Learn all you need to know about bottom-up vs top-down approaches to problem-solving. Here’s what sets each process apart and when to implement them.
Top-down vs. bottom-up project management strategies
“How long is that going to take?”
As project managers, we’re driven by dates. Customers, senior managers and stakeholders all want to know how long it will take to complete a project. And as project management professionals, we’re also measured by our ability to predict the future and be right about our predictions—despite the many unknowns. To answer the “how long” question, we have to plan the project, define tasks and gather estimates from the team.
When planning a project, the two most common questions, I ask up front are
1. What are the tasks? and
2. How long will the tasks take?
These are relatively simple questions, yet the project management field has developed many different techniques to answer these questions. For example, when you define the tasks,
Do you follow a prescribed template or formal “standard” to plan the project?
Do you look at past projects for similarities and reuse their project schedules as a starting point for project planning? or
How do you use top-down or bottom-up approaches to plan your project?
When you estimate each task’s duration and cost, do you
Ask a bunch of experts;
Use a similar project’s estimates;
Apply top-down planning; or
Spend more time building a bottom-up estimate?
When you look at the various techniques, there are a lot of ways to answer those original two simple questions I pose at the top of this article.
Here’s a look at how to use top-down and bottom-up planning to identify and estimate your project tasks.
Question 1: What are the tasks?
Using the top-down approach.
The top-down approach to defining project tasks involves starting with the project goal or final deliverable and breaking it down into smaller planning chunks. We call them work packages. Each of these work packages or “chunks” is further refined into greater detail, and then work items are assigned to team members.
The top-down approach works well when there’s a clear insight into the details of a project, and the leading project manager has a big picture of how the project contributes to the organization.
The benefit of top-down is that the major tasks are quickly identified, and the details are later refined by the project team. However, the downside is that details might be missed without a detailed review by the project team.
A top-down example.
Let’s say you’re responsible for upgrading your application’s hardware and software layers. Based on past experience, you know you’ll need to install a new server, install the upgraded operating system, and then install the latest version of the application software. These are all top-down tasks that can be assigned to a project team to implement. The risk is that the application software doesn’t work on an upgraded software layer due to a conflicting API or compiled library. The challenge is in all those pesky details that impact your project.
Using the bottom-up approach.
The bottom-up approach to answering “What are the tasks?” relies on project team members identifying the tasks and then organizing them into specific groups or work packages. If you applied a bottom-up approach to identify tasks for the software upgrade mentioned above, the entire project team would brainstorm all the tasks required to correctly upgrade the system. There’s also a greater chance that a team member will identify an operating system conflict or at least include a step to test that feature than in top-down planning. Ideas get flowing and tasks can be written down on sticky note pads or index cards. All these tasks can then be logically grouped into categories that make up each work package.
The bottom-up approach results in a more detailed schedule, but it’s also a time-consuming approach compared with the top-down task planning approach. The schedule you create is based on direct input from experts who will be implementing the project; it’s also a useful technique to build teamwork.
If your organization doesn’t have previous experience with the type of project you’re trying to plan, this approach helps identify unknown tasks.
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