I talk a lot about how everything's a project…and today I realized I had a real life example to share!

 
After a disconcertingly dry February, suddenly March showed almost 10 days with only one dry day among them in the San Francisco Bay area.  Six inches of rain was forecast in a week in the valley, which would likely translate into ten inches here in the Santa Cruz mountains. (Bear with me, really this has project management written all over it.)

 On Tuesday, what looked like three days of rain suddenly coalesced into an extended wet spell.  While cause for rejoicing, this triggered some serious storm preparation.  As I worked to get things ready, I realized that this storm prep was a great application of project management concepts (hence the blog post).

 Dependencies reared their head early on.  I used the Eisenhower Matrix, did contingency and mitigation planning, identified and assembled the necessary tools, assigned and executed tasks, did necessary maintenance work, worked up some new project planning, practiced teamwork, and did a post-mortem.  Most of it Wednesday, the day the rain was due.

 Here's how it shaped up - a great example of how project management skills come in handy all over the place:

 Branches large and small that came down in the last windstorm had to be picked up (the second time in 10 days).  BUT…the dogs had to be picked up after before I was willing to play pickup sticks. [Dependencies]

  • The branches had to be taken away in the green waste before there was room to put in what I would be sweeping up, so the branches had to be in the bin by Wednesday early morning. [Dependencies, Scheduling]
  • Today my schedule needed to be rearranged to finish up since rain is now coming in this evening instead of tomorrow. [Eisenhower Matrix - this is Urgent and Important]
  • Today I assembled my tools: brooms, dustpan, trash can, ladder. [Tool identification and acquisition]
  • Although I had installed new gutter screens last summer in anticipation of El Nino [Mitigation Planning], they had to be cleared off due to the recent windstorms.  There was no use in sweeping up before I cleared the gutters or I'd be sweeping up twice (laziness makes for good planning!).   My loyal office staff helped with this. [Dependencies, Task Planning and Scheduling, Teamwork]
  • After clearing the gutters and making a lovely mess in the process, I had to sweep up the brick patios to keep them from being slippery [Mitigation Plan] and the wooden stairs and decks to keep bad things from happening due to wet vegetation sitting on them [Maintenance].
  • Now that the patio was clean I had to put down a tarp in case a real deluge comes (something we discovered a year ago when we got 8 inches of rain in a day - unheard of here near Silicon Valley).  But…I couldn't find the big one I got expressly for this purpose.  I pulled the second one from the woodpile and deployed it. [Improvisation, Process Issues]  I remembered at this point that I couldn't get the hose loose to use as a siphon if necessary during the last big rainstorm, so I put 'hose' on the shopping list. [Risk abatement, Follow-up]
  • I put away my tools so I could find them again next time. [Process]
  • A weekend project needs two flowerpots full of soil.  Since I keep the potting soil outside, it would be, um, uncomfortable to retrieve that in a driving rainstorm - so I got those all ready today.  [Project Planning]
  • Finally, I ordered a new tarp and figure out where to store the rainstorm tarps so they can be found quickly and won't be used for the myriad of other things popping up here in the mountains. [Post-mortem]


   Whew! Proof positive that almost everything is a project, and project managers rule!

 

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