“How many of you have been on a project that just wouldn’t end?” I ask the group.
Almost everyone raises their hands, knowing glances and giggles ricochet across the conference room.
I’m leading a workshop called Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager as part of my work with FranklinCovey.
The laughs settle, and I continue, “If it doesn’t end, it’s not a project.”
This is a core tenet of project management: projects have a beginning and an end.
I’ve said that line many a time in the context of corporate project management. Then two neurons collided as I drove home from a workshop through suburban farmland.
If it doesn’t end, it’s not a project.
Sure, that quip applied to building an internal SharePoint site or planning a regional sales meeting, but what if I viewed my personal projects that way, too?
What if I saw a project’s ending as inevitable? Sometimes predetermined. Other times intuited. But always the expectation.
What would change?
For a self-aware overachiever like me, who never feels like she lives up to her own standards—it’d change a lot.
My problem isn’t letting go of projects. I’ve wound down companies and programs and business models.
The guilt is what gets me. Its presence tells me I have some internal spelunking to do.
I don’t know where I picked up the belief that, to be successful, my projects must live forever. It’s not a belief I’d be able to verbalize if you asked me, and it’s not something I expect from others.
But it’s present.
Project success = perpetuity.
Perpetuity = running the project until I’m no longer able to do so.
If you’ve ever been in a coaching session with me, chances are I’ve asked you to define a term. Not in an ask Siri way. More like, “What does this mean to you?”
Because once the definition’s on the table, we can play with it.
I’m asking myself now. What else could perpetuity mean?
Maybe it could mean that some part of the project lives on.
As a framework someone uses. As a memento on their shelf. A dinner party anecdote. Or an experience that poked a pinhole portal of possibility, if only just for me.
That’s the belief I want to hold on to:
All projects end. All projects live forever and ever.
Amen.
