Drowning in Deliverables? – Selecting the Necessary Deliverables for Your Project

Whether the end product is a Micro-site promoting your newest product, an ecommerce platform in which to sell that new product, or even a space shuttle bound for Mars, the term that you’ll hear associated with all of these projects is “deliverable”. A deliverable, by its Project Management Institute (PMI) definition, is a “tangible, verifiable work product such as a feasibility study, a detail
design, or a working prototype.”

Now, what does this really mean to someone who does not necessarily manage projects every day? In short, a deliverable is any officially documented information that is critical to the end product of the project. For example, consider the screenshots of a potential new homepage design or the list of things that your organization knows that the new mobile application needs to have. A deliverable is these types of information that contain documented traits that are crucial to the end product.

Now that we’ve highlighted what a deliverable is, it’s important to understand exactly how many deliverables are available for a given project. Sometimes this can be tricky as the types of deliverables critical to a project is dependent upon the industry you are working within. Take that space shuttle that is one day bound for Mars for example, that project is so large that it’s likely to be broken down into many smaller projects…each of which might have 1000’s of deliverables.

As you might guess, producing deliverables takes time and we all understand that time is money. If you connect all of the dots, you’ll start to understand why NASA spends an average of $450 million dollars per mission….it all comes back to the number of deliverables (tangible documents that are critical to the end product) that are required to complete a project.

Luckily, it’s not likely that a web site or web application project will require 1000’s of deliverables or a 450 million dollar budget, but the analogy still works. Identifying which deliverables are crucial to your end product and, conversely which are not crucial to achieving project success within the most cost effective budget structure possible.

The process of indentifying which deliverables are included and excluded is called “tailoring” and relies heavily on experience within managing similar projects successfully. Galvin has successfully completed all kinds of projects, from complex Insurance Rating Software Packages to the simplest of websites. This helps to ensure that the deliverables produced are the right ones for your project, ultimately delivering a superior product at the lowest cost.

For more information on the concept and types of deliverables or on how to better select which ones are the right ones for your project, please give us a call. We’d love to chat more.