Page 279 - DCAP304_DCAP515_SOFTWARE_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Unit 14: Small Projects

Now suppose you don’t define and write down what the objectives are, you are always going to Notes
be at the mercy of any boss who decides he’s got it in for you. The defined and documented set
of objectives is your insurance policy against your manager later coming along and saying you
didn’t meet the objectives.
However, there is another reason why you still need to define and document the objectives even
on a small project. You want to satisfy the needs of the stakeholders since that is what you are
paid to do as a project manager. If the objectives aren’t defined, then you won’t be able to meet
those needs through your project.
Similarly with defining the scope. The scope forms the boundary of your project. If you don’t
define what it is, the likelihood is that it will grow and grow as the project progresses and
although you might have started managing a very small project, before long your project could
become very much bigger than when you set out.

Notes You still need to document who are the stakeholders on a small project as well. By
defining who these are, you can ensure that you cover all of their needs when you define
the objectives and deliverables.

Defining Deliverables

Somebody is going to have to carry out the actual work to produce whatever is delivered from
your project. Even if the deliverables might be small and don’t take much time to produce, they
should still be written down. By documenting these things and then having them reviewed by
others allows errors to be found. Your aim should be to document a detailed enough set of
descriptions of the products to be delivered.
These descriptions will then be used by the people who will produce the deliverables. Even if
these descriptions take no more than a page of text, it is important to write them in a clear and
unambiguous way. If you don’t write down a description, it means that the person making the
deliverable can interpret what is required in unexpected ways which will only result in work
being done later to correct the mistakes. So, always define and document the deliverables.

Project Planning

If you were to walk up Mount Everest, you would never do it without a considerable amount of
planning. Even if you walk up the hill at the back of your house, there is probably some
planning involved - what time do you go? What should you take with you? It is the same on
even the smallest project where you will still need to work out which activities are required to
produce a deliverable, estimate how long the activities will take, work out how many staff and
resources are required and assign activities and responsibilities to staff.

All of these things need to be written down and communicated effectively to the project team
members. I’ve seen lots of people become unstuck because they think they need to use some
kind of project management planning software such as Microsoft Project. This is an unnecessary
overhead. I’ve noticed that people tend to waste too much time making their Microsoft Project
Gantt charts look pretty, so that they lose sight of the reason why they are using the tool.
Instead, for small projects we find that creating a bar chart in Microsoft Excel is the best. It is
simple and more than adequate for small projects. Just make each column a sequential date,
write your tasks in the first column, and fill in the cells to represent the time the activity takes.

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