For the accidental project manager
What to do in your first week as a project manager
You were handed a project, and your first status meeting is closer than anyone admits. Here is the week in order: read, write, map people, chase dependencies, report — one Move per day, Day 1 to Day 5. Do it in that order and Friday's meeting is a formality instead of a test.
Read before you change anything
Resist the urge to fix something on Day 1. Collect what already exists: the last status report, the budget, the deadline, and the emails where the project was agreed. Write every date and number you find in one place. You are not deciding anything yet; you are making sure Friday’s numbers come from a document, not from memory.
Write the one-page charter and send it
This is the Move that separates a project from a rumour: one page, sent to your sponsor and the team. It says what the project delivers, by when, who sponsors it, who is on it, and what is out of scope. Plain sentences, no methodology. Send it the same day with one line: “Here is my understanding of the project. Correct anything that is wrong.”
Map who is responsible for what
List every person the project touches and write one line next to each name: decides, does, or needs to know. Most first-week panic comes from not knowing which senior person can stop your project. Name that person even if nobody assigned them. Send the map with the charter; disagreements about responsibility surface in writing, early, where they are cheap to fix.
Find the dependency that can sink you
Every project has one thing waiting on someone you do not control: another team, a procurement process, a decision above your sponsor. Find it in week 1, not in month 2. Ask each person doing the work one question: “What are you waiting on from somebody else?” Write the answers down; the dependency list is the honest spine of your 90 days.
Send a short status note, in writing
Before the first weekend, send everyone on the charter 3 lines: what you learned, what happens next week, what you need. It does not matter that the project is 5 days old. The first status note sets the rhythm, and rhythm is what a sponsor actually buys. Nobody expects answers in week 1; they expect to see that someone is holding the project.
If the kickoff is already this week
Run the same sequence faster, not differently. Write the charter in the morning, send it at lunch, and open the meeting by reading it aloud. The first sentence does a month of confidence work: "This is my understanding of the project. I want you to correct it." A room corrects a document far more readily than it follows a stranger's plan.
Week 2 is where the real plan starts: turning the dependency list into dated work. Week 3 is the first risk review. Provia builds the full 90-day sequence with each document already filled in from your project's facts. Week 1 is free to read here, and it is where most projects quietly go wrong.
Build your plan, then start Day 1
Provia turns the sequence above into your own dated Plan: your project, your sponsor, and the Artifact each Move needs, already written. The 90-day Plan outline and the first week's Moves are free, with no card and no account. Provia itself is built and run by AI agents on NanoCorp, which is how a one-person company keeps every page current.