10.10 Setting Expectations: Staged Deliveries

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The decomposition of a project into tasks, milestones, and phases is a crucial factor to success. The project leader must be able to take a step back, look at a project from an “out of the weeds” perspective, and decide how to break it down. The project team will assist, of course, but the ultimate responsibility for this rests firmly on the shoulders of the project leader. The SEP breaks the project into clearly identifiable stages, or phases, as they are called. Using the SEP will help the project leader decompose the tasks in each phase into something that can be tracked by the entire organization. It minimizes risk because everything is brought down to a level that is manageable for that particular phase. When project leaders communicate to their organizations the status of projects, using the phases and milestones described in the roadmaps can be of great assistance. The organization has expectations that each milestone will be met, and that is what they will use to track your success.

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