Simplifying Project Requests
January 2nd, 2009I’ve found the following questions can clear up much of the confusion and misunderstanding that happen at the workplace. When supervising recent college grads, I always give them this list of questions to ask for any new project. As a manager, I try to make sure to cover the information when giving out assignments, but I don’t always hit all the points.
When do you need this by?
I’ve been shocked by the number of times this simple bit of information is omitted in conversations. This has led to many late nights working on projects that I assumed were urgent and turned out to not be. Of course, there have also been times when I figured that the project was not as urgent as my supervisor thought it was.
Who is the project being prepared for?
I work in an information industry. When asked for data, it’s not always clear who the end user will be. While the output of any project should be professional, different notes or layouts might be required for different users. Don’t assume that it’s your boss that is the only one that’s going to be looking at your product.
How is it going to be used?
The obvious example here is an internal versus external report. Every company has things they would rather not have published for the world to see and misunderstand. This is closely related to whom the project is being prepared for. Formality is another key factor here. If your boss wants a single number, there’s no point spending an hour putting together a pretty spreadsheet; if the number is going to be presented to the board of directors, a little formatting would be appreciated.
Has this been done before? If so, by who?
Most programmers have an appreciation for the futility of recreating the wheel; in the business world, I’ve been amazed at the number of times people start over from scratch on a process that has done by someone else in another department or by a predecessor. If it’s been done before, ask for documentation, if it exists.
Is this something that you’re going to be requesting on a regular basis?
Of course, it’s always good to finish a project expediently, but if you know that you’ll be doing the same thing every month or every week, then it’s always good to be looking for ways to be more efficient. On the other hand, if it’s really just a one time request, then it doesn’t make sense to spend hours automating the request.
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