Gary RobertsonSenior Consultant| Alliance InformaticsCalgary, Alberta, Canada
i.e. what is the briefest event you should track (e.g. 1 day) in the WBS? What is the longest event you should track (e.g. 12 months) in the WBS? Saving Changes...
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Huw EvansSenior Manager, Projects and Partnerships| Vicinity CentresMount Waverley, Vic, Australia
This does depend from project to project, but generally I would not track a line item less than 1 day, or more than 10 days duration. If something is larger than 10 days, then I'd break it down into 10 day chunks, to allow for more accurate tracking. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I would work on a week long basis, and not plan tasks longer than 5 working days. Saving Changes...
Stuart DixonProject Office Manager| Xl CatlinCrowbrough, United Kingdom
The answer is simple. How frequently do you ask for updates on your plan?
If you are linked into a time sheeting system the answer is normally 1 week, sometimes 1 month, so your minimum time becomes the frequency of updates.
For the longest one, I would worry if I saw tasks leading to deliverables that were longer than 1 month. However there are tasks that may need time charging to like project management, which don't lead to a specific deliverable, which you can have as long as the project.
Most people tracking plans only look at items which are due to deliver in the next week/2 weeks, and ask for a progress update on those, so if you have a 12 month task and ask 2 weeks before hand whether this is complete and hear the traditional answer of well we have spent 80% of the cost/time, but only got 50% of the way through, so can we have 50% more time (6months) to complete, and you are happy with that answer then by all means make your tasks 12 months long. However if you care about your project split your tasks into tasks which are about 5-10 working days in length, and definitely under a month.
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Rakesh TrivediSenior Project Manager| IT CompanyIndore, Mp, India
Agree with some of relplies in the thread. I feel one should not go with duration but the frequency of tracking like in my project I go with weekly tracking and all the tasks falling on that week or past tasks lagging behind are tracked/Monitored. One more point is WBS literal meaning is to break down tasks so always reduce the size of task for better tracking. Saving Changes...
depending on the project duration you can have and how detailed is the project tracking system you can have tasks from days to one week in short project about 3 month, if the project is 12 o 24 months long the shortest line may be about 10 to 20 days and split long activities in chunks of 10 days.
regards
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Marco OrtizPMO Director| MOB ConsultoresMonterrey, Nl, Mexico
It depends of the stage of the project where you are. If it is, for project control, the rule would be: that any task duration must be less than 2 update periods to avoid loosing control. f.e. IF your are updating every week and you have a work calendar of 5 day, every duration should be less than 10 days. You can havesome exceptions for the task where you do not have enough information, but you should correct them later. Saving Changes...
Some interesting responses. I am not sure how you would break a task down into descrete "chunks" if there was no deliverable at the end of the "chunk" all you could say was that you had spent 10 days on that chunk, but their is no measurable ouput that would determine if the 10 days should have been 9 or 11 days. So I try to link the tasks with some deliverable at least then you have some measure of progress rather than time spent. For example if some form of document was required you can break this down into develop 1st Draft, review, update etc until the final version was produced. Saving Changes...
Huw EvansSenior Manager, Projects and Partnerships| Vicinity CentresMount Waverley, Vic, Australia
Julie makes an excellent point, and I agree that it's ideal to consider what a completed stage (or chunk - not my best term), looks like. I use the concept of breaking the task down to start this discussion, and then drill down for more detail. i.e. if we're breaking one large task into two pieces, use the question "what does 50% complete of this task look like?". Ideally you'll come up with a tangible output that can be observed, like the draft document, to be able to correctly measure the progress.
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Jayson ReadProject ManagerEden Prairie, Mn, United States
I'm kind of with Julie in that the WBS should be deliverables that you are working to achieve and within those deliverables there could be multiple tasks. You shouldn't be restricting your definition of deliverables to how long it's going to take to achieve them.
If you're looking to task effort, I would side with Elizabeth in that you should try not to plan anything more than a week at a time; it gets too difficult to manage % complete.
And conversely, I try to stay away from tracking anything less than 4 hours as a task. You just end up getting inundated with follow-up and tracking tasks if there gets to be too many of them. Saving Changes...
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