A step and the relevant tasks are likely to be atomic-granular and clearly understood if every person who is responsible for carrying out the tasks is able to explain in his or her own words in detail what he or she needs to do in order to complete the step and the tasks.

Project steps and tasks sequential identification and the relevant communication processes are very time and labor consuming. However, investing this time into planning is more than justified because due to better understanding of what needs to be built, considerably more time is saved during the consequent project development stages.

The person or persons who identify the steps and tasks should be proficient at users needs and wants identification and documentation, all aspects of a relational database application building, the technologies that are being used, and communication. As needed, the person or persons who identify the steps can consult with the specific software specialists or programmers regarding the details that are related to usage of the individual software packages or programming languages. It is highly unlikely that only one person consulted with can provide all the necessary information, and can do so sufficiently accurately. So, the less familiar is the person who identifies the project development steps with the software in question, the more specialists should he or she consult with. Consenting views should always be taken into consideration and evaluated.

This process is more art than science, and some people are much better at carrying it out than others. The person who identifies the steps and tasks must be very willing and able to learn a lot about the customers needs and wants and the subject matters that the project deals with. Further, that person must be very detail oriented, a relentless perfectionist, able to communicate with all levels of customer company management and employees, and at least somewhat intrusive to be able to gather all the needed information, and to get sufficiently good quality results.

Failure to identify all the steps and tasks sequentially renders this type of project planning less than effective.

What makes this and other project planning steps outlined here even more complex is that the customer must carry the costs of these steps. Ultimately, all this work is very much in the customer's best interest, because better plans make better applications, and help to save substantial amounts of the development and testing time. So, the need for these planning steps must be explained to the customer. If the customer does not agree to carrying the costs of these project planning steps, then the entire project will not be undertaken, unless the customer agrees to paying an hourly rate for the project development tasks, and so that no specific tasks and relevant deadlines are identified in advance.