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Project Management
Importance of Small Projects
Do you want to work on next big project to save the company? Small projects can do the same or wreak havoc. They also may be more fun.
Small internal projects are the glue that pulls large projects together and support daily operations. They make people’s lives easier and can potentially have a huge impact on the bottom line.
This concept applies to ALL projects, not just computer apps. A small construction project can bring in a much larger order later. It did for one company on our house remodeling project.
If managed correctly, they provide wonderful training platforms for new leaders and employees.
Size
A small project may differ in the mind of management when the staff is 200 than from one with a staff of 20.
My first estimate after I joined EDS was in work hours. They were used to thinking in months and could not grasp how long the project would take. I had to change everything to days.
The definition of a small project here is normally work for one individual from start to finish. It can occasionally include more than one person. I was once team lead for a 3-week project with 3 other programmers.
For IT projects, a small project can be from one day to about 3 months as long as it has a full Development Life Cycle, but condensed to a reasonable size .
Some organizations include Maintenance but that means that the project never ends.
For example, EDS had a
- Large Service Request (SIR) required approval by the coordinating committee,
- Small Service Request less than 60 development days required approval between the IT and Business manager,
- Standard One-Day Consultation SIR used for meetings and simple changes.
I used the standard one-day SIR to create a database, complete with maintenance pages, reports and user manual, that coordinated production between two factories — in 7 ½ hours. That included user acceptance testing. It can be done with the right tools.
