Week 1
Recently, probably driven by an impending mid life crisis and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle I’ve started competing in a few Triathlons.
The amount of time spent training for the things has given me a lot of time to think, and, for me personally, I just can’t get over the similarities between a good triathlon and a good web project. Over the next three weeks, I’ll share my thoughts on why.
Training = Project Management.
If you don’t train for a Tri you’re in trouble. Training will involve endless hours of pain that, eventually, does reward you with a couple of seconds improvement here, and a minute or two there. It’s about conditioning your body to handle the three very different physical demands, and then, if done well, bringing them together perfectly when needed.
Project management of web projects is demanding, yet, like training, if it’s done properly, it can be very rewarding. The first challenge is that you need to work across three different disciplines:
- Strategic – quickly getting the idea, understanding and business objectives, whilst striving to deliver a return on client investment.
- Creative – the touchy feely, personal, subjective element of making things look and feel great for the user.
- Technical – the critical heavy lifting, functional, engine house responsible for making the above all work well.
Just like cycling using different muscles entirely than swimming, or running being much higher impact skeletally than cycling, the second challenge is that you need to understand that the people involved are also typically very different personalities, and need you to deploy slightly different management styles in working with them, and (most importantly) getting them to work for you.
In conclusion, it’s about putting in the hours, monitoring and measuring whilst being sensitive to each discipline and pulling it together perfectly on the day. Just like training, project management definitely improves the more you do it, but if you employ a good robust process (akin to a training plan put together by a professional trainer) you’ll find everything coming together much quicker than if you try and do it yourself.