Structured Project Management

Remember back in the 1960's when you took your first course in programming using Fortran to write programs to find the determinant of a matrix of a numerical solution to differential equations.

We wrote spagetti code.

We didn't know any better. They hadn't invented Structured Programming yet so we used dozens of GOTO's in every program to solve all the special cases.

Have you ever seen a spaghetti PERT?

It's not a pretty sight - hundreds of task boxes and lines going every which way.

It's not any easier to understand than 1960's code and there is no systematic way to determine that you haven't missed a major task in the project.

Structured Project Management is a methodology we have developed to solve this problem.

It is the application of Systems Engineering to management of engineering projects by performing the top down decomposition of a project into it's phases, tasks, and activities.

The process partitions a project systematically to ensure that no tasks have been missed anything.

Systems Integration Projects will all follow the same decomposition from project to project so a template can be used for the first several levels.

The modules are reusable from one project the the next.

The output of the process - a structured PERT Chart - is very readable.

It is a "project on a page" and use it as a communications tool so the project team has the big picture of what is going on and what each individual's role is in the project's success.

Click here to go through a short slide presentation on the principles of Structured Project Management.

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