How to Manage a Project

This project guide helps two Sky’s the Limit members work together through four meetings as they collaborate to create a project management plan and execute it.

Meeting 1: Review project requirements and systems

Before this meeting:

• Make sure that you’ve had an intro meeting. If you need help navigating your first meeting, visit this Guide to Your First Meeting.

• Review: Project Management for Business article

In this meeting:

• Review the systems and tools for planning projects. Choose

  • Project Planning w/ Google Sheets

  • Trello

  • Asana

  • Monday.com

After this meeting:

• Choose the system that is easiest to use and costs the least. Try not to spend money on a project management system unless/until you have a large team and/or a complicated project with many subprojects.

• Note any agreed-upon next steps.

Meeting 2: Choose your project management system and start planning

Before this meeting:

• Review and best practices or training materials for your chosen project management system.

In this meeting:

• Break the project up into project groups. 

  • How you can break down these larger goals into smaller, more specific actions?

• Assign tasks to one owner. In many cases that may be you, but if you have trusted team members or vendors, you may want to name them the owner of a task. 

• Set timelines. Start with your ultimate deadline and work backwards to set due dates for specific tasks. 

After this meeting:

• Share your plan with anyone who will be working on it and ask for feedback.  

• Start the plan and track your progress.

• Note any agreed-upon next steps.

Meeting 3: Review project status. Update if needed.

Before this meeting:

• Review the plan and update with all progress so far.

In this meeting:

• Discuss your projects status: 

  • Have any due dates shifted? How does that impact your plan? 

  • Have any unexpected challenges come up? Are you stuck on anything? How can you work around that or adjust your plan accordingly? 

  • Who do you need to communicate changes to?

After this meeting:

• Continue to complete project tasks and update on progress. 

Meeting 4: RCOGN (Revenue, Cost of Goods, Net Profit)

Before this meeting:

• Review your notes from the first meeting and compare to how the project actually went.

In this meeting:

• Reflect on your experience:

  • What went as planned? 

  • What did not go as planned? 

  • Was the project successful? 

  • Is it time to revise your system  and/or start a new project?

After this meeting:

• Start planning your next project!

• Be sure to mark your project complete, update your business tracker, and start a new project!

Want to talk to someone who can help?

Sky’s the Limit members are connected to a community of volunteer business mentors, more free tools and guides like this one, and exclusive funding opportunities.