One of the things we’ve struggled with from the start is managing projects. Both of us are Type A personalities, at least when it comes to our jobs. When juggling as many things in a day as I do, I need a clear road map of what:

1. Must be done: do or die get fired
2. Should be done: the client can wait until tomorrow without yelling at me, but it’s really important
3. Must not fall of the list: important, utterly unlikely for the day, but like a persistent pet, it won’t be ignored

At first, I used Outlook’s Task features to manage my work. That quickly got out of control and I had a huge list of things that were red warnings (generally category 3 above growing at an alarming rate).

Then I moved on to what my business partner eloquently calls “The Shit List.” Every day I summarize the tasks that need to be done on a fresh page of my notebook, ordered by client, and check them off as I get things done. I copy the unfinished items from the previous page and add new ones.

For example, yesterday list:

1. That Tech
• [X] 8am meeting
• Wireframes for Edit screen
2. Mouras
• [X] Update financing company details on website
3. Earthsoft
• [X] Edit form front end (see feedback email
• Configure and integrate database with form
• Update management dashboard
4. FashionEx
• [X] 10am meeting
• Complete templates
• Update client, generate new milestones
5. Parentpursuit
• Fix PHP filesize error
• Configure security solution
6. ABCD
• Write proposal
7. Boots
• XHTML Templates
• Enter content into CMS
8. Safeguard Knowledge
• XHTML Templates
• Enter content into CMS

That’s a really long list. You’ll notice how much of it got done. Is this because I’m a slacker? No. (though I won’t deny that sometimes that is the case.)

This is a result of what I can only refer to as Project Claim Jumping. There are some projects that suck time and resources at a rate that can be called hostile.

In a market such as ours, saying “no” isn’t an option. However, it goes further than that: I honestly want my clients to succeed and I can help them with that. Saying no doesn’t meet that goal.

So, what you do not see accounted for in that Shit List—also known as “Dude, what happened to my billable hours?”—is:

• My 8am meeting turned into a series of meetings over the course of the day.
• A client re-defined requirements and accelerated a timeline.
• Playing phone tag with clients.
• $Contractor’s part of a job went so wrong that I had to help him instead of doing my own part.

I went to bed after 1am, without the day’s critical items complete. 6 hours of sleep later, I get up with a huge to-do list, a number of items bumped from “should” to “must,” and this sensation that it doesn’t matter how good I am at my job today, there is going to be a list of disappointed clients.

Early this week, we signed up for a trial of Basecamp in hopes that, while it wasn’t the magic bullet, it at least gave us a way to track the jobs, assign work to each other (view dependencies), and give an overall picture of what is coming. I love the overall picture that I can now have, as well as the visibility into my business partner’s day (if he uses it, that is). The problem is that it’s yet another item to maintain in my day, and that to use it effectively, I must enter every task and track things in real time – not a luxury I have often.

Three factors of projects constantly have us under pressure: project creep, claim jumpers, delays.

I have yet to figure out how to manage a project to take these factors into account. At my level of experience, those three items are seemingly random. Perhaps what I really need is a crystal ball, not a project management tool.

Another item on The Shit List: research project management training.