Project Playbooks & Project Plans

A lot of work goes into creating the project playbooks you can find here. Do you want to learn how I come up with playbook ideas and how a playbook is actually built? Read on.

“What type of project should we cover next?”

This question keeps bouncing around in my mind all the time. It’s an important question that I spend quite some time pondering. Obviously, I want to build helpful playbooks for in-demand topics. For topics that are currently hot in the industry. For topics you care about because you are either involved in this type of project already, or you may be in the future.

Apart from the demand aspect I look at complexity: Is this something complex enough that any form of a roadmap would be highly useful? I don’t create playbooks for topics like building a website. There are already good project plans out there.

A third criterion for choosing projects for a playbook is: Can the process be generalized and can it easily be captured in a playbook format? The specifics of a project vary depending on the organization and the industry. But if there is a common process – a common denominator – that can be described in a generalized form and documented in a spreadsheet, then we can build a playbook for it.

A good example is the Warehouse Relocation Playbook: The detailed process of moving to a new warehouse must be mapped out for an organization individually. But on a higher level, the process will be similar for each company: you have to set up the new facility, prepare your IT systems, train staff, plan and execute the transfer of equipment and stock etc.

Fortunately, getting new project ideas hasn’t been difficult in the past, because I get suggestions from you, my dear readers, all the time. And the more specific you are in terms of what your project is about and what information would be helpful for you, the better I can help you!

Finding an expert

Once I have decided what the next playbook will be about, I will look for freelancers with expertise in the particular project type and industry. Thanks to the internet, I can find experts with a few clicks. When it comes to people I work with, my standards are quite high. That’s because my goal is to build excellent products that provide great value to the people who use them. This I can only achieve by working with the best people in the field. Apart from deep subject matter experience, I look for people who are passionate about their work and who are excited to share their expertise with me.

Iterative development

Each playbook is entirely built by the expert (with my guidance). We usually start by mapping out the high-level steps together and brainstorming topics to cover in the playbook. As much as possible, I like to cover projects from all relevant angles: technical, organizational, financial, risk management etc. This way we can make the playbook more useful, as the technical part is usually only a small portion of the entire project.

Once a playbook draft is ready, I will share my suggestions. It’s an iterative process that can take several weeks until the final playbook is ready.

Launching the playbook

The last step in the playbook development process is the launch. I will create a dedicated page for each playbook so that people can find it on Google. They will type something like ‘warehouse relocation plan’ and – boom – they have come to the right page.

I add all of the new project playbooks and plans to this page. And if you are subscribed to my newsletter (sign up here), you will also be the first to know when I have released a new playbook, so you can start using it right away.

Refining and expanding the playbook

Once a playbook is released, that’s not the end of the story. Far from it. I continuously expand and improve the playbooks based on feedback from clients. Sometimes we’ll add additional worksheets covering a particular aspect or activity in the project (e.g. adding test cases for a software implementation). Sometimes we’ll further detail a particular activity or add important questions that should be addressed at a particular stage in the project. We make sure to send the new and updated versions of our project playbooks to all of our existing customers because we want to make sure they have the best possible experience.