Applying the Fundamental Axioms to Reduce Uncertainty walked through the steps of using divide and conquer to reduce a large complex project into smaller inter-related tasks. Now that we have our smaller list of tasks, one of the first thing you will want to do is look at the critical path, that is, the longest set of tasks in your plan that all depend on each other and define the longest path from start to finish in your project.

The Fundamental Axioms of Project Planning introduced the two fundamental axioms: The Axioms of Project Management: Starting is definite, finishing less so. Divide and conquer to reduce uncertainty. So now let’s apply that to an ambiguous task and see how we can break it down into more manageable chunks. Let’s start with the classic example of building a house: Now that’s pretty ambiguous, we have really no idea how long that will take, maybe anything from 3 months to a couple of years.

Over the years I have run many projects, everything from small software projects of just a couple people, to new product development projects in the material testing space, include both hardware and software, to large projects involving work that effects the daily routines of thousands of software engineers. In that time I’ve honed down how I think about project management into just two axioms, which, if you know the field of project management is quite short.