🪂 Fortnite x Project Planning
I jump out of the plane, plummeting towards the ground much like the whale in that one movie. The wind against my skin feels absent as I’m focused on picking my position below. As the ground looms, I snap open my umbrella and glide safely to a roof top in this little neighborhood situated near the greasiest looking burger place you’ve ever seen. My team arrived behind me. The fighting begins around us.
Starting a project is exactly the same.
The table setting of the early game has a dramatic impact on the remainder of the project. If we make a mistake at this stage it could portend ruin. So too in a project, the early game mistakes can cause dire consequences later (if not immediately).
The early game requires quick, but not rushed action. Pause to assess our surroundings, the context of our mission and the constraints presented to us. Don’t spend too much time. The action waits for no one.
The early game is also the time in a project when actions are most scripted. Although we may not know when the game will end or how it will end, there are things we’ll do in every early game. In Fortnite that’s breaking down every bush, fence and chest in search of materials and loot for combat. In project mode, that’s creating the plan for our project, collecting buy in from stake holders and setting the plan into motion.
As the game progresses, the plan we established (implicitly like a casual or explicitly as professional players do) in the early game becomes more clear and the pitfalls (and upsides) more obvious. And since we are professionals, when we started our project, we made sure to plan through to the end. Note that this does not mean dusting off our crystal ball and peering into the detailed future — More like forecasting just around the bend and for each milestone beyond our immediate foresight. Outline the scaffolding of a plan and expect that it’ll refine as we progress along it. If we fail we don’t want it to be because we weren’t prepared with a plan.
So we’re matted up, armed to the teeth and leaving this greasy suburb having eliminated the local competition. Our plan wasn’t the best plan, but it was the right plan to get us through the battle.
As the dust settles on the early game and we exit into the mid-game, our objective is to get to and win the end game. The great players think they need to be spectacular in their delivery. Good for them. We’re just focused on getting this thing to the end successfully, with a happy customer. If we’re showy in our delivery that’s fine, but secondary.
We forge on…
- RAID log in hand
- Project plan in tow
- And our team beside us
Ready for battle.
Thanks for reading.
