One-Person Projects

When is managing a project not project management? When only one person is involved.

A lot of people are sent to my seminars to learn how to manage projects, but they are the only person working on their projects. Now it is true that a one-person job can be called a project, because it has a definite starting point, target end date, specific performance requirements, defined scope of work, and a budget. However, when no one else is working on the project (including outside vendors), there is no need for a critical path schedule. A critical path schedule is one that has a number of parallel paths, and one of them will be longer than the others and will determine how long it will take to complete the job, or ultimately, whether the given end date can be met. When you’re working on a job by yourself, there aren’t any parallel paths—unless you are ambidextrous!

One-person projects do require good self-management, or good time management, but all you need is a good to-do list, which comes from a task listing. However, unless you are coordinating the work of other people, you aren’t practicing true project management.