I was thrilled today when I read this post by Tonia Dousay on project management for academics. Tonia and I have been chewing on a concept we’ve come to call “Designing in the Open” for a bit. She graciously agreed to participate in an interview for our Design in the Open Challenge last year, and we just submitted a proposal to the 2019 AECT convention for an Inspire! session related to this idea of openly sharing your work process as a means of organizing your thoughts, reflecting on your process, and developing your professional presence by telling others about your work and work process. Her blog post today is a PERFECT example of this approach.
I’m guessing it took Tonia quite a lot of time to document and reflect on her project management process. She shared some tools, tips, and her work process, as well as how she arrived at this system that works for her. Like Tonia, I have a mix of digital and analog tools, including three walls of my home office covered in whiteboards. I found these awesome dry erase pouches that I’ve hung up in grids using Command wire hooks. While I use a combination of Google apps (Tasks, Calendar, and Docs) to keep track of projects and to-do list items online, my whiteboards are where I scribble out the big messy ideas. I sometimes take photos of my whiteboard wall if I’m moving on to something else and I want to retain my ideas, but I love having the visual (literally – in my face) presence of the whiteboard when I’m working through the tricky bits of a project. Often, it’s the big picture goals, the sequencing of a lesson, or things I want to remember to mention in my next call with a project team.
I can’t waait to do a deeper dive into Tonia’s tips. I’m so glad she took the time to share with us her work and work process! Also, David Wiley’s classes have created a free and openly licensed Project Management for Instructional Designers book.