At the start of most projects, someone sits down with the scope and decides how to break it up. Two levels of detail or five. Chunks of a few days or a few months. It usually takes an afternoon, it is rarely discussed, and it is treated as a planning formality before the real work begins.
That afternoon quietly sets two important numbers for the life of the project. The first is the cost of control: every chunk of work has to be described, estimated, given an owner, scheduled, tracked and closed, and more chunks mean more administration. The second is the earliest moment a problem inside a chunk can become visible as evidence rather than opinion. Until a piece of work finishes, the only account of its progress is the word of the person doing it. If the chunk is two months long, a problem inside it may not show clearly for two months.
When a project reports trouble later than the business could have done something about it, the usual instinct is to blame the reporting culture or the team’s honesty. Often neither is at fault. The information could not have arrived earlier, because the unit of work was larger than the window in which anything could still be done. This article explains how to size work deliberately, matching the detail of the plan to how quickly the business needs to know.
Key terms
- A work breakdown structure is the hierarchy of a project’s scope, from the whole project down to the smallest units that are planned and tracked.
- A work package is one of those smallest units: a piece of work with a defined output, an estimate, an owner and a way of confirming it is complete.
- The recovery window is the period after a problem starts during which the business can still change the outcome, for example by expediting parts, adding a shift, replacing a supplier or rescheduling a customer.
- The surfacing interval is how long it takes for a problem inside a work package to reach someone who can act on it.
Rules of thumb are inherited, not decided
Many organisations size work packages using a rule of thumb, such as keeping each package to somewhere between a day and a couple of weeks of effort. Other industries routinely use much larger bands. These rules are useful starting points, but they are often inherited from a previous employer, a textbook or a template rather than chosen for the project at hand. Different parts of the same project may need very different sizes, and a single rule applied everywhere can buy detail where it is worthless and miss it where it matters.
One choice, two numbers
The cost of control
Halving the size of work packages roughly doubles their number. Each package carries a recurring administrative cost: a description and acceptance criteria, an estimate, an owner, a place in the schedule, a status update every reporting cycle and a closure. That cost is real and can be estimated. In a small business, it might be an hour or two of a manager’s time per package over its life. In larger organisations, it can be much more.
The surfacing interval
The surfacing interval for a package is roughly:
- The package’s duration, during which progress is mostly self-reported, plus
- The wait for the next reporting point, plus
- The time for that report to reach someone with authority to act.
If a package takes eight weeks, reporting happens monthly and decisions take a week to reach the right person, a problem that starts in week one might not be acted on until week twelve or thirteen. If the recovery window is three weeks, the control system was never capable of catching that problem in time, however much effort went into it.
The recovery window belongs to the business
The recovery window is not a project number. It is set by the business situation: a customer’s promotion date, a seasonal peak, a shutdown period, a lease start, a regulatory deadline, the lead time for alternative parts. It should be stated by the person who carries the consequence of missing it, not estimated by the project team for convenience.
Different parts of the same project often have very different windows. Ordering long-lead equipment for a fixed installation date may have a window of a few weeks. Updating procedures and training staff before go-live may have a window of months, because the work can be compressed or rescheduled late without harm.
Uneven detail is often right
Because windows differ, the right level of detail differs too: fine where the window is short, coarse where it is long. Some planning standards treat uneven detail as a sign of careless planning. Here, it is the opposite: a sign that detail has been placed deliberately where it buys timely information.
How to size packages deliberately
For each major branch of the plan, before it is finalised:
- Ask for the recovery window: how many days after a problem starts can the business still change the outcome? Record who provided the answer.
- Estimate the surfacing interval for the proposed package size, using realistic durations, reporting frequency and decision time.
- Compare the two.
- If the surfacing interval is longer than the recovery window, make packages smaller, report more often or add objective checkpoints until it fits. This is not negotiable against administrative cost, because a control system that cannot report in time is decoration.
- If the surfacing interval is much shorter than the window, packages may be smaller than they need to be. Consider combining them and saving the administration.
- Check that every package has an estimate and a defined output. A package without an estimate cannot be tracked against anything.
- Write down the sizing decision: the window, who supplied it and the date. Revisit it if the business situation changes.
Package size is not the only lever
Smaller packages are one way to shorten the surfacing interval. Others include:
- Objective checkpoints inside longer packages, such as drawings approved, parts received and inspected, a first article checked or a trial run completed. Each is evidence, not opinion.
- More frequent short status updates for branches with short windows, such as a ten-minute weekly check rather than a monthly report.
- Faster routes to a decision-maker, so a problem raised does not wait for the next scheduled meeting.
- Leading indicators, such as supplier confirmation of dispatch dates, that warn of trouble before a package finishes.
The best choice depends on which part of the surfacing interval is longest.
Make progress reports evidence, not estimates
Even well-sized packages can hide problems if progress is reported as a guessed percentage. “About 60% done” is an opinion, and it tends to stay near 90% for a long time before jumping to complete or revealing a problem. A few simple practices make reports more trustworthy:
- Report against defined steps rather than percentages: drawings issued, parts ordered, parts received, fabrication complete, inspected.
- Use simple credit rules for longer packages, such as no credit until a package starts, half credit when it starts and full credit only when it is complete and accepted. This stops optimistic percentages from building up.
- Ask for the next date and the evidence: when will the next step finish, and how will we know?
- Separate effort spent from work completed. Hours booked show cost, not progress.
The aim is to turn each report into something that can be checked, so problems show up as missed steps rather than as a sudden change of tone near the deadline.
When the business situation changes
Recovery windows are not fixed for the life of a project. A customer may bring a date forward, a supplier may lengthen lead times, or a promotion may be confirmed. When that happens, the sizing decision should be revisited for the affected branches. A branch that was comfortably coarse may need finer packages and more frequent checks. Keeping the written sizing decision, with its window and source, makes this easy: when the window changes, the decision is visibly out of date.
A worked example
This is an illustration. A small food processor is modifying its filling line to launch a new product for a retailer’s promotion. The modified line must be running by 1 September so stock can be built for a promotion starting mid-October. If something goes wrong, the business needs about three weeks’ notice to expedite parts or arrange temporary co-packing. That is the recovery window for the equipment branch.
The first plan has one package for the equipment work, “fabricate and install filler modifications”, lasting eight weeks, with monthly progress reports to the owner. The surfacing interval could be eight weeks plus up to four weeks waiting for the report plus about a week to decide: up to thirteen weeks, far beyond the three-week window.
The owner resizes the equipment branch into four packages of about two weeks each, each with an objective completion check: modification drawings approved; parts received and inspected; fabrication complete with a first-article check; installation complete with a dry run. A fifteen-minute weekly check replaces the monthly report for this branch, and the owner agrees to make decisions on the equipment branch within two days. The surfacing interval falls to about two weeks plus up to a week, plus a couple of days, roughly matching the window.
The branch covering updated procedures and staff training has a much longer window, because it can be done in the final fortnight without harm. It stays as one package, reported monthly.
The extra packages cost about an hour a week of the project lead’s time. In week four, the “parts received and inspected” check shows that a valve is on six-week back-order. With about three weeks still in hand, the business switches to an equivalent valve from another supplier, and the line is ready on time. Under the original plan, the shortage would likely have surfaced only when installation stalled.
How this applies to a small Australian business
Small businesses rarely use formal work breakdown structures, but they make the same choice whenever they plan a job. Practical steps:
- Identify the parts of each project with short recovery windows: long-lead items, fixed customer dates, regulatory deadlines.
- Break those parts into short packages with objective completion checks.
- Keep detail light elsewhere, where problems can be absorbed late.
- Match reporting frequency to the window, not to the calendar.
- Make sure someone can decide quickly when a short-window branch reports a problem.
- Ask suppliers for interim evidence, such as confirmed dispatch dates or photos of fabrication progress.
The articles on project management basics and time to value cover related planning.
Signals worth watching
- Problems arriving when a package finishes rather than during it.
- Progress reports stuck at the same percentage and then jumping.
- Packages in the plan with no estimate.
- The same level of detail across parts of a project with very different urgency.
- Recovery options that expired before the report reached a decision-maker.
- Administration growing without earlier warning of problems.
Common mistakes
- Applying one sizing rule to the whole project.
- Letting the project team set the recovery window rather than the person who carries the consequence.
- Reporting on a fixed calendar regardless of urgency.
- Relying on self-reported percentages with no objective checkpoints.
- Over-detailing low-risk work while under-detailing critical paths.
- Blaming the team for late news that the plan structure made inevitable.
Frequently asked questions
Does more detail always mean better control? No. More detail costs more to manage and only helps where it brings information within the recovery window. Elsewhere, it is overhead.
How do we estimate the recovery window? Ask what actions could rescue the situation, such as expediting, rescheduling or substituting, and how much notice each needs. The longest notice among the realistic options is a good starting point.
Does this apply to work done by suppliers? Yes, and often most of all, because supplier work is the hardest to see. Agree interim checkpoints with suppliers for critical items, such as confirmation that materials have arrived, photos of fabrication at defined stages or an inspection before dispatch, and build those checkpoints into the order so they are expected rather than requested later.
What if the window is very short? Combine short packages with daily or near-daily checks for that branch, and make sure decisions can be made immediately. Consider building buffers, such as ordering critical parts earlier, so the window is wider.
Questions to ask
- For each major part of our biggest project, how many days after a problem starts can we still change the outcome, and who said so?
- How long does it currently take for a problem inside a work package to reach someone who can act?
- What does each work package cost us to manage?
- Which packages have no estimate or no objective completion check?
- Where did our sizing rule come from, and when was it last tested?
- In our last late project, was the bad news withheld, or could it not have existed earlier?
Bringing it together
How finely work is broken down decides both what control costs and how late problems can surface. Start from the recovery window, which belongs to the business, estimate the surfacing interval for the proposed plan and resize until problems can surface while there is still time to act. Accept uneven detail, use objective checkpoints and faster decisions as well as smaller packages, and write the sizing decision down so it can be revisited. Whoever sets the size of your work packages is deciding how late your business is willing to find out.
Source: KEVOS notes. Examples and figures in this article are illustrations. Rules of thumb for package size vary between industries and organisations.
