Define Tasks And Milestones

With the above comments as background, let’s consider how to develop the detailed project plan. The sequence of actions is as follows:

Action 1: Review the template and breakdown of the project into subprojects with the team; assign areas of the template to pairs of team members.

Action 2: Create a general list of issues using the ones from Part IV. Use this as a checklist for the team. Have them add more issues as appropriate. This gives you the initial list of issues for the project.
Action 3: Each pair of team members works to define detailed tasks for the next 3–4 months.
Action 4: Review the detailed tasks with the team members. In doing so, you will identify additional issues that can be added or referenced using the issues database. This action will ensure that there is a common understanding of what is to be done.

Action 5: Arrange for presentations of the tasks to other team members. This will widen the understanding of what is to be done and gain additional input.

Action 6: Each pair of team members will now assign specific resources and dependencies. These are reviewed by the project leaders.

Action 7: Each pair of team members will develop the estimated durations and dates for the work. This is now reviewed by the project leaders.

As you can see, this approach is collaborative and leads to a better understanding of what is to be done. Later, the team members will update their own tasks. This gives the individual team member a role in project management and also ensures that the project leaders are not driven down to the level of clerks who just update the plans.

What is the appropriate level of detail for an international project? Experience indicates that you want detailed tasks at the bottom to be 1–2 weeks in duration. There is a trade-off here. If you go for more detail, the project plan takes more effort to update and maintain. It becomes unwieldy. We know of one international project where the project leader was not experienced. He created detailed tasks down to 1 or 2 days. It drove the project team nuts! It was so unworkable that within one month the plan had to be scrapped and the effort started over. If the team cannot reasonably update the tasks in a short amount of time, then the team members will perceive that using project management is getting in the way of the work. Credibility of the method and the project leaders drops. There is another benefit to this range. If team members are able to leave the project team, there is less potential damage since the tasks are of reasonable duration.

What about milestones? International projects are often far flung and spread out. It will be difficult to get status later if there are fewer milestones. So we recommend that you have more, rather than fewer, milestones.

It can happen that your project is interdependent with other projects that are going on in one or more locations. How do you address this situation? You could just put in the major milestones of the dependent project and then track these. Often, this is not effective. If the other projects are set up in templates, then you can combine the projects to do analysis of slippage. This is feasible if there is open information on the projects and they are on the network.

Another action is to establish a new subproject that addresses the interface between your project and another project. This “interface project” provides a focus for joint management between the two sets of project leaders. It also draws attention to the risk and importance of the interface. This is preferable to burying the interface in some detailed tasks that are not visible. It also makes the two sets of project leaders more jointly responsible; they are forced to work together on issues that affect both projects.