Legal project management tip of the month: Identify tasks that take 8 to 80 hours to complete

According to Erik Verzuh (in The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management, p. 134):  “The secret of successful project management [is to] break the project into small, meaningful, manageable units of work.”  Individual tasks should be manageable, should not overlap, and should be easy to track. Each activity should be budgeted for a manageable chunk of time (typically 8 to 80 hours).  The interval should be long enough to give team members freedom to perform the task as they think best, but short enough to assure accountability.

The first Wednesday of every month is devoted to a very short and simple tip like this to help lawyers increase efficiency, provide greater value to their clients and/or develop new business.