Have you ever taken over a project and realized you don’t know where to find the SOW or deliverables at all? What about all those times you’ve picked a project back up after launch to add a feature and had to do your best impression of Sherlock Holmes to dig out what went down on the project before it launched? If you’ve experienced these things, then you’ve experienced project management debt.

A few months ago I was messy-bun-deep into a web project that was consuming all of myself and my team’s time, energy, and resolve. The project was tough for a number of reasons (actually, all of the possible reasons) and led to a lot of emotional highs and lows for everyone involved, as well as a good amount of frustration.