At its heart, project maintenance is a matter of practicing some very simple values throughout the course of your project. It means being very intentional about tracking your progress toward milestones and goals, instead of assuming everything will happen as planned. It means keeping things on track through clear and continuous communication.

You should have project maintenance meetings no less than once a week. Think about (and frame) these meetings less as ensuring that your team performs their tasks, and more a verification that your project is on track and your tasks are making an impact.

At some stages, it will be necessary to brief many decision-makers with the same information before you can move forward on a given project or task. If you haven’t laid the groundwork through clear communication with all parties, you can end up with a lot of pushback and decision-makers may wonder why they were not consulted on a certain issue.

In some cases, you’ll need to communicate with decision-makers one-on-one. In other cases, it will be more effective to communicate with the full team at once. Part of your job in maintaining your project is assessing which communication style will be most fruitful in a given situation and proceeding accordingly.