It's All About Deliverables
by Paula K. Martin, CEO,
Martin Training Associates
We all know that the point of any project is to produce a final deliverable that satisfies the customer, and is delivered on time and within budget. So, if it's a deliverable we're after, why not manage our projects with a focus on deliverables instead of activities or tasks? Focusing on deliverables at the main project level has several advantages.
The level of detail is manageable.
When you're working with activities, the level of granularity in large projects can overwhelm your ability to see what's important. For example, the project team for the start-up of a large, offshore plant created a master schedule that included 300-500 activities. Because of the large number of activities, it was difficult to identify the interdependencies within the project. By converting the activities into deliverables and then manually mapping the interdependencies of each deliverable, they discovered the fact that raw materials had not been scheduled for delivery until six weeks after finished goods were supposed to be leaving the plant. Focusing on deliverables pulled the project up to a level of granularity they could manage, and after all, project management is all about making a project manageable. If it doesn't do that, what's the point?
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