The List That Saves My Projects: How I Stay Ahead of What Could Go Wrong

Projects have many competing priorities for our time. There are risks that need managing, assumptions that need validating, reports that need creating, workshops that need running, issues that need resolving, benefits that need defining and, ultimately, something that needs delivering.

How on earth do you work out what you should be working on next?

What’s the most valuable thing for you to be doing across all the things that you could be doing for your project?

Introducing the “what’s going to make my project go wrong today” list. For me, this is the most useful artefact on my project and my one go-to every day.

What is in this list?

The “what’s going to make my project go wrong today” list, is a list of 10 things, in priority order, that are going to make my project go wrong, if I don’t work on them today.

Some of these things already exist in issue logs, or minutes from governance meetings.

Some of these things are uniquely represented in this list.

The order in the list is important. The item at the top of the list, is the thing that is most likely to make my project go wrong today.

This list helps me answer what I should be working on next. It is the highest item in the list.

How do you create it?

I start work early in the morning so I’m lucky to have quiet time at the beginning of my day. I get a cup of tea, and I read through my project artefacts.

For each artefact, I ask myself, if I don’t do anything on this today, is it going to make my project go wrong? If the answer is yes, it goes on my list. If you’re working on a really good project and nothing is going wrong (someone tells me these sorts of projects do exist), you can change the question to “if I find time to work on this today, is it going to make my project even more awesome”.

I do this for all my artefacts. Risks, Issues, Assumptions, Decisions, Plan (in whatever form I have it), one on one notes with the team, meeting minutes, benefits, outcomes, scope, etc.

When I’ve read through all my artefacts and have a long list, I prioritise it.

I find my personal bias comes in when I’m prioritising. I tend to value the things I like doing, rather than the things that need doing. To combat this, I ask myself which is the highest priority thing on this list today, that needs doing, that I’m going to delegate?

By framing the question as a task I’m going to give away to someone else, it tricks me into correctly prioritising the work I don’t like to do.

Once my first priority is set, I write it on a new piece of paper and scrub it off my long list. I repeat the same question until I have 10 things on my second list, in priority order.

The daily discipline

The first time you do this, it’s hard. You might be on your second cup of tea and still working through it. By the end of the first week, it’s a 15 minute exercise and you’ll still have some tea left but you’ll be done with the task.

15 minutes spent on this at the start of the day stops the procrastinating during the day. I find I get the time back by not procrastinating. I find it helps me work on the most important things. I find it makes me really clear on the current content in all my artefacts because I force myself to read them every day. All of that, saves me more than 15 minutes every day.

The list is dynamic. My lead developer quits. That’s a new item that’s going to go somewhere on my list. It’s OK for a new item to come onto the list during the day.

If an item has been on my list for a week, and it’s no higher than priority 7, and I haven’t found time to do anything with it, I don’t let myself put it back on my list for the next week. It’s possible that this is an example of something I think I should be doing, but isn’t really important. So I take it off my list.

Some days I get all 10 things on my list actioned. Some days I don’t get to even action the top priority item. But every day I know the things I should be working on that could disrupt my project.