Skip to content

Idle Time Backlog

The principle: the project coordinator should never be sitting on their hands waiting for someone to give them a task. Between live engagement work, they pull from this list. It's the model David built for the innovation interns and is what's missing for project coordination.

The list is ordered by leverage — items at the top return the most value to the firm AND develop the project coordinator fastest. Work top-down.

Tier 1 — Things that produce real artifacts the firm will reuse

These are gaps in our knowledge base that an organized project coordinator can fill in 2-8 hours each. Every item completed here is a permanent contribution.

  1. Kanban-for-RevOps explainer (Loom companion) — The written primer now exists as asana_kanban_waterfall_primer.md plus the January 2023 PMO All-Hands recording. What's still missing is a short Loom walking through how one of our live RevOps boards expresses Kanban in practice. Record one (10 min), pair it with the primer, and propose migration to HR - Learning & Development/.

  2. 1099 Onboarding Orchestration Checklist — The legal documents already exist in Corporate - DocuSign Downloads/: the Independent Contractor Agreement (ICA), the 1099 Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), and the Referral Sources Addendum. What's missing is the orchestration: who sends the ICA, when, who provisions Box / Slack / Asana / PSA access, who introduces them in #bench, who hands them off to the EM. Draft this as a one-page sequence with named owners. Land it in HR - Learning & Development/Consultant Development Program/Additional Brilliance/Talent Program/.

  3. PC Welcome Pack v2 — Once the project coordinator has lived through this curriculum, they are the world's best author of v2. After week 6 they should propose edits to onboarding_plan.md based on what was missing or wrong.

  4. Box folder cleanup proposal — Pick three older engagement folders (Clients/Spirion/, Clients/Logically/, Clients/Omnigo/ are good candidates). Compare each against the standard 4-subfolder pattern you absorbed in Module 2.3. Produce a cleanup proposal naming specific files to move/rename. Hand to David and your onboarding mentor; one of them will green-light execution. (Note: there is no formal "folder hygiene doc" — the standard is observed by walking three healthy folders, not by reading.)

  5. Glossary additions to the PMO Site — Cortado's PMO site (https://sites.google.com/cortadogroup.com/pmo/) holds reference material. Every term you encounter that isn't there yet (BLUF, Steerco, 4 Blockers, Addendum A, the bench, preload-vs-panic-load, ICA, AUP, etc.) is a candidate addition. Propose entries to David (who owns the PMO charter) — don't fork a parallel glossary in Box.

Tier 2 — Skill development with no immediate output

Use these when you genuinely have a few hours and no Tier 1 item makes sense.

  1. Storytelling course — Work through Consultant Development Program/Storytelling/ end to end. Do the exercises, not just the readings.

  2. Steerco video series — Work through the Steerco video lessons in Consultant Development Program/Steercos/. Start with The Power of BLUF, Winning Your Meeting, and Winning the Room. Take notes per video and bring observations to your next GROW.

  3. Channel Strategy course — Consultant Development Program/Channels/ (4 videos + transcript). Cortado does GTM, not just RevOps; the project coordinator should understand the adjacent practices.

  4. EM Playbook excerpt — Consultant Development Program/CG_EM_Playbok_Excerpt_Phase0_111423.pptx. This is what the role above yours looks like. Useful for understanding what an EM cares about and therefore what they need from a great PC.

Tier 3 — "I'm bored and there's truly nothing"

These are open-ended. Bring results to a 1:1; don't sink more than a half day without a check-in.

  1. Competitive intelligence — Pick a competitor (Big 4 RevOps practice, a Vista-owned firm, a Beckway, a Burdett-led shop). Find their public materials. Build a 1-page "how they pitch RevOps and how Cortado is different."

  2. Tool exploration — Ask the Innovation team for current ideas on tools worth learning. Pick one, use it on a synthetic problem, and write up what you learned. (Cortado's tooling stack moves fast; don't rely on whatever was listed here last quarter.)

  3. Process improvement proposal — After 30 days, the project coordinator has the freshest view of what's awkward. Pick one thing — a meeting that feels redundant, a doc that's hard to find, a handoff that drops things — and propose a fix in writing. Don't try to fix it yourself first.

What NOT to do with idle time

  • Don't proactively reach out to clients without the EM's awareness
  • Don't restructure anyone else's Box folders or Asana boards without asking
  • Don't volunteer for a project that isn't yours just because you have capacity — go to your onboarding mentor first
  • Don't disappear for half a day without communicating. If you're heads-down on a Tier 1 item, post in #interns: "Heads-down on the 1099 checklist, back in standup at 3."

How to log it

Log every idle-backlog session in your timesheet in the PSA — https://psa.cortadogroup.com — same as you would for engagement work. One entry per session with hours, the Tier and item number, and a one-line description of what you actually did. The PSA is the system of record; don't fork a parallel log.

The onboarding mentor reviews these monthly. They're the best evidence of self-direction and exactly what we'd point at in a 90-day conversion conversation.