What Project Work Is

CNMCyber suites

What Project Work Is (hereinafter, the Lectio) is the lesson part of Project Work Essentials lesson that introduces its participants to project management concepts. This lesson belongs to the CNMCT Entrance section of CNMCyber Bootcamps.

Content

The predecessor lectio is Agile vs Waterfall Work.

Script

Project work is the aggregate of the work that must be done to complete a project.

In Waterfall projects, the project customer separately approves the work in the project executing stage. A separate term, project scope, is used for this work only.

For big, expensive, and predictable executions, the project scope is decomposed and presented as work breakdown structure or WBS. This document may be accompanied by a WBS dictionary, which further describes WBS items.

In project management, the project scope becomes the project scope baseline when and if the customer or customer's representative approves it. Unless the customer or its representative agrees on something else, a project manager shouldn't start any execution of the project without the baseline.

In addition to WBS and WBS dictionary, a project scope baseline also includes acceptance criteria as a separate document or a part of a project scope statement. In addition to the 'criteria, this statement summarizes WBS and explains why particular works are included.

Life is life, things happen, and no project can be fully predicted. If any of project baselines cannot be met, a project manager makes a request for change to the customer or customer's representative to approve, decline, or modify.

Project scopes derive from detailed descriptions of the target work products and their specified features and functions. Logically, what needs to be done must be defined before the list of what to do. Sometimes, these detailed descriptions of the product are called product scopes. In business analysis, they are called solution scopes. Acceptance criteria is the most important description of product scope.

As a general tendency, the smaller a project, the fewer documents its customer requires. For some customers, acceptance criteria satisfy all the needs.

Some customers, like CNMCyber Team, provide contractors with detailed product descriptions. If not, project managers or business analysts collect requirements from project stakeholders starting with the customer or customer's representatives. If the target deliverable is complex, systems engineers design solutions.

Product descriptions are not necessarily textual documents. Prototypes can possibly do even a better job. For instance, one amateur coder wrote the original user management system of WorldOpp Middleware. The current code was created while recreating functions and features of that original system.

In Agile projects, the project scope is rarely documented at all. The project executing starts when the product backlog is approved. This backlog serves a role of the product scope and developers makes decisions of what work they should do based on that scope. While the Agile project progresses, the product scope is further defined.

Key terms

Project work, project scope, work breakdown structure (WBS), WBS dictionary, project scope baseline, project scope statement, request for change, product scope, solution scope, prototype

Closing

Fill in the blank

To create a project scope to plan your work, you have to have a description of the future _________.

The successor lectio is Project Parties and Roles.