by Laurence Nicholson, PMP

One of the biggest challenges faced in the development of accurate and comprehensive project plans is that of scope identification through requirements gathering. All too often this area is subject to a cursory review and not given the level of importance it requires.

Without a fully defined set of requirements, the project scope will be incomplete and the likelihood of controlling the project schedule and cost diminishes.

It is not uncommon to see projects planned without a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), relying entirely on a Gantt chart constructed by committee. The lack of a comprehensive WBS against which to base cost, schedule and resources is often the root cause of project failure.

It will come as no surprise that this area is the most difficult to enforce, with many clients not understanding the potential dangers of failing to prepare adequately for the management of the project. Experience of a client who refused to write anything down, and categorically refused to sign anything, makes you realise how projects can easily get out of control without a strong PM. In this case, the client’s idea of requirements was a late evening telephone call during which his demands were spelt out, regardless of the fact that he often contradicted previous verbal instructions.

What makes this situation more difficult is often the fact that the Client sponsor is a senior member of the organisation and that they deal with relatively junior team members, which is why the Project Manager should ensure through the communications plan that they are the focal point for information flow in these circumstances.

Consider for a moment the aspects of project planning; scope, time, cost, schedule, resources, HR, risk, quality and procurement. All of these benefit from a defined and detailed breakdown of the project deliverables into work packages against which to estimate the various costs and effort, as well as associate quality criteria for measurement of KPI’s.

Ensuring you build a comprehensive WBS as the foundation for your project management activities will pay dividends when you come to estimate cost and effort, plan resources and track performance. Get it right and down to the right level of detail, and the required controls will be easy to implement, and whilst there is no guarantee of success, the warning signs will be identified earlier in the project for corrective action to be able to take place.

Remember that it is important to decompose the WBS to a suitable level for work packages to be identified. Use the WBS Dictionary to further define the tasks required to be carried out, the resources required to carry them out and the criteria against which each task will be measured from a performance and quality aspect.

At this level the risks associated with the activities planned can be more accurately defined and planned for, improving the management of risk and reducing the impact likelihood. If we could identify and plan for all risks at the start of any project, there would be very few failures, but due to the very nature of risk, there are always ‘unknown unknowns’ that will happen. It is thus important to try to predict as many risks as possible, and doing this at the lowest level of the WBS allows for a greater level of risk management.

Make it habitual to gather your team together from the outset to define the WBS and to estimate at task level, making sure they understand they will be measured at that level.

It has often proven useful in the past to have a brief presentation ready for project stakeholders and sponsors, defining the benefits of accurate requirements gathering and WBS creation, in order to avoid them ‘cutting’ time allotted to this area of project planning.

Create your WBS, decompose to task/activity level and define all relevant details such as effort, cost, quality criteria and relationships. Use this information to control and monitor your project statistics and look forward to a successfully managed project.

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