I often get approached by talented professionals who are considering writing a book or creating a course to share their knowledge and what they’re good at. Unfortunately, the majority don’t take the actual steps to concretize their book or course ideas, and I understand why, taking into consideration how daunting and overwhelming such projects might seem and actually are.
It’s been three years since I published my first on-demand course and almost three years since self-publishing my first book. Since then, my work as an instructor and author includes 10 books and 8 courses. Does this mean it gets easier over time? Yes, it does! What keeps me on track when I lack inspiration or lose motivation is consistency and commitment to plans.
In this blog post, I’m sharing with you the template that I use to track the progress of my projects, whether it involves a book or a course creation and development. You can download the exact template for Free below.
Projects, big or small, should have a plan. With the right tools, you can streamline your project management process and achieve your goals more efficiently. Here’s how tracking the progress of your book or course creation project can majorly improve its efficiency and increase its chances of success:
1. Easier Informed Decisions
Tracking the progress of whatever project you’re initiating allows you to understand and anticipate the timeline of your project work and gather actual data to estimate its deadline. For example, if you’re making 5% progress per week, you know that by one month you’ll finish 20% of your book or course. If you’re not satisfied with your progress, you can then take action based on the actual data you gathered to reach your goal in a shorter period. This can involve adding more resources to your team or whatever decision is suitable depending on your actual progress vs the progress you wish to make.
2. Better Communication
Using a progress monitoring tool allows you to clearly communicate with your team; undertaking a project and starting work with no plan or actual information on how your team is performing can make the whole project seem ambiguous and impossible to finish at some point. It’s crucial to establish clear objectives and milestones, define what you want to accomplish, set specific goals, and break them down into manageable milestones. For a book development project, milestones can involve completing chapters, revisions, and final editing. A course can involve video production, voice-off, assessments, etc. Well-defined objectives make it easier for you to communicate and for your team to envision and commit to the final goal.
3. Enhanced Commitment
Working on any type of project without a clear roadmap makes it impossible to achieve progress since you can’t commit to goals that are not defined and, hence do not exist. Without a deadline, work can continue for as long as you allow it to. Here comes the importance of deadlines, milestones, and short and long-term goals: this creates a sense of urgency to push yourself and/or your team to achieve the defined goals in the estimated timeframes. Tracking work can also allow you to reconsider unachievable goals, hence setting new deadlines and creating more realistic estimates.
Now that you understand the importance of employing a tracking tool, click on the video to watch a step-by-step explanation of how to use and customize the free template.
If you’re interested in more project management templates for client onboarding, Statement Of Work (SOW), stakeholders, communication, and risk management, etc. check out my IT Project management course including +20 Professional Templates and Checklists.