JohnScullen.com

kicking ideas around

Tagged: planning

Nathan campus Red Zone

management / productivity

8 productivity lessons from the Red Zone project

Projects are a field of opportunity for learning. They offer scope for experimentation that’s difficult to incorporate into the business-as-usual world. Capturing project lessons lets you refine and promulgate techniques that worked well and identify things to do differently next time. All worthwhile project management methodologies include a process for recording learnings. It’s also one of the most frequently bypassed processes. A backlog of new initiatives means project managers are whisked off to their next assignment well before the first project wraps up. The Star Wars movies illustrate what happens when you don’t learn from past experience1. To close the...

Roadmap Planner banner

technology

Roadmap Planner v2 introduces iOS app, syncing and new features

Things can change quickly with software. A few weeks back I reviewed Roadmap Planner from KeepSolid. They’ve been hard at work and have just released: Roadmap Planner v2; Roadmap Planner for iOS; a sync service; and a new business model. Roadmap Planner for macOS New features Roadmap Planner v2 fills several gaps I discussed in my earlier review. The export function has taken a big step forward. Version 2 adds JPG and PNG export to version 1’s PDF format. Exporting is more flexible. You can selectively export project bands and nominate a date range if you don’t need the entire...

Nathan campus Red Zone

management

The high-tech space that will make you see red

Last June, Griffith University opened the doors on the Red Zones — two of the most unusual facilities you are likely to see. These spaces apply innovative design and technology to showcase the University’s research and teaching expertise. I had the privilege of managing this ambitious project and wanted to record my experiences before the next big project consumes all my time. This post reveals the ambitions, design considerations and some of my favorite content pieces. I’ll explore some of the many lessons a project as complex as this provides in a future post. The project combined the skills of...

arrow on the road

productivity

Move forward on the things that matter most with these 4 steps

Sometimes it can feel like the world is conspiring to thwart you in achieving the things that really matter in your life. The goals that are most important to us are often complex and take us into unfamiliar territory. While ultimately good for us, being stretched into new areas is often uncomfortable and this can create a level of resistance toward engaging with these goals. Existing commitments , interruptions from colleagues and the latest crisis can also quickly derail any momentum that we may have worked up. I’ve found these steps to be helpful to keep progress toward important outcomes...