Project management#

wsman sysman sysadmin

The two most important phases of a project are the planning phase and the execution phase. The most important activities in these two phases are

Defining the project scope
Identifying and structuring the necessary activities or products. By product we mean any identifiable work result, such as a specification or a test report.
Determining the dependencies between activities and products
Determining the durations required to create the products
Creating a schedule
Determining the efforts required to create the products
Assigning resources
Carrying out the activities while updating the plan and continuously refreshing the status.

Pragmatic project management does not have to cover all of the activities mentioned above. We name four categories somewhat arbitrarily: PM Level 1 through PM Level 4.

PM level 1#

This level defines the minimum of project-management-related activities and covers points 1, 2, and 8. Project management is thus essentially limited to good task management.

PM level 2#

At this level, points 3, 4, and 5 are added. This already allows fairly good planning, especially when the breakdown of activities has gone far enough that only one person ever works on a given task.

PM level 3#

This level adds point 6 and, through effort planning, enables comprehensive control and early assessment of whether the project goals are achievable. This requires additional data, whose collection and maintenance demand noticeable extra effort and discipline.

PM level 4#

What remains for this level is resource planning, which presents a major challenge in almost any operational environment. This is mostly due to disruptions that directly affect the availability of resources and thereby disturb the planned schedule. Some of the disruptions can be compensated for with buffers; otherwise a re-planning becomes necessary each time.