Project Planning Examples

Date: 2020-10-30

projects
init brainstorming
review plan draft 1
project: review selected topics
1. IGC
2. pre-plan
  1. brainstorm
  2. pre-plan tree
3. plan
  1. brainstorm
  2. main plan tree
project: moving house

projects

review + practice material from tutorials re project planning
example: moving house
example: writing a short book on type-level programming
- note: this is an idea I have b/c there aren’t really any good accessible type-level programming books AFAIK

init brainstorming

should brainstorm early in process
doing first is okay if you just need to get ideas out. then you can come back later to do a ‘proper’ order of steps.
what are the steps?
- need pre/main/post plans
- need to brainstorm dependencies
- brainstorm early steps - prelim before anything but sketch of plan is written down
- can break up projects in to subprojects at some point
- check reference material
might want to list skills you have / skills you need (contextually appropriate)
project should have clear IGC
can get feedback after draft
reference example: https://curi.us/files/diagrams/Skyscraper-Project-Plan-v1.pdf

review plan draft 1

define IGC draft 1
1. make sure you have a clear reason for taking action and you understand the context. if there are gaps: they go in prelim plan.
generic pre-plan skills
1. trees
2. IGC
3. overreaching detection & mitigation strategies
4. break down goals into subgoals and identify associated skills (main plan) or how to acquire them (pre plan)
draft up pre-plan
identify parts of main plan you know enough about and those you don’t
todo: – comment: I didn’t start this with a pre-plan

project: review selected topics

IGC

The goal is to get better at particular material we’ve covered in tutoring max. Particularly: writing and project planning. I want to do this via practice/review of both material and techniques. I want to produce examples while doing this. I’m doing this for me primarily.

The idea is to use project planning itself (along with some other examples) as the subject to practice on. I’ll practice writing by producing articles about the component skills (similar to my how can we write to communicate better post). I am the intended audience, but the examples should be useful for FI people also (the articles should be higher quality than just notes). I’ll practice project planning by planning the project of practicing project planning, along with two examples of plans: moving house and writing a small book on particular programming techniques.

Note: the book project might be at high risk of overreaching – should make sure to do pre-plan stuff well b/c it’s likely I’ll hit something in prereqs to do first (and do before I make a decision on doing the project or not).

Context is mostly delegated to assumed / common / background knowledge. Additioanl context: I feel like I have a busy schedule. I also have bad time management, esp after an intense period of work, and esp esp after intense work I am not particularly enjoying.

pre-plan

brainstorm

what does reference pre-project tree say?
- trees, overreaching, skill breakdown, bias and emotions
- other stuff?
- can the pre-project plan be generalised? like a ‘colour by numbers’ sorta thing. Why shouldn’t it be the same for any project? The 2+ levels deep stuff might be particular to the project, but shallower nodes should be generic-alizable.
some stuff in reference pre-plan probably not relevant here, but can I safely exclude it? Probably not. I should include but show an empty node.
going to put trees under skills

pre-plan tree

pre-plan: reviewing material and producing articles/examples
  identify skills
    trees (status: okay)
      method: plan the project using trees
        reqs: know about trees and other FI relevant topics
    grammar (status: okay)
    sentence analysis (okay)
    text analysis (okay)
      be able to represent article/explanation/etc as tree
    writing (?)
      techniques
        brainstorm
        define audience
        topic sentences and outline
        good sentence construction
        writing simply and clearly
        constructing ~complex arguments / explanations
    project planning (?)
      breaking ideas down into components / dependencies
      enough knowledge of core subjects, meta stuff, myself, etc to know when:
        a. I am knowledgeable enough to proceed
        b. I'm not knowledgeable enough to succeed
        c. I don't know whether I'm knowledgeable enough or not b/c of lack of overall knowledge
        d. I will get stuck if I dive into trying to learn a topic (not enough foundation)
        e. I am overreaching (or at risk of overreaching)
        f. I am reacting emotionally and not rationally
      need to know how to detect and mitigate overreaching
  what skills are very important and need to be kept in mind throughout?
    self awareness re: overreaching
    how to deal with problems and getting stuck
      identifying the problems
      finding or creating solutions
        implementing them (actually doing error correction)
      discussion and error checking
    use proper structure when writing plans/articles/etc.
      checklists might help if I'm not good enough to autopilot it reliably
  stuff i need to learn before starting main project
    nothing, but at risk of forgetting stuff so should go back to source material occasionally
  failure points
    poor time management
    starting to write before reviewing material
      the plan is like: 1. try planning/writing stuff, 2. if I get stuck go review material, 3. once I'm done, maybe review material to self-eval
      could result in wasted time or high error rate
        error rate in the project planning is okay if I can manage and correct it. it's not okay in *result* of the project (i.e. the written articles)

plan

brainstorm

for each project
1. make sure I have IGC
2. brainstorm pre-plan stuff
3. fill in pre-plan tree to note breakdown of skills
4. identify stuff that needs to happen first
5. brainstorm main-plan stuff
6. break down project into components (knowledge, tasks, risks, content outline, whatever)
7. continue breaking stuff down till it’s actionable
8. quality and totality check:
  1. what questions will ppl have?
  2. what isn’t clear?
  3. what failure cases haven’t been considered?
plan to only be doing a small number of new things at once
- what are the new things I’m doing now?
  - project planning in general - haven’t done much of that with this method
  - writing robustly under time pressure
    - note is there an issue here b/c I’m not able to effectivley manage error rate? not sure, should keep an eye out though
    - am I taking too long or being too verbose so far? might either of those indicate getting stuck?
      - haven’t had to think on any particular thing very long atm, not stuck, better to keep going
      - slight worry I’m repeating myself a bit
  - writing technique – note: does this really happen at the same time as the other parts of project planning? I could separate (eg time-box) the various components where I avoid doing bits of the other one

main plan tree

(note: I think the project planning project plan is maybe not good to do first. going to try straight up moving house example)

project: doing example project planning collection
  **todo**

project: moving house

Initial thought: Since I’ve moved house before I’m going to skip pre-plan. Revised thought: whoah there, how do you know you’re not mistaken?

IGC

Simple and general case: you don’t want to live where you do and want to live somewhere else.

Note: I think we can sort of ignore the IGC a bit in this case; we’re sort of assuming the goal (move house), context doesn’t matter much, and the idea is like the naieve/obvious idea (taking all your stuff from one house and putting it in the other).

preplan

not at particular risk of overreaching / getting emotional
skills are pretty general, nothing super important needed
going to just go for it

moving house plan

moving house brainstorm

need to be able to sign a lease
need to be able to pay for lease
need to be abel to move in whatever window you set
need to be able to secure a lease
need to find a place you like
need to know where you want to look for a place
need to know idea of effort involved to make sure dates are suitable
need to include buffer somewhere - either it needs to be pre-existing in your schedule and/or you need a long overlap period (where you have keys to old and new house) to give lots of time to finish moving
need to organise new utilties
need to cancel utils
need to update addresses
need to vacate old house

moving house project tree

project: move house
  find houses up for lease you're interested in
    decide qualities of location you like
    decide parameter for houses in that location based on market values
    schedule inspections
  secure lease
    know what you'll need to apply
    choose good docs and references
    apply early
    talk with real estate agent if possible, establish rapport
    find out plans for house if possible
      did owners buy it as an investment
      might they sell it or move in themselves
  prepare the move
    sort possessions into keeping/sell/trash
      throw out trash, starting earlier is better
      advertise items for sale, the earlier the better
      do early prep for items-to-keep early if appropriate contextual
    pack stuff for moving
    move stuff
      order of operations
        keep in mind furniture and organisation of new place
          avoid furniture tetris
      plan cutover of services like internet
  do the move
  vacate old place
    clean everything
    terminate or move services
    update address with banks/apps/govt/etc
    hand back keys
  set up new place

You can leave a comment anonymously. No sign up or login is required. Use a junk email if not your own; email is only for notifications—though, FYI, I will be able to see it.