There are plenty of tools to help you plan, budget, track, and otherwise mange projects. They range from heavy scheduling tools like Microsoft Project and OmniPlan, to communication and organization tools like Basecamp and Backpack, to generalized tools like Excel, to even things as simple as Post-its. On a large project I’m working on, we’ve used all of these in some form or another; and while they’ve been a help, they all share a common flaw. You have to teach the tools about the project, and that only works if you already understand the project.

Tools only go so far, and that’s fine since no tool will ever be a silver bullet. In this large project I mentioned earlier, we bid overall for the work appropriately. However, when it came time to track our progress along the way, we started missing our internal deadlines. We were already pulling some late nights and even weekends working on this, so where did we go wrong? We had done all of the “right things” you’re supposed too… After a good night’s sleep, the answer presented itself.

Scissor Dagger in Black and White, originally uploaded by Jurica G.

Simply, we had done what had worked for us in the past. We had based milestones on page templates, while in fact the work centered around modules that, combined in different ways, formed the bulk of the pages. I’ve built a lot of my experience around building B2B web sites, some noteworthy blogs, and a little heavy duty content management system integration. To help us wrap our minds around a different paradigm, I printed out every single comp, whipped out a pair of scissors, and headed back to arts and crafts time.

Now instead of dealing with a half dozen page templates that shared a lot of resemblance to each other, we were dealing with more than a dozen modules, and even modules within modules. With this new perspective, we rebuilt the entire plan and discovered not only were we not behind like we had thought, we were actually a little ahead! You won’t find the “scissors technique” in any project management handbook I’ve heard of, but that shouldn’t stop you from adding a pair to your planning toolbox.