Project Management Simplicity

While attending a family celebration this past weekend I was reminded of the importance of being organized and pre-planing. When I complemented our host on how smooth and seamless the activities flowed, she thanked me and interjected that she in fact did not consider herself an organized person. What did she do that made her event work? A simple timetable with the afternoon’s activities blocked in 15 and 30 min increments. A cross over moment. As project managers we do this all the time either following a waterfall (sequential) or scrum approach. In this case a simple sequential top-to-bottom timetable was all that was required to keep the 200 attendees all moving in the right direction at the right time. Of course the m.c. and caterer needed to follow the script, but even when things went “off-script” they were still headed in the right direction.  A great example of project management simplicity. Share your story with us.