Systems Run the Work: Project Management
If the work lives in five places, it does not really live anywhere. Putting it on one board, with dates people believe, changes what your whole team can see.
The Pattern.
Most teams we meet started moving their tasks into a new tool and never finished, so the work is split across three places. Priorities change every week, which makes last week’s plan wrong by Monday. People spend more time in meetings about the work than doing it. Everything has a due date and almost none of those dates are real.
What we Take Out FirSt.
We start by closing the tasks that do not matter anymore, which is often a third of the list. Work that is not a priority right now moves to a parked list with no date until it is time to pick it back up. We also retire the tools your team stopped using instead of moving them over.
What we build
- One board where the work lives, set up in the tool you already pay for
- A single intake point for new requests
- Dates that reflect when the work can happen
- A weekly rhythm that tells everyone what is with them, what needs someone else and what is parked
A shorter list with real dates will get more done than a long list nobody trusts.
Erin Peshoff is the Founder of Vivid Operational Advisors. She has spent thirty years inside nonprofit operations, helped raise over $100 million for institutional missions, and built Vivid around the operating discipline most strategic engagements skip.
