
   2. Send to Forums
3. Implementation
   1. Create pages on this site
   2. Add content
4. Launch
   1. Create press release
   2. Create social media posts
   3. Notify folks on various designer forums

Okay. I think that does it. In the next session I’ll start drafting the instructions. How exciting is that? Very! See you there!

Action Items

• Create project deliverables for Documentation, Review, Implementation, and Launch