Produce a WBS for the project This is essentially a structured list of all the jobs that must be done to complete the project. The list should have a "folded map" format, that is: -
All the major milestones shown you can get these immediately from Step 1 in the following section. -
As much detail as possible (i.e. down to the manday level) in the upcoming phase. -
As detailed as it can be thereafter. Make the WBS as excruciatingly detailed as possible by milking every scrap of information you have for all that it's worth. To help you to do this, a sample WBS is provided in Section 7 of this appendix. This WBS follows a general purpose software development life cycle. The WBS is presented in such a way that you could add in your own life cycle elements and WBS checklist elements, gathered from your own experiences over time. Steps to take -
Write down all the jobs in your project and for each job identify: -
which jobs it depends on -
which jobs depend on it. -
Present this list in a top-down way with: -
clear start and end points -
a high-level overview, i.e. the (less than a dozen or so) top-level jobs that have to be done to complete the project -
the milestones associated with these jobs -
wherever possible, these jobs broken down repeatedly until the lowest level of detail (i.e. the manday level of detail) is achieved -
For the next 46 weeks, no job should be more than 5 man-days in size . You can do this with whatever you normally use for writing, or alternatively and far better use a PC-based project planning tool. -
Guess and document the amount of effort (sometimes also called work) in each job. Note that it is effort, not elapsed time that we are looking for here. Nor is it the quantity called duration that PC-based project planning tools are so fond of. For each element write down the basis on which the guess was made, e.g. the document has 12 sections, allow 1 hour per section, therefore 1.5 man-days; or "This is what one of these normally takes me" etc. If any data are available from previous projects, use them. If you feel that you simply cannot guess certain jobs because they are unclear or unknown try first to break them down to lower levels of detail. When you eventually feel you can go no further in this process, and if certain jobs are still unclear or unknown which they will be then make and document an assumption. Finally, involve the people who will do the work in the estimating process. For that matter involve anyone whom you think might have a valid input. Enter the guesses of effort for each job onto your list. Document the way each guess was arrived at. Note that this includes documenting all the assumptions you made. When producing estimates with an individual, the individual's normal working day should be used: no productivity factor should be used. Where it is not known who will work on a particular job, a productivity factor of 20 percent should be used. Thus a 10 man-day task actually becomes 12 days. -
Add up all the effort in all the jobs. This gives you the total amount of work in the project. Using manpower rates, it also gives you the project budget, if you need it. This is the "demand" side of your project. All of this should be documented in the project plan. |
