From the course: Project Management Simplified

Choose the level of granularity

From the course: Project Management Simplified

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Choose the level of granularity

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- There's a little detail of task listing, which is a bit of a problem in the world of project management, because there isn't an exact rule for it. And that is, how small do you go? The level of detail is known as granularity, the size of the grains. Clearly, if you break your project down into tiny grains, the plan will be too unwieldy, too complicated. But if you don't break the tasks down far enough, then you won't have enough grip of what they actually consist of, so you won't be able to estimate the time and the cost required. So the first sign of your tasks being too large, is that you can't estimate them, either in terms of time or cost. For example, how long will it take to install a kitchen? What will it cost? Clearly, we need to get more detail about what exactly is in this kitchen. But we probably don't need to go right down to the level of drill hole through wall, push wire through hole, so there will be a sweet spot, where our plan is the right level of detail or granularity. The key is to keep breaking your tasks down until you can estimate them. The second sign of tasks being too large, is if they overlap. For example, if you were going to dig a 10-mile trench, and then put in the pipes, they could just be two large tasks. But in reality, you probably wouldn't need to wait till the whole trench was finished before you started putting in the pipes. So you'd need to decide when you can start on the pipes. Maybe after you've dug the first mile of the trench. So you'd have to granulate the trench to show when you can start laying the pipes. The third sign of a task being too large, is the forbidden O word, which is so bad that I can't even say it. Here it is on the screen. The O word should ring alarm bells if you or anyone else says it, because it's a sure sign that you haven't broken a task down into enough detail to have a grip of it. For example, if the electrical work on my house is ongoing, throughout the build of the house, it means that the electricians can do whatever they like, and they probably will. They'll do almost nothing at the start, because they've got ages, and then they'll finally get going halfway through, and then there'll be a big panic at the end, and then they'll finish late. I bet you've seen exactly that happen. So the answer is to granulate those pesky electricians down to a weekly plan, which then allows you to keep a grip of them and monitor each week, are we still on plan, much better. So that's granularity. Make sure you get the right level of detail, not too little, but also not too much.

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