Logical Thinker

You need to be able to think like this...
1,2,3,4,5,6. Not 1,4,6,2....That could work in some cases. But most of the time, and especially in IT projects where you are messing about with lots of LOVELY technology, you HAVE to absolutely do things in the right order.

You may not be the most logical person at the minute so what can you do to improve this?

The trick is to start practicing logical thinking in normal life. You're making a cup of tea. Now, this is one of them things that you just do without thinking. So...next time you start to make one...just stop and think....'what do i do first?'. The sequence will probably look like this:

-Select best mug.
-Turn the cold water tap on and let it run for a while(10 secs for a winning cup of chaaa)
-Fill the kettle from the cold water tap.
-Turn the kettle on.
-Put a teabag into the mug.

and so on. Obviously there will be variations on this. There might be a more logical way.

This is just one exercise. Start doing this, develop it, you will need it OR if you are already an IT PM...You NEED IT. The reason?

Well, you get a message from the board saying you need to get your 10,000 users, split across the country on 40 sites, all working different hours, upgraded to MS Office 2007...

...You've sat down...you've done the brainstorming to gather requirements.....you have a list of things.....the question is...WHERE DO YOU START?

How about just picking a site at random and starting some installs there?

Daft eh?

...and that is why you need logical thinking. To help you with this use tools like Mind Maps and Rich Pictures....We'll talk more about tools in later posts.