Employ Project Templates

Many people begin project planning with a blank piece of paper. This is not a good idea. The traditional approach was to use a work breakdown structure or WBS. A work breakdown structure is a detailed list of all applicable tasks. It was thought years ago that this was useful because people could just pick and choose among the tasks. However, over time a number of problems have surfaced with this approach. First, there is the problem of what tasks mean. In an international project with different cultures and languages, this can be a major problem—leading to misunderstanding and confusion. Second, the WBS is too rigid. What if you have tasks that are not in the WBS? Do you force fit them into some general category? A third problem is that no one on the team, including the project leaders, had involvement in the WBS—they did not buy into this.

Instead of a WBS, develop high-level tasks for each type of international project that you do. In Part III there are examples of international projects and these high-level tasks are given. How many tasks are to be defined? Maybe as few as 20–30 up to several hundred. The high-level tasks serve as the umbrella for the project. Detailed tasks will fit under these high-level, summary tasks. The high-level tasks are the start of the project template. A project template consists of the following:

• High-level tasks;

• General resources assigned to the tasks;

• Tail-to-head dependencies among tasks;

• All durations and dates, left unfilled.

A general resource is the name of the role that would typically undertake the task. An example might be construction foreman or systems engineer. Tail-to-head dependencies are the simplest and will cause the least problems.

There are two additional “rules of thumb” for using templates. One is that all projects must use the same customization form of the project management software. Almost all useful project management software can be customized. If people use different forms of customization, then you cannot put the schedules together to do analysis.

The second rule is that all project plans and templates must use the same resource pool. A resource pool is a project plan in which there are no tasks— only resources. There are general resources for the template and specific resources for the individual projects. If all of the project plans use the same resource pool, then you can combine the projects for analysis.

When you fill out the project plan from the template, you first create detailed tasks under the template tasks. Then you replace the general resources with the specific people or organizations doing the work. You can also add dependencies and, finally, the dates and durations of the tasks to produce the plan.

There are a number of advantages of using project templates, including:

• It is easier for the team to understand and support these.

• The template can be improved as the project goes on and after the project is over. As such, the body of templates constitute cumulative improvement through experience.

• Management can understand templates easier than the detailed tasks.

• Changes in the project can be made in the detail, leaving the high-level tasks unchanged except for the dates and durations.

There is an overall roadmap here. It is shown in Fig. 5.1. This diagram reveals how templates, project plans, lessons learned, and issues tie together. Each of the arrows is labeled so that the following explanation helps you to see the overall picture.

Figure 5.1: Roadmap for Templates and Projects

• Each international project plan is generated from a template (arrow 1).

• As you gain experience from the project, the template can be updated for future use (arrow 2).

• Any task that has risk has one or more issues behind it (arrow 3).

• Each issue that is identified can be associated with one or more tasks (arrow 4).

• Template tasks refer to the appropriate lessons learned that help you carry out the task (arrow 5).

• Each lesson learned would be difficult to find or use if it did not refer to some tasks in the templates (arrow 6).

• You employ lessons learned to help in resolving issues (arrow 7).

• From dealing with issues you gather more experience so that you can improve on the lessons learned (arrow 8).

• Certain issues commonly arise in international projects so that they can be associated with the tasks in the template (arrow 9).

• Lessons learned can be useful in resolving issues and doing work in the project; the lessons learned can also be updated (arrow 10).

Note that without the cross reference of lessons learned with the tasks, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to uncover which lessons learned to use. The same applies to issues. Also, as time goes on and you gain more experience in international projects, you will likely experience the benefits given in Fig. 5.2.

Figure 5.2: Benefits of a Structured Approach for International Projects

Many international projects involve consultants and contractors. It is important that the issues, templates, and project plans be shared with outside firms. Otherwise, a vendor may continue to use their own plan. Then you will spend literally hours with the vendor manager in reconciling your and their versions of the plans and interpretations of issues.