An Exercise In Project Management
I've been using COVID-19 to tackle a large garb overhaul project, but never really considered the processes I take in actually accomplishing that. Both for personal use and for anyone who wants some tools in tackling big projects, I wanted to take some time to sit down and quantify how I go about project planning.
My to-do list and spreadsheet setup.
The grand overview is as follows:
Set deadlines
Give the project a purpose
Organize both individual aspects and the whole project
Let the project evolve
Take lots of notes
Keep myself motivated by monitoring my progress
Breaks are important too
Other people love you and want to support you- let them.
First, my Spanish garb project started out as an amorphous blob of "I'm really excited about this thing!" There wasn't much of a direction and that had me floundering and struggling to really accomplish much coherently. This floundering brings me to my first major point: I need deadlines. Even if they're self-imposed, I really need to have a temporal context for my goals. "Having garb ready for when we're back to events" wasn't enough this time. When Virtual 12th Night was announced, and that Tempore Atlantia would be taking place with all four categories of time periods, that gave me a goal to work on. The entry has to be ready by December 6th, 2020. That's a firm, concrete deadline and helps me plan.
I'm not an ars gratia artis type of person- I do not create A&S for the sake of doing so. The things I make are made to be enjoyed, whether they be garb, decoration, or food. Pretty is great, but practical is better. Going into my current project, the goal was always to have a wearable selection of garb for my brand new Spanish persona. The entry for Tempore had to be organized in a way that stayed true to that. I decided ultimately to start with what I'd need for a one-day long event- casual wear for during the day that is a complete set and fits the persona, and enough additional accessories to transition to a court look. My art is meant to be used, and giving the pieces something to be used for helps me organize my priorities. This goal allowed me to sit down and say I need to work on pieces A, B, and C before I start working on and planning pieces X, Y, and Z.
The next thing to mention is that I run all the day-to-day operations of the company I work for mundanely. This includes a LOT of statistics and budgeting which means I love me a good spreadsheet. My projects almost always involve spreadsheets. Using a spreadsheet helps me both look at individual processes and details but also at the whole picture. This brings me to my next point: both the forest and the trees matter to me. The overall goal- a coherent entry for Tempore Atlantia- is just as important to me as each constituent part- each of the individual pieces of garb and the documentation- and vice versa. That's a lot of detail to keep track of. I'm the kind of person who will not remember something if it's not written down. Spreadsheets organizing things by sections and priority keep all those little details manageable and achievable in my mind.
Even with all the planning, things go wrong. My current Spanish project is a great example. I have a color palette I default to in my personal clothing and garb, which is normally neutrals and jewel colors. When I want something brighter, I default to whites and creams. For the Spanish project, that's just not a realistic choice for a lot of it. My original vision for the garb and the history just didn't match up, and for Tempore Atlantia, they need to. So I took a step back, started looking at paintings and pieces again, and let the fabrics I had available to me tell me what to do. Almost no project ends up exactly as was originally planned, and you have to be ok with changes along the way. With that flexibility, I'm well on my way to a project result that's going to look stunning, even if it's not what I had originally wanted.
As I said before, I will not remember something if it's not written down. Taking extensive notes will help later with documentation. A lot of people advise doing your research first, then building your item and there's a good amount of truth in that. You cannot create something historically accurate without knowing the history. That said, when I'm looking at A&S, the processes that went into the construction are just as important to me as the history itself. I want to know what went well, what went wrong, how those things were fixed or adjusted, and how the artisan wants to grow in the future. I cannot accomplish those things myself without taking extensive notes throughout the project. In addition to my spreadsheet of the project, I have Google docs for each individual piece. These docs include the research, and then bullet points that I add through the creation of that item and can then go back to while finishing my documentation to describe what actually happened.
Knowing that I love spreadsheets, it should come as no surprise that I'm also a to-do list person. I like the feeling of crossing something off a to-do list because it helps me contextualize the progress I've made on a project. To be able to look at a spreadsheet or a list and say to myself, "Would you look at that! You're already X% done!" helps keep me going. Figuring out how you stay motivated is part of the planning process. I personally cannot jump into something without knowing that I'm going to have the energy to see it through. Knowing I have a tangible way of keeping myself pushing when things go long or wrong gives me a lot of the courage I need to start a new project.
That said, breaks are important. Most of my big projects are big sewing projects, and that is both physically and mentally exhausting. Occasionally, I need to take a step back and regroup before continuing. Physically, staring at tiny pieces of thread doing minuscule things for a long time is exhausting. It takes energy, can create migraines, and sitting in one place for too long is really detrimental to my back issues. Mentally, it can feel like you're not always accomplishing much so why bother with the work in the first place (I'm looking at you, seam finishing)? But in the grand scheme of things, those little details make the piece feel so much more authentic, and cannot be skipped. Taking a step back can help remind me why I put myself through the frustration of the tedious stuff, get a good stretch, rest my eyes, and catch up on that to-do list for motivation.
Kiki “snoopervising” and napping on the job.
I rely really heavily on Evan for support on large projects. He's an excellent project manager and has an excellent eye for color and paintings because of his hobby of painting Warhammer miniatures. While he likes to say he knows nothing about garb and the SCA, his skills are an absolute asset for looking at inspiration images, talking through my priorities, and what someone who may not be either as knowledgable or as excited as I am about the thing would think about what I've done. No project happens alone. Between Evan, Kiki (who is my stalwart companion on the sofa while sewing and a discerning, if a bit pushy, fabric inspector), and my friends, I have so much support, encouragement, and input on literally everything I do. I can honestly say that nothing I have done could have been accomplished by myself.
And that is a very longwinded way of describing how I get stuff done. Back to sewing, I guess!
