The One-Page Project Manager for IT Projects: Communicate and Manage Any Project With A Single Sheet of Paper

Chapter 9. Customizing the One-Page Project Manager

One of the strengths of the One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) is that it can readily be customized to meet virtually every high-level communication need of the project manager. As you have seen in this book, the tool can take many forms to fit the shapes and variables of many types of projects. Yet, there is also a consistency to the variations that make the tool immediately identifiable as an OPPM. But if customization is not properly managed, it can become one of the tool's great weaknesses.

Consistency and simplicity are absolutely vital. It is good to customize if needed, but it is very bad to customize too much. Changing the basic template by too great an extent lessens the tool's value. That's because the greater the difference between the OPPMs that you use, the more difficult it is for the tool to communicate. The power of the tool is that anyone familiar with it can immediately read it and glean the important information it contains. This is very powerful for the project manager who is trying to communicate with others. The more the template is changed, the less familiar is the tool to the reader, resulting in the reader having to work much harder to learn what the OPPM is saying. It is possible to make the OPPM so customized and complex, that it can no longer adequately communicate the information it was designed to communicate.

THE INVIOLATE RULES OF THE ONE-PAGE PROJECT MANAGER

Because it is tempting for inexperienced project ...