making cereal for breakfast

Identify the project

This project is simply making cereal for breakfast, including sourcing the cereal and milk, a bowl, and a spoon.

Outcome

You’re no longer hungry, and you’re ready to start the day.

Delineate the tasks

If you were starting this project from scratch, you would have a much better picture of the actual timeline of events that need to occur for you to have breakfast. The tasks would be as follows:

  • Go to the supermarket
  • Buy a bowl
  • Buy a spoon
  • Buy a bottle of milk
  • Buy a box of cereal
  • Return home
  • Place the bowl on the counter
  • Pour the cereal into the bowl
  • Pour the milk into the bowl
  • Place the spoon in the bowl, and eat

The tasks in a project often have strong dependencies. For something simple like making cereal, it is easy to spot them. You can’t pour milk into the bowl if you have not purchased it from the store. For larger projects, these can often be harder to spot, which is why you have to spend the time mapping out each part of the process and building a timeline. It doesn’t matter what you are planning; using these fundamentals, you’ll find that every project has a similar process to follow.

Identify the players

For eating breakfast, it is probably just yourself, unless you have a son or a daughter who helps out in the morning. Risks include not having one of the supplies, or realizing that the milk has expired.

Timeline

For breakfast, the timeline is immediate.

Review

You may decide to use less honey tomorrow or add something new like fruit to your cereal for added vitamins (and taste

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