Specification is a definition of the project: it is the statement of a problem, and not
the solution. Normally, a specification do contains the errors, misunderstandings, ambiguities
and the enough rope to hang the entire project team.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Thus before you do embark upon
the next six months of the activity working on a wrong project, you should assume that the
numbly was a chief author of specification you received and you should read, worry,
revise and also ensure that everyone who is concerned with a project, from the originator,
through workers to the end-customer, is working with a same understanding. The outcome
of this deliberation must be the written definition of what is required to do, by when to do;
and this should be agreed by all the team members who are involved. There will be no short-cuts
to this; if you do fail to spend time initially, it do costs you far more later.
Agreement upon the written specification do have several benefits:
A clarity will reveal the misunderstandings.
Completeness will do remove the contradictory assumptions.
Rigour of analysis will do expose the technical and the practical details which
the numb ties normally gloss over through the ignorance or a fear
Agreement forces all the concerned to actually read and think over the details
Providing the Structure
After deciding what the specification intends, the next problem is to decide what you
and the team actually need to do, and also how to do it. Like manager, you should provide
some form of the framework both to the plan and also to communicate what needs doing.
Without the structure, work is the series of unrelated tasks which do provides little
sense of achievement and has no feeling of the advancement. If a team has no grasp of
how the individual tasks do fit together towards the understood goal, then a work will
seem pointless and they do feel only the frustration.
To take a planning forward, therefore, you should need to turn a specification into the
complete set of a tasks with the linking structure. Fortunately, these requirements
will be met at same time since derivation of such structure is a simplest method of
arriving at the list of tasks.
The Work Breakdown Structure
Reasoning behind this is that human brain can only take in and process much of the
information at one time. To get the real grasp of a project, you have the
to think about it in the pieces rather than trying to process a complexity of the entire
details all at the once. Thus each level of a project can be understood as a
amalgamation of few simply described smaller units.
The Task Allocation
In simple terms, consider what each member of the team is capable of and also allocate
the sufficient complexity of the tasks to match that. The tasks you do allocate are not
the ones on the final lists, they are adapted to better suit a needs of the team's
development; tasks are been molded to fit the people, which is far more effective than
other way around. For an example, if Arthur is to learn something which is new,
the task might be simplified with the responsibility given for another to guide and
check the work; if Brenda is to develop, a sufficient tasks are been combined so that
her responsibility increases beyond what she has held it before; if Colin lacks the
confidence, tasks are broken into the smaller units which could be completed
and also commended frequently.
The Guesstimation
At initial planning stage main objective is to get the realistic estimate of a
time involved in project. You should establish this not only to assist the higher
management with their planning, but also to protect the team from being expected to do
impossible. Most important technique for achieving this is known as the
guesstimation.
The Guesstimating schedules is notoriously difficult but it is helped by the two
approaches:
make the guesstimates of a simple tasks at the bottom of work break down
structure and look for a longest path through a sequence diagram
use experience from the previous projects to improve the guesstimating skills
