Project hierarchy analogy with telescope and its lense

 Project hierarchy analogy with telescope and its lense

One of the challenges of managing a complex project is to ensure that all the stakeholders have a clear and consistent vision of the goals, scope and deliverables. A project hierarchy is a useful tool to organize and communicate the different levels of detail and responsibility in a project. In this blog post, I will use an analogy with a telescope and its lense to explain how a project hierarchy works.

A telescope is an instrument that allows us to observe distant objects by magnifying their images. A telescope consists of two main parts: the objective lense and the eyepiece. The objective lense is the large lense at the front of the telescope that collects and focuses light from the object. The eyepiece is the small lense at the back of the telescope that magnifies and projects the image onto our eyes.

A project hierarchy is similar to a telescope in that it has two main parts: the project charter and the work breakdown structure (WBS). The project charter is like the objective lense: it defines and focuses on the high-level objectives, scope, deliverables, stakeholders, assumptions and constraints of the project. The WBS is like the eyepiece: it breaks down the project into smaller and more manageable pieces of work, each with its own description, duration, cost, resources and dependencies.

The advantage of using a project hierarchy is that it allows us to zoom in or out on different aspects of the project depending on our needs. For example:

- If we want to see the big picture of what we are trying to achieve with our project, we can look at the project charter.

- If we want to see how our project aligns with our organization's strategy or vision, we can look at how our project objectives support our strategic goals.

- If we want to see how our project will be executed in terms of tasks, milestones and deliverables, we can look at the WBS.

- If we want to see who is responsible for what in our project team or among our stakeholders, we can look at how each work package in the WBS has an assigned owner or sponsor.

- If we want to see how much time or money our project will take or cost, we can look at how each work package in the WBS has an estimated duration or budget.

By using a project hierarchy analogy with a telescope and its lense, we can better understand and communicate how our project is structured and managed. This can help us avoid confusion, ambiguity or misalignment among ourselves and others involved in our project. It can also help us monitor and control our progress and performance throughout our project lifecycle.