The Craft of Project Management

Managing a project is easy. Managing a project well is difficult. It’s far more art than science—and it’s certainly more than to-dos, schedules, and status updates.

When you’re managing a project, you need to:

1. Collect Context
2. Curate Communication
3. Collaborate Collectively

Collect Context

Information is power. And the information you need to manage a project comes from the context you’ve collected. Write diligent notes, document decisions, and continue to dig deeper into the problem space to unlock key insights. They say “content is king”, but I think “context is king.” The better the context, the better the decisions. And delivering effectively requires trade-offs, built upon hundreds of tiny decisions made daily. Context is your ally.

Curate Communication

If you’re leading a project well, you’re an artist—you’re a chef. The kitchen may be chaotic at times, but that’s not what the customer sees—that’s the creative process in motion. You know how to select the best items, construct the menu, and thoughtfully present information. That’s artistry. Often times that means extra work, duplication, and methodical precision. But it protects the creative process and it puts the best product in front of your customers. You do it because it’s your craft.

Collaborate Collectively

With clear context and clear presentation, you need a flywheel of refinement. You need feedback. The tighter the feedback loop, the more you can iterate. And the more you can iterate, the better the end result. Project success is measured by impact. And you only get there through continuous feedback loops born out of collaboration. You know precisely when to open the aperture and bring more people into the process, and when to lower the volume of input to decrease the noise.

The Craft

Project management is a craft. And like all crafts, it requires taste, intuition, and a deep understanding of the domain you operate in. Focus on the principles, and let the process be a byproduct of those fundamental truths.