From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Organize project work - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Organize project work

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- [Instructor] There are three main ways to organize the activities in your project, by deliverable, phase, or group. You can choose one approach or a combination based on how you're going to plan and manage your project. When you identify deliverables and work packages in a work breakdown structure, it's easy to organize the activities that produce each deliverable. If your project has distinct phases, such as design, development, and production, you might want to organize work by phase. Organizing work by phase makes sense if you have go/no-go decisions at the ends of phases. For example, you might group the activities for a feasibility study. If the project isn't feasible, you stop at the end of that phase. When you organize by phase, you can organize activities within each phase by deliverable or group. When different groups perform distinct portions of the project, you can also organize work by the groups, departments, or teams that do the work. If you organize by group, you can ask team leads to identify activities so you can focus on how each team's work contributes to the overall project. In our example, the website deliverable can be handled by the web group. So this part of the project is organized by deliverable and group. This method is ideal when different teams take on each part of the project with well-defined handoffs from team to team. It also helps when you farm out portions of your project to different vendors and contractors. The end result looks like an organization chart, except that the hierarchy shows project activities, instead of who manages whom. Regardless how you organize your project, the underlying activities stay the same. There isn't one right way to organize work. Pick the approach that you feel will help you manage the project and make it a success. For practice, try out each method on one of your own projects.

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