Downtime doesn’t need to mean unproductive time. It doesn’t have to be spent passively waiting for your next assignment. Instead, you can take advantage of your downtime and use it productively. If you want to maximize your downtime but don’t know where to start, focus on the three P’s: product, process, and people.

While a postmortem, or retrospective, is done after a project is completed, a premortem is done before the project starts as a way to imagine that the project failed and to explore what went wrong. You list every possible thing that can go wrong, then devise solutions to the most probable risks—before you need them.

Project managers are tasked by sponsoring executives to complete projects successfully and provide timely communication if barriers arise. But what should a project manager do if the sponsors are the biggest barrier? If you can’t get the answers you need, is it a good idea to make your best guess and proceed?