What do you do if your architectural project is overwhelming and you need to prioritize tasks?

When faced with overwhelming architectural projects, it's essential to prioritize tasks to ensure efficient and successful outcomes. Start by breaking down the project into smaller, manageable tasks and identifying critical deadlines and milestones. Evaluate each task's importance and urgency, focusing on high-impact activities that align with project goals. Utilize project management tools and techniques to organize and track progress, ensuring that essential tasks are completed on time. By prioritizing effectively, architects can navigate complex projects with confidence and achieve architectural excellence. Let's embrace the power of prioritization to conquer challenges and drive success in our architectural endeavors.

It is quite helpful to realize the nature of tasks - priorities and scales. Then by using a software like Notion or to do list _ there could be specific deadlines_ shorter ones to achieve each goal and dedicate x hours. This would help to track progress across different projects.

First, I need to analyze what makes the project overwhelming, then assess the scope of work to see if there is something related to the actual work or if there is some external, such as client, consultant or GC. Based on that, I will create guiding principles that will guide me and my team to meet all promised deadlines and learn from our mistakes that brought us to the overwhelming situation. We, as designers, need to communicate better when we don't agree or like specific approaches that will create a negative, in this case, the overwhelming feeling.

Delegation helps to prevent unnecessary delays as the tasks are distributed aligning the expertise of a team worker. Eg. If the coworker is best at conceptualising projects, they can be involved in the first stage and further the tasks could be divided based on design team and presentation team.

Tools such as Ai based charts or even excel sheets can determine the progess and setbacks in the timelines. It would promote effective performance strategies to work on if the project is facing challenges.

Reviews with the peers and the bosses help to track the performance and the ultimate goal. The tasks could go through mid-reviews every week to ensure that there is a good amount of feedback. This would contribute to successful engagement and progress.

There would always be last minute editions and it is important to keep two- three days from the actual deadline to ensure there is a room for the changes and the whole set is ready for the release.

Get Help. Many times when a project is overwhelming we tend to try everything in our power to delegate to juniors, manage priorities etc. However, the fact that we can ask for help doesn’t appear to our mind. Do’s & dont’s in asking for help: 1. Collaborate with someone who is eligible to handle a significant part of your work. 2. If you are the best that your project has then all the trouble shootings will come to you. Empower & delegate 3. Be ready to get help but don’t be dependent 4. Analyse your current team and see if some of the work can be outsourced so that any resource can be freed for relevant job 5. Think out of the box