Project Management Tools

Primary Task Response: Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

Now that you have created a work breakdown structure (WBS) for your project, your manager would like you to begin to determine any additional tasks needed to complete the work packages. You can think of work packages in the WBS as the “nouns” of a project deliverable. These nouns help you to determine the tasks, or “verbs,” for the project schedule.

For example, a work package could be a textbook for a project to design a course. The tasks needed to obtain the textbook could be to search publisher Web sites for textbooks that are relevant, and purchase the textbook that best meets the course’s objectives. Alternatively, you could have tasks such as write the textbook, edit the textbook, and publish the textbook.

• What additional tasks are needed to create the work packages for your chosen project (the IT or the construction project from the 2 scenarios in the last DB)?
• What are the starting and finishing dates of the project?
• What are the project’s key milestones?
• In what order do the tasks need to be completed?
  • Do some tasks need to be completed before other tasks can begin? Why?
  • Can any tasks be completed at the same time?
• What are the durations for the tasks in days or weeks?