Project Management - POAM development

1 - Read the SOW/PWS looking for tasks that will impact your team
2 - Highlight task statements in the SOW that your team will need to support
3 - Turn to the schedule of deliverables or deliverables table in the SOW and highlight the deliverables that your team will deliver or support.
4 - Begin building a high order task outline in your project plan / POA&M that maps directly to the task statements and outline format of your PWS. This facilitates tracability between the PWS and the project plan. If paragraph numbers are used then enter them into the project plan as well.
5 - Under the appropriate task statement enter the deliverable, and it's due date from the SOW, that the statement leads to.
6 - Keep the project plan hierarchy as shallow as possible. Often the SOW/PWS will be at least two levels deep. When those tasks statements are put into the plan you should avoid creating additional hierarchical levels. At most, try to add just one more level where you will enter line item tasks, but avoid grouping these task into sub-task "areas". The advantage here is that given "subtask" groups, your Program Management Office will create an exhorbitant number of work packages for you to report against. By keeping everything at one level you increase the perception that it's all on large piece of work that should received just one work package number (within sensible limits).
7 - Try to script the tasks that lead to a deliverable as broadly as possible. Some programs will allow this and it decreases the amount of management overhead spent with replaning should change happen. Other programs insist on highly detailed plans, which are often at risk in environments where direction changes are prone to occur.

Project Management - explaining cost variances
when your burning underbudget, and your accompliishing work on time, you'll show a positive cost variance. This indicates you planned for too many resources, and don't really need them all to accomplish the work. A more realistic explanation, in the case of consulting or think piece type work, is that you are accomplishing the same "dead tree" deliverable, but with fewer brains applied. The result is a product built and delivered on time, but ultimately of lower quality given the reduced amount of expertise brought to bear.