ops-project-planninglisted

# Project Planning — WBS, Critical Path, Risk **The unit of a plan is a verifiable deliverable, not a task.** "Stuck at 80% for 3 weeks" is not done until it's 100% done (Brooks's Law). ## WBS and Schedule - **WBS**: goal → milestone → deliverable-level tasks (small enough for one person to finish in 2–4 days). If it doesn't decompose into deliverables, you can't measure progress. - **Critical path**: the longest path. Every day it slips, the project slips a day — adding people to non-critical work won't help. - **Buffer rule**: put **10–15% of total duration** as an integration buffer at the end of the project. Per-task personal buffers are banned — they scatter and hide slack (and induce multitasking and student syndrome). - **Parallelization limit**: one person can't hold 2+ critical tasks at once — resource constraints can exceed the critical path (PMBOK Resource-Leveling). ## RACI and Risk - **RACI** (rows = tasks, columns = roles): R (one or more executors) · **A (single accountable, approval authority)** · C (consulted) · **I (informed)**. Two A's means nobody is accountable. - **RAID log**: risks (probability × impact High/Med/Low) · assumptions · issues · dependencies. Each risk gets a **response (avoid / transfer / mitigate / accept)** + trigger + owner. - **Definition of Done**: write acceptance criteria for each deliverable at planning time (undefined = scope dispute later). - Scope changes require approval with stated impact (deadline, cost, quality). No verba