The weekly project template

When it comes to software development and software projects, a lot can happen in a week, which in my view is one of the best things about working with software.

Think about it: between Monday and Friday, you could build an entire system, wipe everything, and rebuild it again in a very short period of time, relative to being in the hardware business. This is especially true if your developers manage to achieve their creative flow state, also known as being "in the zone!"

Of course, gathering the requirements, designing, building, testing, and shipping an entire system week in and week out is not, and should not, be a realistic expectation in most contexts.

You will have stakeholders and users to engage with, and everyone needs time to engage and contribute to the overall goal. With that idea in mind, most organizations and people will think and plan on a week-to-week basis. In most business environments, a week is a natural pattern of planning simply because it fits nicely into people's diaries.

It's also a sensible frequency for most modern professionals from a psychological perspective because, at the end of the week, there's a weekend where you can think about, or more precisely, stop thinking about work. This two-day period (Saturday and Sunday) can act as a natural way to pause to re-evaluate, re-energize, and re-plan your strategy.

Having a weekly routine is a highly productive way to plan and manage your work. This is true for both you as a manager and your team, as it will enable effective team-working, cadence, and regularity, which are all vital for inertia and progress. This is especially true when you need to get through the challenging times where everyone on your team may feel stretched and, as a result, morale is low.

Every project is different, and every team is unique. So, you will always need to tailor your ways of working and managing in accordance to the needs of both your team and the stakeholders. As a starting point, in the next section, I will introduce a simplified weekly template, which has worked well for me across several different environments.