Project Management Principles to Live By

When I first encountered project management as a field of study and a formal credentialing process, I was interested primarily in how project management training might help me more efficiently organize the multiple administrative and research projects I lead. What I discovered was a set of principles that apply much more broadly to my life as a scholar-administrator and to how I approach the process of building and sustaining my own professional and personal flourishing.

Go Slow to Go Fast

Project management begins from the premise that in order to move quickly over sustained periods of time and achieve high-quality results, it’s important to move slowly in the planning phases to make time for intentional planning and goal setting. Strategic slowness in the early phases of work can help ensure that a project meets its goals and decrease stress and inefficiencies along the way. Setting aside time at the beginning of a new project -- developing a new course, designing a new research project, getting started on a book manuscript -- to think through goals, set up processes and develop realistic timelines creates the ability to go deeper and quicker during the heart of the project.

The Triple Constraint Is Real (and Wishing Otherwise Is Futile)

In project management, the concept of the triple constraint (also known as the iron triangle) is that the quality of any project is determined by three inputs: time, scope and resources. Changes to any one of those inputs without adjusting the others will necessarily diminish the quality of the project. This is a reality that perpetually disappoints me, yet one with which I am finally forcing myself to come to grips.

The triple constraint doesn’t mean that broadening the scope of a project midway is always a bad idea or that losing resources on a project dooms it to failure. What it does mean is that changing one of those three inputs -- time, resources, scope -- without intentionally adjusting one or more of the other inputs will necessarily and unavoidably impact the quality of a project. The key here is not that one should always try to avoid changing one of the inputs in an in-progress project, but to be intentional about making adjustments to one or more of the others when one input changes.

The Burnout Cycle Is Real

As academics and administrators, when faced with projects that expand in scope, lose resources or have deadlines moved up, many of us -- myself included -- default to adding more work hours to our weeks rather than pushing back the timeline, adding more resources or adjusting our expectations for quality. To be clear, it’s not always possible to push back timelines (grant deadlines are real!) or add more resources. Scaling back the quality we desire for a project is often less than ideal. Yet, while feasible for brief periods, adding more work hours to our weeks as our primary response to changes in our projects inevitably leads to burnout over the long run.

Burnout is an unfortunately frequent experience for many of us working in higher ed. The burnout cycle demonstrates the declining effectiveness of overwork. In the burnout cycle, sustained overwork creates rework to correct mistakes to increase, decreases productivity and ends up increasing the need for additional overwork. While short periods of intensified work can be useful, extended periods of overwork end up decreasing productivity and creating an ongoing cycle of increasing levels of overwork and make us more likely to experience burnout.

Applying Project Management Principles to Professional Flourishing

In short, “doing more with less” -- a phrase I’ve heard more and more frequently in higher ed spaces in the last decade -- is not a long-term sustainable practice, and particularly not in the present moment of the continuing pandemic. In my own professional life, I’ve found that resisting escalating demands to do more with fewer resources and in a shorter amount of time has become its own work. But for me that work is worth it because resisting the “more with less” approach helps me keep the quality of my work high while avoiding the burnout that results from sustained overwork. Building in time to go slow at the beginning of projects, accepting that the triple constraint is real -- however much I wish otherwise! -- and recognizing that sustained overwork makes me less rather than more productive have become cornerstones of my approach to cultivating flourishing in my professional life.

Brandy L. Simula, Ph.D., BCC (she/her/hers) is a queer feminist sociologist and professional and career coach. Currently a research affiliate at the Center for Positive Sexuality, her current projects include an edited volume on sexualities under contract with Oxford University Press and a mixed-methods study of the career experiences of Ph.D.s employed in higher ed careers beyond the professoriate. She works and writes on the occupied lands of the Mvskoke (Creek) People.