The Project Management Pain Curve

If you've ever been tasked with solving a challenge, delivering a new product, or increasing an operational efficiency, you've suddenly become a project manager. And you have a choice to make.

The choice is whether you'll absorb the pain of the project at the beginning, or at the end.

On a graph, it looks like this (pardon the hasty handwriting)

You can either spend a little extra time up front clarifying the scope of work, the key milestones, the potential risks and the ground-rules for communication,* or not.

Projects are where organizations make their mark in the world, and where you can make a mark in your career. When tasked with a project, choose your pain curve wisely.

*(h/t to this book for the pain curve and Seth Godin for an excellent list of "How We Do Things Around Here" that will make your next project so much better. His maxim that 'we don't sprint at the end, we spring at the beginning' was part of the inspiration for this post.)

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At Trellis Group, we believe chaos is the enemy of the small business. It's our mission to partner with small business owners and their teams to develop the managerial practices and processes to crush chaos. Revenues go up, anxiety goes down, and work becomes a force multiplier for good in the lives of your people. Reach out to discover how the Trellis Group can help you crush chaos.