While every project is unique, many projects of a certain type have repeatable phases and tasks. If this is true for your project team, then it makes sense to sit down and develop your project templates. We recommend getting the people that belong to the team or department or group together for a meeting. We like to perform the 'sticky note' exercise as a method of capturing all activities or tasks on a project. What's this? The team meets and one person acts as the moderator, writing down all individual tasks on a 'sticky note' and putting it on the wall or white board. The team outlines all tasks and activities without judgment about the level of detail or what order the tasks should be in. Just brainstorm and collect all the tasks, one per sticky note.
Once you are satisfied that you have outlined all activities that encompass that project type, then you may organize them in an outline or WBS (work breakdown structure) format. The first group of tasks is labeled 1.0 in your WBS. One rule of thumb is that phases or summary tasks should start with words that are nouns, whereas tasks start with verbs because they are things that you 'do.' A lively discussion usually ensues. Be patient and take the time to get the outline right. You are also building team agreement during the process. That is, you want 'buy in' from the project team about the steps that the project will take to complete. By participating in the process, the team members will offer less resistance, as they helped 'build the house,' so to speak.
The next step is to look at the level of detail that you have outlined. Sometimes it is appropriate to build out more detail, but in our experience, it is more likely that you will want to trim out some of the detail. This makes your task list or WBS more manageable. More experienced project managers know that the more junior the staff, the more detail you need to have. If your team is experienced, you may still want to have details in the task description fields of your project management software solution. Steps may be outlined there, instead of making the steps individual tasks. This keeps the team members' burden of updating tasks down and you will get more adoption!
We had a customer that had task lists initially built out to the 15 minute increment in Project Insight, project management software. That turned out to be too cumbersome for their fast paced environment. Imagine having to check off a task every 15 minutes! So they trimmed down the template and people were much happier. Another customer told me that she was out for surgery last year and because she had built out exact steps in the task description fields, the project manager that took over for her was able to complete the project on schedule without any hiccups. A great success story and wonderful use of project templates.
To recap:-Meet with the team-Write down all tasks on sticky notes-Arrange sticky notes into an outline-Decide how much detail you need-Then, put your results into your project software tool!
About CynthiaWest
I consider myself a 'serial entrepreneur.' I was brought on board in 2002 to launch Project Insight's sales and marketing efforts. I spent the 1990s in Silicon Valley working at 3 different start ups. I was part of a management team that took one company public, and another start up was acquired by RR Donnelley & Sons. If it isn't fast paced, it isn't fun!