--- title: Project Planning Examples layout: post date: 2020-10-30 07:20 parent: Posts categories: [planning, plan, project, example] published: true --- {:toc} 1. TOC ## projects * review + practice material from tutorials re project planning * example: moving house * example: writing a short book on type-level programming * note: this is an idea I have b/c there aren't really any good accessible type-level programming books AFAIK ## init brainstorming * should brainstorm early in process * doing first is okay if you just need to get ideas out. then you can come back later to do a 'proper' order of steps. * what are the steps? * need pre/main/post plans * need to brainstorm dependencies * brainstorm early steps - prelim before anything but sketch of plan is written down * can break up projects in to subprojects at some point * check reference material * might want to list skills you have / skills you need (contextually appropriate) * project should have clear IGC * can get feedback after draft * reference example: ## review plan draft 1 1. define IGC draft 1 1. make sure you have a clear reason for taking action and you understand the context. if there are gaps: they go in prelim plan. 2. generic pre-plan skills 1. trees 2. IGC 3. overreaching detection & mitigation strategies 4. break down goals into subgoals and identify associated skills (main plan) or how to acquire them (pre plan) 3. draft up pre-plan 4. identify parts of main plan you know enough about and those you don't 5. **todo:** -- comment: I didn't start this with a pre-plan ## project: review selected topics ### IGC The goal is to get better at particular material we've covered in *tutoring max*. Particularly: writing and project planning. I want to do this via practice/review of both material and techniques. I want to produce examples while doing this. I'm doing this for me primarily. The idea is to use project planning itself (along with some other examples) as the subject to practice on. I'll practice writing by producing articles about the component skills (similar to my *how can we write to communicate better* post). I am the intended audience, but the examples should be useful for FI people also (the articles should be higher quality than just notes). I'll practice project planning by planning the project of practicing project planning, along with two examples of plans: moving house and writing a small book on particular programming techniques. - Note: the book project might be at high risk of overreaching -- should make sure to do pre-plan stuff well b/c it's likely I'll hit something in prereqs to do first (and do before I make a decision on doing the project or not). Context is mostly delegated to assumed / common / background knowledge. Additioanl context: I feel like I have a busy schedule. I also have bad time management, esp after an intense period of work, and esp esp after intense work I am not particularly enjoying. ### pre-plan #### brainstorm - what does reference pre-project tree say? - trees, overreaching, skill breakdown, bias and emotions - other stuff? - can the pre-project plan be generalised? like a 'colour by numbers' sorta thing. Why shouldn't it be the same for any project? The 2+ levels deep stuff might be particular to the project, but shallower nodes should be generic-alizable. - some stuff in reference pre-plan probably not relevant here, but can I safely exclude it? Probably not. I should include but show an empty node. - going to put trees under skills #### pre-plan tree ``` pre-plan: reviewing material and producing articles/examples identify skills trees (status: okay) method: plan the project using trees reqs: know about trees and other FI relevant topics grammar (status: okay) sentence analysis (okay) text analysis (okay) be able to represent article/explanation/etc as tree writing (?) techniques brainstorm define audience topic sentences and outline good sentence construction writing simply and clearly constructing ~complex arguments / explanations project planning (?) breaking ideas down into components / dependencies enough knowledge of core subjects, meta stuff, myself, etc to know when: a. I am knowledgeable enough to proceed b. I'm not knowledgeable enough to succeed c. I don't know whether I'm knowledgeable enough or not b/c of lack of overall knowledge d. I will get stuck if I dive into trying to learn a topic (not enough foundation) e. I am overreaching (or at risk of overreaching) f. I am reacting emotionally and not rationally need to know how to detect and mitigate overreaching what skills are very important and need to be kept in mind throughout? self awareness re: overreaching how to deal with problems and getting stuck identifying the problems finding or creating solutions implementing them (actually doing error correction) discussion and error checking use proper structure when writing plans/articles/etc. checklists might help if I'm not good enough to autopilot it reliably stuff i need to learn before starting main project nothing, but at risk of forgetting stuff so should go back to source material occasionally failure points poor time management starting to write before reviewing material the plan is like: 1. try planning/writing stuff, 2. if I get stuck go review material, 3. once I'm done, maybe review material to self-eval could result in wasted time or high error rate error rate in the project planning is okay if I can manage and correct it. it's not okay in *result* of the project (i.e. the written articles) ``` ### plan #### brainstorm - for each project 1. make sure I have IGC 2. brainstorm pre-plan stuff 3. fill in pre-plan tree to note breakdown of skills 4. identify stuff that needs to happen first 5. brainstorm main-plan stuff 6. break down project into components (knowledge, tasks, risks, content outline, whatever) 7. continue breaking stuff down till it's actionable 8. quality and totality check: 1. what questions will ppl have? 2. what isn't clear? 3. what failure cases haven't been considered? - plan to only be doing a small number of new things at once - what are the new things I'm doing now? - project planning in general - haven't done much of that with this method - writing robustly under time pressure - **note** is there an issue here b/c I'm not able to effectivley manage error rate? not sure, should keep an eye out though - am I taking too long or being too verbose so far? might either of those indicate getting stuck? - haven't had to think on any particular thing very long atm, not stuck, better to keep going - slight worry I'm repeating myself a bit - writing technique -- note: does this really happen at the same time as the other parts of project planning? I could separate (eg time-box) the various components where I avoid doing bits of the other one #### main plan tree (note: I think the project planning project plan is maybe not good to do first. going to try straight up moving house example) ``` project: doing example project planning collection **todo** ``` ## project: moving house Initial thought: Since I've moved house before I'm going to skip pre-plan. Revised thought: whoah there, how do you know you're not mistaken? ### IGC Simple and general case: you don't want to live where you do and want to live somewhere else. Note: I think we can sort of ignore the IGC a bit in this case; we're sort of assuming the goal (move house), context doesn't matter much, and the idea is like the naieve/obvious idea (taking all your stuff from one house and putting it in the other). ### preplan * not at particular risk of overreaching / getting emotional * skills are pretty general, nothing super important needed * going to just go for it ### moving house plan #### moving house brainstorm * need to be able to sign a lease * need to be able to pay for lease * need to be abel to move in whatever window you set * need to be able to secure a lease * need to find a place you like * need to know where you want to look for a place * need to know idea of effort involved to make sure dates are suitable * need to include buffer somewhere - either it needs to be pre-existing in your schedule and/or you need a long overlap period (where you have keys to old and new house) to give lots of time to finish moving * need to organise new utilties * need to cancel utils * need to update addresses * need to vacate old house #### moving house project tree ``` project: move house find houses up for lease you're interested in decide qualities of location you like decide parameter for houses in that location based on market values schedule inspections secure lease know what you'll need to apply choose good docs and references apply early talk with real estate agent if possible, establish rapport find out plans for house if possible did owners buy it as an investment might they sell it or move in themselves prepare the move sort possessions into keeping/sell/trash throw out trash, starting earlier is better advertise items for sale, the earlier the better do early prep for items-to-keep early if appropriate contextual pack stuff for moving move stuff order of operations keep in mind furniture and organisation of new place avoid furniture tetris plan cutover of services like internet do the move vacate old place clean everything terminate or move services update address with banks/apps/govt/etc hand back keys set up new place ```