successful project management - Commonwealth of Learning

?? Activity
The Mission Statement for my project is:
The Project Structure
The WBS should be developed before the schedule, that is, it depicts the main parts
of the project. As an example, in a distance education project where study materials
have to be originated by the organisation, the broader areas must be identified first.
These are:
• Areas that are the responsibility of the sponsor such as the signing of a
memorandum of agreement if the project is done collaboratively with a
partner.
• Areas to do with course development such as identification of writers, training
of writers, editorial issues, etc.
• Areas that fall under the learner support section of the organisation such as
preparing the tutorial cycle, identification of study centres, enrolment of
learners, etc.
• Areas to do with project budget such as financial resources, remuneration of
part-time staff, etc.
At this stage there is no attempt to sequence tasks and activities. This is the rough
drawing of the project and should be agreed with stakeholders. As you will
appreciate, the WBS is a good way to show the scope of the job. Participants begin
to see responsibilities before getting into details, which are the main focus of the
schedule. Essentially, the WBS is a reflection of deliverables. It is not the activities or
tasks, but what the customer will get at various stages.
Getting the Team together
The first step to creating the WBS is for the ODL project manager to get the team
and the key stakeholders together in one room. This is a vital step because it is the
team that possesses all the expertise (Look at the Responsibility column in Table
5A).
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