The secret of good Project Management - well, one of them, anyway! - is to cut everything into the smallest bits possible.

Some of your main tasks will be made up of smaller ones. Lets take this one:

• Design maintenance and testing system for elephant

Hmmm .... a project in itself, isn't it?

So apply what you've learned already to this small part of your project.

Maintenance. Well, included in maintenance is:

• Regular meals

  • Diet

• Regular mucking out (ugh!)

• Regular water bathing

• Visits from the vet

• Exercise

Guess what? You have to recruit someone to look after the elephant. That's another sub task of "Design maintenance and testing system for elephant".

This member of staff - elephant keeper - will also become the "testing" part of the maintenance and testing system, together with your specialist vet.

Do we add vets' fees and elephant keeper salary into the project budget? No. These are ongoing maintenance costs not confined to the end of the project. Recruitment and possible training costs have to be taken out of the budget because they are one off costs, not ongoing. To save budget on training we should recruit experienced staff. To save costs on salary, we should recruit inexperienced, but willing staff. Your call. What usually happens here is a balance between the two.

And you can always offset the ongoing costs by selling surplus elephant by-products.... another task to add to our list :

• Find outlets for elephant manure

Test and adjust all the way through your design process. That saves time in the long run and usually money too.

Your turn to break the rest of the tasks into sub-tasks as appropriate.