The relationship between development time and the scope and size of a project is obvious. What may not be as readily apparent is the massive increase of work to even secure such a project. Over the last week I’ve been spending significant portions of my time creating, drafting and changing documents for it. Enough to give me a headache, but still, these things have to be done.
This is partly a post to assuage readers who may be (rightly) feeling a little neglected of late. I don’t really have the time to write something, but I am anyway. Yes, for you dear reader, I am forfeiting some of my sleep and more. You should feel special.
How do you deal with large projects?
That’s a very, very good question. The answer is to have a plan, a plan that tells you how to plan out the response for the project, the design and build of it, and then the support for it. A plan for a plan then, perhaps that sounds a bit redundant? It really isn’t. If you’re dealing with something that will involve a development team, you need a process set to help you map out every detail. You can’t just begin writing out all the features it will need, because that will end up being a mess with no structure or coherency and won’t allow you to gauge the size of the project at all.
My simple base plan is this:
- Write out the goal, write out the current situation
- Work out a development flow chart (e.g. proposal -> planning -> development/build -> review -> training -> launch -> support/maintenance)
- Fill in the development flow chart in detail
- Progress through the development plan
And with that, you should be in a position to better handle larger projects. Now I do need to get back to working on my particular one ;-).
