Chapter 3. Just What Tasks Should You Include?

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Determining your business need

Writing a goal statement

Establishing your project’s scope

Writing a scope statement

Deciding on project phases

Choosing how detailed your tasks should be

Determining when a phase is a project

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One of the trickiest parts of putting your project down on paper (or in a computer file) is knowing exactly what tasks to include in it. Too much detail and you’ll spend more time creating tasks than getting the work of your project done. Too broad a vision and you might miss crucial tasks because nobody defined them along the way.

Some useful tools that are available to project managers can help them focus their projects at the outset to lay a foundation for eventual success. These tools include establishing a clear-cut goal and defining the scope of your project. After you’ve taken these steps, you can start to outline the various phases of your project and begin to fill in the tasks you need to get to your goal.

In this chapter, we walk you through setting your project goal and scope, including writing a goal statement and a scope statement. Then, we take a look at some general rules that help you make choices about building your project phases.

First Things First: Define the Business Need

Good project management practice requires that you start at the beginning, considering what business need your project is fulfilling. Before you begin a project to upgrade your ...

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