When Much sometimes is Too Much

In this podcast, listen Ricardo's opinion on the level of detail of the project scope. How much detail we have to pursue? What is a good size for a work package?

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM. Podcast this week I watched having a conversation with a friend talking about the level of detail and he was just asking me, he got into what is the size of the word package. And then I decided to record this podcast with a very suggestive interesting name. When Much it's sometimes too much. And why do I want to share this with you?

Because always there is a huge debate of how much detail should I pursue when I'm doing the project. There is a group that doesn't want to the tail. Anything in the order size they're is a group that wants to the tail make deep the tails of everything. So my personal experience, please take this as my experience. There is no rule on that. What is always on my mind is dis to numbers, 80 and 40 or 80 minutes, eight hours.

I try to think about the length, the duration of the work package. If it's below eight hours, then I need to have a brief reason for not joining or not merging this work package with something to reduce my work in the control. So usually I try to make one day eight hours at night, up to 40 hours. For five days, some friends, they use 80 hours or 10 days or two weeks SAP to you.

But for me from one day to one a week, this is very good. I don't like what packages with 200 days. Why? Because of it's very, very hard to prac product, because I can tell you a 10%, 20%, 30% on the work package, I have 200 days and I can easily give you the wrong information. But when I have a package of three days, it's a very hard for you to tell it's 20 instead of 60 or 80.

So it's very, very different. So what are the people tend to do? The group that wants the tail, the CRI to create extremely that the WBS charts and scheduling and the Xhosa as bad as know the tail, no detail. Of course, doesn't give you too much work to control. And also does not give you the information that you need.

Imagine a car with a speed meter that he has only zero in the a hundred miles. There is nothing in between. So, you know, when you reach a hundred miles, you know, when you reduce it zero, but you cannot understand that you are 50 or 40. So we are, it's quite useless dis kind of device its the same of the project. But in the other hand, imagine what is the difference for you as a driver to have your speed meter showing 50.03, two miles.

Does this make any sales for you to make a decision while you are driving? This is too much detail too much. And then when you create very detail project with detail past and everything, this is extremely detailed. Approach will cost you a lot to control in it. So crazy for me because people, they don't think in the midterm solution, they are what we call in Brazil.

It's very, poplars length, 80 or eight, so eight or eight zero, nobody see 40. So everybody's so extreme. Oh, now we'll detail everything. And then they start to create a five minute work package, 10 minute work package. And then they put a hundred people just to take care of this. Then they complain that the cost of project management is too high. In the other hand that people just create one work package, do everything.

And this is work packages. It's a test three years of Lance of duration, a hundred resources on it. And then you are not controlling anything. So just make the common sense of pride to understand what is good for you to manage it, to make proper decisions. And this is what really matters when we are doing scheduling. So think about that and see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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When Much sometimes is Too Much

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