One of the most important tools you have to manage a project is the “one pager”.  This is the one page that everyone will look at, through the life of the project to see if the project is on track. It doesn’t fundamentally change: it gets updated.

So what does the one pager need to show?

1. Time vs deliverables. You want to show when deliverables are expected to occur, the elapsed time, and the interdependencies. Not the obvious ones (like UAT comes after QA), but the ones that cross workstreams. I’m looking for unrealistic time allotted, missing activities.

2. RAG rating on key activities: green, yellow, red. Sure, you’ll RAG rate the overall project, but it’s the difference between calculating overall return on a portfolio rather than looking at each stock’s performance individually. You want to see the individual stock performance. Red is where your exposure is.

3. Contingency. Show me a plan that has activities all the way up to the last day, I know it’s a project in amber. Nothing goes as planned…you’ll get more defects that you expect, it will take longer to drop new code to fix the problem. Give yourself two weeks minimum at the back end where NOTHING is planned.

4. Names: who’s responsible at the end of the day? Not for the task, for the deliverable.

5. Plan B: what if you can’t go live and miss the date? What are the implications? Figure it out now when it’s calm and get buy in, not when you’re in a 5 alarm fire.