Keeping a project journal throughout your Project Management career will help you tailor your resume and give you the confidence to answer even the toughest questions in an interview.
Although keeping a project journal is beneficial to roles other than Project Managers such as UX designers, programmers, QA analysts, and copywriters, this article is dedicated specifically to Project Managers.
Benefits of a Project Journal
Keeping a project journal benefits you far beyond the lifespan of the project.
Here are a few examples of how keeping a project journal can help you create a highly relevant and detailed resume, and demonstrate confidence in an interview.
Land Interviews with a Detailed and Focused Resume
Applying for a job requires tailoring your resume to the position and that means including details of relevant work and removing the irrelevant.
If you are applying to multiple jobs per day, making custom updates is tedious and time-consuming. As a result, the default resume you submit is a chronological list of jobs and projects, each chock-full of bullet points highlighting your role and what you accomplished. The projects include enterprise software, a large migration project, e-commerce websites, and everything in between.
When you don’t tailor your resume, you transfer the work to your potential employer because now they must do the work of skimming through two pages of experience to find what they are looking for. In reality, they are likelier to trash it before making it to page two.
It is easier to cut out details than to create them from scratch. Your project journal is your exhaustive resume and includes more detail than you will ever need for a job application.
With a well-organized project journal, you can cut and paste the relevant information into your resume in minutes.
Confidently Answer Difficult Interview Questions
Say you are applying for a technical project management job that requires:
Proven record in managing medium to large-size financial application projects
Somewhere in your resume or cover letter, you include this phrase verbatim and that gets you selected by the AI bot for an interview.
But once you are in the interview, if you can’t back up your claims with clear examples, you won’t make it past the first round.
Your project journal is a great interview aid because it only takes a few minutes to skim through relevant experience to refresh your memory.
Without this review, you will hum and haw while trying to come up with a response. The pause will make it seem like you are unprepared or you are making it up.
Here are some textbook interview questions and how a project journal helps you prepare your response.
Do you have any experience with _________________?
This question usually focuses on skills or experience in the job description where you haven’t demonstrated much experience within your resume.
In my experience, you can always match what they are looking for with something in your experience, you need to be creative. But being creative does not mean being dishonest. Anticipate this question and prepare a response.
Give me an example of ____________________.
This question might focus on analytical problem-solving, creativity, or conflict. This is the type of information you will have recorded in your project journal so it is a matter of picking the best example in advance.
Tell me about a time when your work was criticized.
You never want to respond with the details of the criticism without a follow-up on what you learned and how you improved.
Review what you learned and trace the problem back to its origin.
A Handy Log of Problems and Solutions
No matter what the question is, potential employers are always looking for evidence that you are easy to work with, you have good communication skills, you are resourceful, and you would be an asset to their organization.
One common way they assess this is to ask you to talk about a problem and how you solved it. This could be a problem involving yourself and another team member, a conflict with the team, technical or design issues, or issues related to the client.
A project journal hands that information to you on a silver platter. Specifically, it tracks a problem from its beginning to the solution and what you learned.
A project journal makes it easier to see the interconnectivity of projects and how you applied learnings to subsequent projects.
A Project Journal Template
Here is a brief project journal template that will give you an idea of what type of information can go into a project journal.
The more details you include, the more useful it will be when your memory of the project is not as sharp.
Project Brief
Summarize the project with a brief paragraph about what the project accomplished.
Creative Brief
A summary of the visual and content style, ideally with links to a mock-up and documents such as tone of voice, brand guidelines, etc.
Team Composition
A list of roles, and vendors. Examples of roles are:
- UX designers
- Graphic designers
- Motion designers
- Interface developers
- Server developers
- QA analysts
- Copywriters
Client and Stakeholder Profile
A brief list of clients and stakeholders and their respective roles.
Technologies
- List of technologies used including
- Cloud technologies
- Development frameworks
- Front-end technologies
- Server technologies
- Databases
- Content Management Systems
- Cybersecurity
- Web Accessibility
Timeline
Either a link to the timeline or a list of key dates including:
- Start date
- Projected end date
- Actual end date
- Extensions
- Total # of sprints
A before and after snapshot of the timeline can also be handy to record.
Budget
Keep a record of the original budget or target, and the state of the budget once the project is complete. Other information you can include:
- Cost per sprint
- Change requests and amount
- Overruns, if relevant, and why
Design
If the project is a redevelopment or redesign, take screenshots of the original state. Save mock-ups each time they change and make note of increases to the budget.
Resources
- Links to case studies (download them)
- Project documentation
Challenges
Save your risk log with notes about mitigation, how the issue was resolved, and what you learned.
Other challenges to record include:
- Technical issues and resolutions
- Financial issues
Key Decisions
Save your decision log that tracks:
- Scope changes
- Resources changes
- Changes made by the client
Lessons Learned
For every project, keep a record of lessons learned. This includes:
- Team feedback
- Stakeholder and client feedback
- # 1 learning
Summary
Your project journal does not have to be a huge undertaking. Spend a few minutes jotting down notes along the way which you will want to do for regular status reporting.
At the bare minimum, include:
- The goal of the project
- Your role
- Your accomplishments
- Challenges and learnings
- Reference links or documents
- Brief creative and technical details
- References to the website, project documentation, and case study if applicable
A project journal can be the difference between a detailed and focused job application and a long, disordered resume and rambling interview responses.