Isn’t Project Management sometimes about having the answers ready before the questions get asked? Sometimes the question is do you give the answer before the asking? 🙂

I was reminded of this recently as i went through a mental checklist of what the basic project management needs were to be on a large project. As with any large initiative that is being started up the scope is still unclear, resource needs are unsure and so things look blurry. To determine the clearer picture the Project Manager must start to offer input around potential plans, sequence of events, resource needs, potential risks and how to manage them, dependencies to name a few.

What i had set up was a definition of scope, a high level plan with some key milestones, an initial risk assessment and an program governance structure that would become a living document. As things progressed these became the items that others asked for and were readily available because ultimately they are the basic building blocks on every successful project.

As a Project Manager you are always looking forward to what is coming and sometimes that means having the information available to give when others ask for it rather than giving the information before people are ready.