Project Management Checklists

I’ve been reading Atul Gawande’s work on checklists, and I had the privilege to hear him speak the other night. (You can also read his original New Yorker piece on checklists here.)

I think checklists are a valuable tool for both experienced and accidental project managers.

Right now, I’m working up some LPM checklists, starting with What Belongs in a Project Charter. Here’s a first cut, drawn from my book Legal Project Management:

• Problem Statement: Is there a clear client problem statement?
• Business Problem: Is it phrased in terms of the business problem the client is trying to solve?
• Vision: Is there a project vision, expressed in the present tense, representing the desired end-state?
• Testing the Vision: Have you tested proposed actions against the vision to demonstrate that the vision is clear enough to provide a thumbs-up/thumbs-down on those actions?
• “Done”: Is there a “Done” statement?
• Commander’s Intent: (optional) Do you have a Commander’s Intent?
• Out of Scope: Do you have an Out-of-Scope section listing the things you know that you explicitly will not do?
• Dates and Deadlines: Have you included all required dates and deadlines that you know about?
• Resources: Have you summarized the budget and resources available and committed to the project, whether by name or by position?
• Fees: Do you know and have you included what the client expects to pay? Have you indicated whether it’s an hourly arrangement, fixed or flat fee, and so on?
• Bonuses: Are there bonus payments? Have you noted them?
• Key Players: Have you listed the key players? Have you included both the stakeholders and the leads on the project team?
• Signatories: Do you have a list of who must sign off on the charter? Does it include the stakeholders? Have you determined whether the signing will be ceremonial – e.g., for a major case – or something simpler, such as an email asking, “Do we have this right?”
• Signatures: Have all of the signatories actually signed off? Are you good to go?

Notes from the book:

• A vision is not the same thing as a “vision statement,” which usually ranks high on the bogosity scale.
• Done: What does success look like? How do you know you’re there? The “Done” statement should list no more than two or three critical success factors (CSFs) for the project; if/when you meet those CSFs, the project is successful.
• In the military, the Commander’s Intent guides troop on-the-fly choices amid the chaos of the battlefield. Commander‘s intent is a worthwhile addition to the project charter whenever the practice itself has a goal for the project in addition to the client goal – e.g., train associates on some aspect of the case.
• With dates, don’t include an entire court calendar, e.g., for information available elsewhere; in that case, include just a few critical dates.
• Resourcing “by position” means, e.g., “two associates.” You can do a client-only version that omits the Resources section.
• Note any potential bonuses – outcome-based, early delivery, fees lower than estimated – as reminders to the team.

Of these, the Commander’s Intent is optional, but I recommend it for larger projects. Sometimes, especially for small projects, you can roll “Done,” the vision, and the Commander’s Intent together, though I don’t recommend conflating “Done” with the vision.

For some projects, signatories and key players are the same, in which case don’t list them twice.

“Done” is called many different things in different approaches to project management. I like the very simple, blunt name “Done.” There’s little room for misunderstanding.

I continue to work on developing some useful checklists. This is a first cut at one of them, and I haven’t had a chance to test it yet.

ProjectHut also has a starter post on using checklists in project management.