PSI CONTRIBUTION

Step 2 contributes 20 towards the PSI. You can think of the score out of 20 as being a measure of how completely well-defined or otherwise the plan for the project is. At the beginning, when the project is just starting, the plan probably contains nothing more than the major milestones with some, probably incomplete, detail thrown in. Then the score out of 20 will be very low. On the day the project ends the plan will be complete, and will show the myriad little jobs, all strung together, that went into carrying out the project. This is the only time the score can reach 20.

So, between the beginning and end of the project, the score will vary within the range 0 “20. Thus, suppose your project life cycle had a number of phases in it, say:

• Requirements gathering

• Design

• Implementation

• Integration

• Testing

• Release

The PSI would gradually increase as you completed each of these phases. If you think of the score as a measure of how much closer you are to knowing all of the jobs that have to be done to complete the project, then you might assign values to these six phases as follows :

Requirements gathering	4
Design	9
Implementation	14
Integration	17
Testing	19
Release	20

To use the PSI for your own projects, you should do a similar exercise in which you map the 20 points available onto the phases of your own project life cycle. Remember, the score is a measure of how close you are to knowing all of the jobs that have to be done to complete the project.

As before, an alternative way would be to break the overall project plan down into sub-plans for each of its individual components . Then, allocate a maximum score per sub-plan, the sum of the maximum scores adding up to 20.

STRUCTURED PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Planning the project

1. VISUALIZE WHAT THE GOAL IS; SET YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE

2. MAKE A LIST OF THE JOBS THAT NEED TO BE DONE