It’s hard enough to put better ways of working into practice without having to invent everything yourself. Here are some templates I use in managing projects to help you get started. They’re useful tools to keep projects organized and to help with communications. They’ve also kept me out of trouble. Each document has notes explaining what to do.

NOTE: These MS Word files are all documents, not Word templates, so be sure they all have a .doc file extension when you download them, not .dot. None of these files contain macros. The files are clean and virus-free when they leave here, but I don’t know what may happen between here and there, so practice safe-computing.

1. Project_Plan.doc — A complete plan template for small to large projects.
2. Progress_Report.doc — A template for a 1 – 2 page report summarizing progress on a project. The format is “what we did last period”, “what we’re doing next period” and “issues we’re working on now”.
3. Change_Request.doc — A template for a request summarizing change on a project. The format is “what the change is”, “why it’s needed” and “impact on the project”.
4. Lessons_Learned.doc — Hold a team review to discuss how the project went. This template gives suggestions for the process, and a sample output report.

These are my four most-used forms since they work for any size project. I’ll see what other work aids I can find.

One of the main reasons I started this blog is the same reason I write–I learn more when I write things down and when there is pressure to communicate what I’ve learned. The upshot is that operating the PPBI blog has not only given me a repository of my thoughts in the project, consulting and management fields, but it also has increased the volume and quality of the yield. I know more, find more, and understand better than I ever have.

Of course, in terms of building a central repository, I have a huge body of pre-blog information I’ve gathered over the years; some of it is well organized for retrieval, using Personal Knowledgebase and Net Snippets. I started seeing the benefits of content management as soon as I started attaching keywords to everything I produced. The blog adds to that. . .while I add to the blog.

Besides writing here, I also write newsletters, training manuals, tutorials, articles, business plans, requests for proposals and multitudes of reports. I also have another blog: Writing, Speaking and Thinking, Oh My!, which is going through a redesign. Once that one is done, I’m going to make changes to this blog, as well as the VMP site.

This paper is short and pretty basic. However, if you’re trying to convince your company’s management of the value of weblogs – maybe even to start a company blog – this paper would be a good thing to give to the boss. “Using RSS For Corporate Communications”. And here’s another supporting article talking about the significance of this new customer relationship tool: Jumping on the corporate blog wagon.

Microsoft is going to charge a licensing fee for any product that is formatted in FAT by the manufacturer. That means anything using a flash memory card, such as cameras, may go up in price. You’ve got to see a court case coming soon on this.

Playing the Live Jazz of Project Management is a PDF paper discussing the similarities between project management and the playing of improvisational jazz.

“General characteristics for projects and jazz are compared and the five most important linkages between projects and jazz are discussed. The paper also explains why disorder is not chaotic and projects can be successfully managed. Jazz might show us one way of looking at the structure of disorder.”

Hey, don’t forget to read and sign up for The Value Manager. I got all of 2003 archived except for January. I can’t find a copy. If you happen to have it, please forward it to me.

I think these are some great rules. They came across in an email (one of 214) I got yesterday. Luckily it was cited. The author is Lorraine Dusky, co-author of “The Best Companies for Women“. This book was published in 1988 and is now out of print, but the rules still stand. . . for all genders.

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I started organizing, or is that cleaning, my directory structures on my PC and server. I do it every once in a while (at least once a year) just to get rid of the old, make room for the new and to see what I got.

So I found a lot of Word documents that I use when managing projects. Yes I have some Excel docs and MS Project .mpp’s, Project Kickstart, and a whole bunch of others. I’m going to get organized and post them here when I clean them up. You can use them as you will. I know they’ve saved my butt at times.

Boy, if you think you have storage problems, review this website: How Much Information?

This study is an attempt to estimate how much new information is created each year. Some very interesting reading, such as each person on earth produces 800Mb of information each year!

I liked the way this man thought and the way he put it on paper. Robert Bartley died on Wednesday at 66 years of age…only the good die young.

He made the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page. It is the one section I never missed in the WSJ, next to the Front Page. My condolences to his wife and daughters and to the entire WSJ family. He’ll do wonders on God’s editorial page