Your Project Management Workflow

The routine that survives a bad week

Most good intentions about AI die in the same way. You try a clever prompt on Monday, it works, you mean to use it again, and by Thursday you are back to writing the status report from scratch at half past five because finding the prompt felt like more effort than doing the work.

A routine that survives has to be small, attached to things you already do, and quick enough that skipping it feels silly. This lesson puts everything from the course into one weekly shape. Adapt the days to your own rhythm. The order matters more than the timing.

Set it up once

Before the routine can work, you need three things in one place you can reach in seconds: a document, a note, whatever you use.

Your prompts. The four from this course that you will use most: brief into a first plan, notes into a status report, the pre-mortem, and the dependency trace. Copy them in now, while you are thinking about it.

Your running notes. One page per project where you jot blunt facts during the week. "Supplier confirmed Thursday." "Finance still silent on contingency." This is the raw material for everything else.

Your line. A short list of what you do not hand over, from lesson five: estimates, bad news, confidential detail, people issues. Written down, it is easier to hold when you are tired.

The weekly shape

Monday: look ahead. Read your running notes from last week. Ask what is due this week, who you need something from, and what is waiting on someone outside the project. If the plan changed materially, run the dependency trace again. Ten minutes.

Through the week: capture. Add a line to your running notes whenever something changes. After meetings, turn the transcript or your notes into decisions and actions straight away. The AI for Meetings course has the full routine for that, including asking permission before you record anyone.

Thursday: draft the report. Decide the RAG colour first, on your own. Then paste your running notes into the status report prompt with the colour stated. Edit the draft against your notes, checking every date and name. Send it before Friday, when people are still reading.

Once a month, or at each phase: pre-mortem. Run the pre-mortem on the current plan. Sort the stories into covered, new and not applicable. Add the new ones with owners. Take the best one to your team.

Friday: clear down. Five minutes. Chase anything still marked OWNER NEEDED. Start a fresh page of running notes.

The checklist

Print it, pin it, or paste it at the top of your running notes.

Below is my status report and the notes I wrote it from.
Check the report against the notes and tell me:

Any date, name or number in the report that is not in the notes.
Any sentence that makes the status sound better than the notes suggest.
Any ask that is missing a named person or a date.
Do not rewrite the report. List problems only. If there are none, say so.
REPORT:
[paste]
NOTES:
[paste]

Where it goes wrong

Three failure modes are worth watching for in yourself.

Skipping the notes. Without them, every prompt runs on memory and vague impressions, and the output is vague too. The notes are the whole system.

Letting the draft decide. A draft that sounds finished pulls you towards sending it as is. Read it as if a colleague wrote it and you were checking their work.

Creep. It starts with the report and quietly extends to the estimate, then the difficult email, then the performance note. Look at your line every so often and be honest about whether you are still holding it.

Where to go next

If you lead a team as well as projects, AI for Managers covers ground rules, reviewing other people's AI-assisted work and bringing a sceptical team along. AI Safety and Verification is worth doing for anyone who acts on what AI tells them. And if you want more courses that finish with a certificate, the free courses with certificates page lists every one.