As project managers determine the requirements
needed to get a project from inception to completion, what may seem simple enough at first can
quickly grow into a tangled morass of requirements
and their myriad dependencies. Visual models can
streamline those complicated details, turning them
into a discernible, easy-to-follow story.
Visual models—whether tables, flowcharts,
maps, matrices, tree diagrams or others—turn
overwhelming amounts of intricate text into read-
ily analyzable images. They thus shorten projects’
development phases and increase productivity, says
Shilpa Gnaneshwar, PMP, project manager at GE
Aviation, a PMI Global Executive Council member,
Bengaluru, India. When presented in text format,
relationships among requirements can remain stub-
bornly opaque; modeling makes them apparent. “If
done correctly,” Ms. Gnaneshwar says, “modeling
will remove redundancy and ambiguity in data.”
What’s at stake is much more than a simplified
project management process, however. A model
that clearly illuminates a project’s requirements has
a direct impact on its chances of success. Almost 40
percent of unsuccessful projects fail primarily due
It’s easy to get
bogged down
in the details.
“If done correctly, modeling
will remove redundancy
and ambiguity in data.”
—Shilpa Gnaneshwar, PMP, GE Aviation, Bengaluru, India
