How to pack up a truck

What roofing and catering can teach you about prioritization

How do you pack a truck?

Most of us have moved at some point in time and been so frustrated by the packing process that by the time you get to loading up, you just throw it in, you might have tried to maximize the space, but probably ignored the ideal location for the boxes you want first in the attempt to be done.

Today I learned how to pack a truck and how it’s a great metaphor for how to organize a project.

This morning, I was lucky enough to have a meetup with Gordon Wong, a premiere data architect who has helped many companies implement the right database and data model solution. I asked him what his super power is and what his super hero back story was. His super power is the knowledge of how to pack a truck.

Let’s start with the basics and break down the problem of packing a truck. A truck is a defined space that you can practically figure out an area for what you could put in there through the height, length and width of the carrying space (Geometry FTW!). There is also the defined knowledge of what items need to go into the truck, which also have defined dimensions. Then you have the equation of items and area of what needs to go into the truck relative to the area of what the truck can carry.

The problem

Now comes the challenging part and what makes logistics so hard. What is your optimal packing strategy?

Based on this space, what items do you pack first?

What items build up to others?

What time do you have to pack the items?

What time do you have to unpack the items?

If you maximize the carrying space, how do you get everything in? And if you can get everything in, can you realistically get it out?

Here’s where we get back to Gordon. As a younger adult, he worked jobs in both roofing and catering and needed to maximize his hours. This presents an interesting problem. The timing for the jobs meant that he had to be in early in the morning, a lot of times before sunrise to find and pack trucks to be ready for the day. He also wanted to maximize the time he would be on the job and ensure that nothing was left behind. He learned how to ensure all the inventory was there, what items were needed first, second, third and onwards to reverse pack the truck. Lastly, he needed to understand his goal and the project or event goal to align them so his working hours would match up.

This superpower is wonderful, because for any work project that a person or a team is on, this thinking can be applied!

What is my and what is the project’s end goal? Based on that, what needs to be built or put together in what timing? What questions need to be answered before we start? When does the project or feature need to be delivered?

The answer hear and the super valuable lesson is that project management is just like packing a up a truck. You need to ask and answer the right questions on the size of your truck (timelines for your project), what materials are needed to do the job (resources and technology going into the project), how can I maximize for my and the teams outcome, and lastly how can I prioritize all of the above to achieve project success.

Today’s learning - prioritize like you are packing up a truck.

Thank you and looking forward to learning more with you tomorrow!