Page 50 - DMGT302_FUNDAMENTALS_OF_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Unit 3: Project Planning

Notes

Did u know? Having the entire team participate in planning is one way to start the
team-building process.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are True or False:
6. Every businessman can expect demand forecasting for products unless he is having strategic
planning for the organizational development.
7. Business entities should always fight for survival.
8. Biological advancements are useful for the development of project manager.
9. Scarcity of the resources always forms as the basis for project management.

10. SWOT Analysis is a formal analysis of your strengths and weaknesses, and of the
opportunities and threats that you face.
11. GMI is a good, simple technique for ‘weighing the pros and cons’ of a decision.

3.4 Work Break-down Structure

Once you have a clear understanding of the project, and have eliminated the vagaries of the
numpties, you then describe it as a set of simpler separate activities. If any of these are still too
complex for you to easily organise, you break them down also into another level of simpler
descriptions, and so on until you can manage everything. Thus your one complex project is
organised as a set of simple tasks which together achieve the desired result.
The reasoning behind this is that the human brain (even yours) can only take in and process so
much information at one time. To get a real grasp of the project, you have to think about it in
pieces rather than trying to process the complexity of its entire details all at once. Thus each level
of the project can be understood as the amalgamation of a few simply described smaller units.
In planning any project, you follow the same simple steps: if an item is too complicated to
manage, it becomes a list of simpler items. People call this producing a work break-down structure to
make it sound more formal and impressive. Without following this formal approach you are
unlikely to remember all the niggling little details; with this procedure, the details are simply
displayed on the final lists.
One common fault is to produce too much detail at the initial planning stage. You should be stop
when you have a sufficient description of the activity to provide a clear instruction for the
person who will actually do the work, and to have a reasonable estimate for the total
time/effort involved. You need the former to allocate (or delegate) the task; you need the latter
to finish the planning.

!
Caution One common fault is to produce too much detail at the initial planning stage. You
should be stop when you have a sufficient description of the activity to provide a clear
instruction for the person.

3.5 Process Mapping

Hopefully, every project manager has been involved at one time or another with helping their
customers map their business processes. Business process maps make work flow visible,

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