When projects struggle with planning sometimes the teams create lists of tasks. To add detail, the lists contain names of people, they estimate how many days are needed for each task, and even list beginning and end dates. So what’s the problem?
If the project is simple and requires a small team of knowledgeable experts, this will probably be enough. I’m a supporter of doing the right amount of planning rather than completing all the steps and forms.
The problem is when the project is complex. In one of my past projects, the team struggled with the concept of planning. I proposed the process of pulling together a team to plan and spend a day or two for the whole process. At the end we’d have a list of sequenced activities with clear milestones and a resource estimate.
Thinking it would be easier, the team leads sat down and started listing tasks and names. In their defense this was a project that required specific expertise and having the experts do the wbs would be a good approach.
Top three problems with the approach.
No milestones, no deliverables. The list of tasks didn’t lead to a clear deliverable that could be tracked. The team lead was never confident that the tasks listed were complete.
No understanding of overall resource usage. While we knew that Joe had to work a total of 12 days between start and end dates, it was difficult to align the start and end dates of each activity to make sure that the 12 days wasn’t actually over a 3 day period.
No clear reporting ability. When it came to reporting to the steering committee we had to manually pull the information and come to a consensus about status each time.
As a bonus problem – time! Originally I estimated a couple of days for the whole project activities list. It took a week for one part of it.
It’s one of those things that I think we as PMs struggle with all the time. What ideas do you have for selling the client on the process?
