Planning Project Tasks

In planning the tasks that make up a project’s definition, you can adopt one of two generally accepted approaches to creating a task list: top-down or bottom-up.

Whichever method you use, keep these points in mind:

• Every task should have clear completion criteria. For every task, you should be able to answer the question, “How will I know when this task is completed?”

• Break down tasks that have long durations compared with the total project. This makes it easier to assign resources and estimate completion dates.

• If you are uncertain about how a task will be accomplished, break it down into subtasks until it becomes clear.

Top-Down Planning

In top-down planning, you create a list of the major tasks or phases of the project that you need to complete for the project to be a success. Let’s use the office decentralization project outlined in Chapter 6 as an example. We can include the following major tasks in the portion of the project related to finding a new location and moving into office space there:

• Find suitable lease space

• Design space

• Build out space

• Decorate suite

• Move

Accomplishing any one of these tasks will require a number of additional steps or subtasks. Any task that has subtasks related to it is called a summary task. In the top-down approach, you list all the summary tasks and then break down each of these tasks into its logical subtasks. For example, the subtasks related to finding suitable lease space include the following:

• Identify space needs

• Contact a realtor to identify potential available properties

• Tour properties

• Make an offer on a property that meets specifications

• Negotiate a lease

• Sign a lease

Even some of these tasks, such as Identify space needs, have a series of smaller tasks related to them. To identify space needs, you might do the following subtasks:

• Develop a list of potential criteria (based on goals of the Decentralization project)

• Solicit input to prioritize criteria

• Finalize a criteria list

The “Identify space needs” task also becomes a summary task with a list of subtasks. By listing the major tasks first, you can break down each task into manageable, bite-sized pieces. You may even look at this list of subtasks and decide to break them down even further.

At some point, however, the tasks become too small to be valuable from a tracking and management perspective. Using the task of “Solicit input to prioritize criteria” as an example, suppose you decide to hold a series of meetings with staff members to get their input by using a multiple voting technique to prioritize the criteria list. You might list “Set up meeting room” as one of the subtasks. Would you also include “Arrange chairs, set up flip chart,” and “Buy markers” as subtasks? If the person to whom you eventually assign this task has never set up a meeting room before, providing this level of specificity might be valuable.

After a time, however, you may find that you are spending more time documenting the status of project tasks than managing the project itself. You might be better off giving a description of the task to the person responsible for setting up the meeting room; the description would outline the specifications for the room, but the task would be kept at the level of “Set up meeting room.” In fact, depending on the project and your needs for detail as project manager, even this task may be too specific. The key is to find a level of detail that shows you are making progress, without losing the big picture.

Tip 

Break down project tasks into smaller pieces in those areas that run the greatest risk of holding up the rest of the project or interfering with the project’s success. You can then more easily determine where the trouble spots are, and work to solve them.

Bottom-Up Planning

The second method of creating a task list uses a bottom-up approach. In this method, you list all the lower-level tasks of the project, usually organizing them in chronological order. You then insert summary tasks with the goal of grouping related tasks together.

The bottom-up approach works best with smaller projects in which you are already familiar with the task details and just want to organize the tasks in some sort of logical order. Using bottom-up planning with larger projects is both logistically difficult and time consuming, and thus used less often than the top-down approach.