Why are Project Managers reluctant to plan for activities within a phase - example they will plan that Development phase takes 40 man days and will get be done between say Jan 1 to Jan 31st.
But they do not wish to plan for the activities within Develoepment phase - such as Coding will take 25 man days and be done from jan 1st to jan 15th , review 3 man days, unit testing 5 man days etc. Isn't that required for internal project tracking? Their contention is that it is a lot of administrative work! But isn't that supposed to be project planning and help them in project tracking? Saving Changes...
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Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
Hi Anon,
You didn't say what level of Project Management maturity your company/project operates at, because in most instances this situation wouldn't sound ithe deal. I would tend to agree with the main thrust of your post, you should always plan to the level that you can track effectively.
From a personal point of view using such a holistic approach can lead to potential timebombs as there are many risks that could be overlooked, but maybe and I'm hypothesising here, your Project Manager feels that monitoring their project at this level is sufficient and the project is low risk, which means they are comfortable doing so.
I guess the devil is in the detail, I have been involved in projects that are almost planned from cigarette packets and others that have thousands of lines of activity, in each case it was the Project Manager that decided that level of granularity the project schedule would be tracked at.
Keep chipping away and they may come round eventually.
Regards,
Darren Kosa Saving Changes...
Josh NankivelEngineering Project Manager| AppleSioux Falls, Sd, United States
The responsible level of detail will change from project to project, industry to industry, and company to company.
In software development, I would personally be appalled at any organization that didn't plan for specific packages, modules, etc.
Planning IS happening at a greater level of detail than "40 man days", but it may be the developers putting their own checklists and diagrams together instead of a project manager. It's difficult to get better at scope definition, estimation, and a lot of other things unless someone is keeping tabs on planned vs actual performance at some reasonable level.
There's also a difference between formal tracking via charge codes and statusing tasks in other ways. I'm doing daily status with my team so I know how many hours they have worked on a work package, how much they have left, and at the end I know how long it really took. But their charge codes and time sheets are tracked at a higher level. This gives me the info I need to stay on top of status and continuously improve while not burdening the team and me with lots of administrative overhead that just doesn't add much value for the costs involved.
Elyse NielsenSenior Project Manager| Ascension Health Information ServicesHaines City, Fl, United States
Hi,
Josh and Darren have excellent points!. Another tactic I would suggest discussing with the project manager that large work task commonly are among the top 10 reasons for project failure and try uncover why managing at that level of detail is necessary. There maybe other constraints or factor for which we are not aware of at this time.
You are correct that a 40 day task is way too long, how do you know whether you are on track or not without some milestones and deliverables in there? It is way to late to take corrective action if the task is slipping at the 40 day mark.
The only way this would work is if the 40 days was a summary task of a more detailed WBS being managed by the IT development lead. I would check this out as well. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
My rule of thumb is no task longer than a week.
But if it was a big project and I had a development team leader, they would do the detailed planning. However, as project manager, I couldn't specify how long the phase would take until they had done their bit and planned in detail.
Most of project management is a lot of administrative work - they just need to get on with it. Saving Changes...
