How to Use an Outliner to Plan Your Project

While working on a project it’s important to have a good overview of the process. Planning the project before you start might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people just start, without taking the time to write down what exactly has to be done and who is going to do it (in case of a group project).

For a writer it’s good to think about the story line before starting to write as well as during the process. Writing a paper or a book he might want to outline the chapters first.
While working on our own project, and this can be anything from doing research to writing a thesis or building a piece of software, it’s a good idea to think about the ’story line’ of your project before you start producing anything.

Where Do We Start?

Let’s assume the project’s goals are already formulated. We know what the outcome should be, so how are we going to accomplish it? First of all we can start by looking at the big picture, what are the most important phases of the project? Almost all projects can be divided into a pre-production, production and post-production phase.

Taking the example of writing a book, let’s look at the process chronologically. The pre-production phase would be doing research, making an outline. The actual writing would be the production phase and the final editing and printing is the post-production phase. Looking at or own project we could make a description of every phase.

Break It Down

After deciding what the biggest parts of the project are we can look at each of those parts and break them down into smaller pieces. We can look at those pieces as chunks of work to be done. The production phase of making a movie for instance consists of shooting all the scenes one by one.

Then we have a look at each of those smaller chucks and see if they consist of even smaller tasks. It’s good to continue this process until we come to small and manageable steps. These are the actual tasks that can be assigned. And when we assign dates to every task on the list we already have a planning! This can later be translated to another format, like a Gantt chart, for a better visual representation.

Great, now we have a long list of everything that should be done during the project, and because it’s divided into small manageable steps we don’t have to worry about being overwhelmed by any of the tasks. If this is a group project this is the moment tasks can be assigned to the group members, providing a clear task list for each member.

But why should you worry about outlining a project if the project leader can do it for you? For your own tasks you can use the same methodology. For all projects, small or big, you can use an outline to structure your thoughts. Speaking of which, structuring your thoughts can also be done using a mind map. The data of a mind map can also be structured as an outline, as each main subject can have a set of child subjects. But more on mind maps in a later post.

What To Use?

Of course we can simply use a pencil and a sheet of paper. I like working with paper because it helps me think more creatively than a computer keyboard. But after jotting down a rough draft we might need the flexibility of an outlining application on the computer, and the ability to share it with others over the internet.

There are outlining applications like OmniOutliner for OS X, but you can also use an online outliner, which make it easier to share with other people and have it available anywhere you go. Examples: LooseStitch, Sproutliner and iOutliner.

Are you using outliners? What are your experiences with them? I would like to hear from you in the comments!

Illustration by quatro.sinko