Do it with a Post-It

If you can’t do it with a Post-it, you might be overcomplicating things.

I’ve been part of five or six organizations that were either implementing project management software for the first time or rethinking what they had. And almost every time, regardless of how experienced or new the team was, the conversation went in the same direction.

Features.

Do we want Asana or Workfront? Jira or Monday? Is Wrike right for us? Should we buy Notion seats?

I’m pulling my hair out just thinking about those meetings.

Because the question is almost never about the tool. It’s about the process. And nine times out of ten, that part gets skipped.

Process. Process. Process.

Maybe it’s because I came up just before SaaS became the default. Back when file cabinets held job jackets, job jackets held manila folders, and those folders had labels that tracked progress.

Signatures. Steps. A visible path toward completion.

There was a physical record of the work. A trail you could follow. Not because it was analog or nostalgic, but because it was clear. You could see where something was, who had it, and what needed to happen next.

I’m not arguing we go back to traffic managers and file rooms. But there’s something in that clarity that we’ve lost.

The ability to tell the story of a job.

A story defined by steps. Repeatable. Measurable. Durable.

So when someone asks me, “What software should we buy?” my answer is usually a little flippant.

Can you show me your process with Post-its?

Really.

Take a pad. One step per note. Put them on a wall in order. Stand back and look at it.

It’s harder than it sounds. And it’s probably the most important exercise you can do before choosing a tool.

Intake.

Triage.

Assignment.

Doing.

Creative Review.

Client Review.

Deliver.

Deploy.

That’s the skeleton.

Every team will add nuance. Different stakeholders, different industries, different approval paths. Add five more notes. Add ten. But start here.

Because if you can’t break the work down this simply, how are your teams supposed to move through it?

Every designer, writer, strategist, and planner should be able to sketch the life of a job and understand where they sit in it. What happens before them. What happens after. What the person to their left does. What the person to their right needs.

Each person should be able to take their Post-it, place it on the wall, add their nuance, and explain it.

If your software can’t support that, you need different software.

And if it can automate the shoulder taps, great.

But if you didn’t know a shoulder needed to be tapped, or whose shoulder it is, then the problem was never the tool.

It was the process.