It’s amazing how often people ask us questions like: “How many tasks should this project have?” or “How much detail should I have in the project plan?”
The usual mistake PMs make is to lay out too many tasks; subdividing the major achievements into smaller and smaller subtasks until the work breakdown structure (WBS) is a “to do” list of one-hour chores. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that a project plan should detail everything everybody is going to do on the project. This springs from the screwy logic that a project manager’s job is to walk around with a checklist of 17,432 items and tick each item off as people complete them. This view is usually linked with another fallacy - namely, that the project plan should be a step-by-step procedure for doing everything in the project in case we have to do it again. If the PM is managing the wrong things, this may be handy because we increase the odds of having to do this project again.
Sponsors encourage these fallacies by marveling at monstrous project plans because they make it seem that the PM has “thought of everything.” Unfortunately, on significant cross-functional projects, there is absolutely no chance that the project manager will think of everything. The subject matter experts and specialists are the ones we must hold accountable for that.
The result of these fallacies is that PMs produce project plans with hundreds or even thousands of tasks. Many of them have durations of a few hours or a few days. Does this level of detail give us better control and lead to successful projects? In our view, a “to do” list approach does not give effective control, and it interferes with the achievement of a successful end result.
Download the entire PDF at 4PM.com.