Distribution of the frame work in specification of the project plan

The manager has to provide some form of framework both to plan and to communicate what needs doing. The first thing is to decide the intention of the specification. Then fix on what you and your team actually need to do, and how to do it. If the team has no grasp of how individual tasks fit together towards an understood goal, then the work will seem pointless and they will feel only frustration. A structure is essential. The work is a series of unrelated tasks which provides little sense of achievement and no feeling of advancement without a structure.

You need to turn the specification into a complete set of tasks with a linking structure in order to take the planning forward. These two requirements are met at the same time since the derivation of such a structure is the simplest method of arriving at a list of responsibilities. These two requirements are: 1. Divide simpler separate activities in the structure. 2. Allotment of the assignment.

•1. Divide simpler separate activities in the structure

This simplification helps a lot in actualizing the project. When you got a clear understanding of the project, describe it as a set of simpler separate activities. If any of these are still too complex for you to easily arrange, break them down into another level of simpler descriptions, and continue to do it until you can manage everything. Thus when your one complex project is planned as a set of simple tasks, you get the desired result.

Reason

You have to think about it in pieces rather than trying to process the complexity of its entire details all at once to get a real grasp of the project because the human brain can only take in and process so much information at one time. Thus each level of the project can be understood as the combinations of a few simply portrayed smaller units.

Simple steps: Follow the same simple steps in actualizing a project. If an item is too complicated to manage, it becomes a list of simpler items. You are unlikely to remember all the niggling little details; with this procedure, the details are simply displayed on the final lists without following this formal approach.

Draw back

Stop when you have a sufficient description of the activity to provide a clear instruction for the person who will actually do the work, and to have a reasonable estimate for the total time/effort involved. This is a common fault produced too much detail at the initial planning stage. You need the former to allocate the task; and the latter to finish the planning.

•2. Allotment of the assignment

It is a complicated job. You now have to allocate the tasks to different people in the team. At the same time, order these tasks so that they are executed in a reasonable series.

The allocation of tasks should thus be seen as a means of increasing the skills and experience of your team - when the project is done, the team should have gained.

The Assignment allocation is not simply a case of handing out the various tasks on your final lists to the people you have available; it is subtle and powerful. You have to look far beyond the single project as a manager. Indeed any individual project can be seen as merely a single step in your team's progress.

The tasks you allocate are not the ones on your finals lists, they are adapted to better suit the needs of your team's development; tasks are moulded to fit people, which is far more effective than the other way around. In simple terms, consider what each member of your team is capable of and allocate sufficient complexity of tasks to match that and to slightly stretch.

One person doing them both removes the start-up time for one of them. Two people will be able to help each other. Sometimes tasks can be grouped and allocated together.

Conclusion

You must have the broad outlines by which to monitor progress, and sufficient detail to assign each task when it needs to be started, but beyond that - stop and do something useful instead. The ordering of the tasks is really quite simple, although you may find that sketching a sequence diagram helps you to think it through (and to communicate the result). Pert charts are the accepted outcome, but sketches will suffice. Getting the details exactly right, however, can be a long and painful process, and often it can be futile. The degree to which you can predict the future is limited, so too should be the detail of your planning.