Preparing for the Next Project

Project management is a science of experience. Estimating durations is not nearly as hard the second time you plan the same type of activities. Assigning resources becomes much easier after you are familiar with the resource pool and have a sense of the quality and quantity of an individual or team’s work. When you finish a project, try to identify those things that might be useable in future projects. Keep a summary of each project you manage so you can go back and review the things you learned as well as the mistakes you don’t want to repeat. Use your experience with prior projects to guide your decision-making about new projects you are undertaking.

If you anticipate that you may manage a similar project in the future, you can save the project file as a template (see “Creating and Using Custom Project Templates” in Chapter 23). When you begin planning the new project, you can open the project template, and a big piece of your work will already be done.