Project planning

Project planning is part of project management, which relates to the use of schedules such as
Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress within the project environment.

Initially, the project scope is defined and the appropriate methods for completing the project
are determined. Following this step, the durations for the various tasks necessary to complete
the work are listed and grouped into a work breakdown structure. Project planning is often
used to organize different areas of a project, including project plans, work loads and the
management of teams and individuals. The logical dependencies between tasks are defined
using an activity network diagram that enables identification of the critical path. Project
planning is inherently uncertain as it must be done before the project is actually started.
Therefore the duration of the tasks is often estimated through a weighted average of
optimistic, normal, and pessimistic cases. The critical chain method adds "buffers" in the
planning to anticipate potential delays in project execution. Float or slack time in the
schedule can be calculated using project management software. Then the necessary resources
can be estimated and costs for each activity can be allocated to each resource, giving the total
project cost. At this stage, the project schedule may be optimized to achieve the appropriate
balance between resource usage and project duration to comply with the project objectives.
Once established and agreed, the project schedule becomes what is known as the baseline
schedule. Progress will be measured against the baseline schedule throughout the life of the
project. Analyzing progress compared to the baseline schedule is known as earned value
management.

The inputs of the project planning phase 2 include the project charter and the concept
proposal. The outputs of the project planning phase include the project requirements, the
project schedule, and the project management plan.

The Project Planning can be done manually. However, when managing several projects, it is
usually easier and faster to use project management software.

Schedule (project management)

In project management, a schedule is a listing of a project's milestones, activities, and
deliverables, usually with intended start and finish dates. Those items are often estimated by
other information included in the project schedule of resource allocation, budget, task
duration, and linkages of dependencies and scheduled events. A schedule is commonly used
in the project planning and project portfolio management parts of project management.
Elements on a schedule may be closely related to the work breakdown structure (WBS)
terminal elements, the Statement of work, or a Contract Data Requirements List.

Contents

 1 Overview
 2 Methods
Overview

In many industries, such as engineering and construction, the development and maintenance
of the project schedule is the responsibility of a full-time scheduler or team of schedulers,
depending on the size of the project. Though the techniques of scheduling are well developed,
they are inconsistently applied throughout industry. Standardization and promotion of
scheduling best practices are being pursued by the Association for the Advancement of Cost
Engineering (AACE), the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the US Government for
acquisition and accounting purposes.

It should be noted that project management is not limited to industry; the average person can
use it to organize their own life. Some examples are:

 Homeowner renovation project

 Keeping track of all the family activities
 Coaching a team
 Planning a vacation
 Planning a wedding

Some project management software programs provide templates, lists, and example schedules
to help their users with creating their schedule.

Methods

Before a project schedule can be created, the schedule maker should have a work breakdown
structure (WBS), an effort estimate for each task, and a resource list with availability for each
resource. If these components for the schedule are not available, they can be created with a
consensus-driven estimation method like Wideband Delphi. The reason for this is that a
schedule itself is an estimate: each date in the schedule is estimated, and if those dates do not
have the buy-in of the people who are going to do the work, the schedule will be inaccurate.

In order for a project schedule to be healthy, the following criteria must be met:

 The schedule must be constantly (weekly works best) updated.

 The EAC (Estimation at Completion) value must be equal to the baseline value.
 The remaining effort must be appropriately distributed among team members (taking
vacations into consideration).

The schedule structure may closely follow and include citations to the index of work
breakdown structure or deliverables, using decomposition or templates to describe the
activities needed to produce the deliverables defined in the WBS.

A schedule may be assessed for the quality of the schedule development and the quality of
the schedule management.
Project Management Plan Document
Project Management Plan

A Project Management Plan explains how to manage the project. Depending on the size of
the project, the Project Management Plan can serve as the main planning document for the
project (smaller projects), or it can serve as a parent plan with a series of subordinate plans
(larger projects). The following outline provides a good base for a Project Management Plan.

1.     Project Description

Explain what the project is, and how it will be accomplished.  Explain the ultimate intended
outcome of the project.  This should serve as a brief introduction.  Provide some background
about the history of how the project got to this point.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or
Preliminary Project Scope Statement if available.

2.     Project Objectives

Provide clear, actionable and measurable objectives of the project.  The objectives should be
clear enough so that the project can be measured against the objectives once completed.  The
ultimate success of a project is whether the project achieved its stated objectives.  Take time
to clearly document the objectives here.

An example of an objective is:

 The system/product/service will cut response times in half, thus allowing the organization to
process twice as many tickets.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or
Preliminary Project Scope Statement if available.

3.     Project Management Plan Purpose

State the purpose of this Plan.  The purpose of the plan should be to describe how the project
is going to be managed.  Specifically, this Plan should provide guidance to the project team
on how to execute the project against the 9 knowledge areas identified within the Project
Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).   This Plan should also identify the key project
milestones and document project team roles and responsibilities, and the governance structure
of the project (who is what decisions).

4.     Project Deliverables

Identify the products and services that the project will deliver.  The intent of this section is to
list the product or system deliverables (e.g., an online shopping site), and not the project
management deliverables (e.g., Requirements Management Plan)
An example of a product deliverable is:

 An online store with a shopping cart and credit card purchasing capability.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or
Preliminary Project Scope Statement if available.

5.     Project Milestones

Identify the project milestones.

Milestone Date Milestone Name Milestone   Description

[Jan 1] System   Requirements System   requirements version 1.0 is approved and

Complete baseline so that the project can   begin design and
development.

[June 1] Development   Complete Software   development is complete and ready for

integration testing

[Dec 1] Deployed   to Production System   passes integration and end-user acceptance

testing and is deployed to   production

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or
Preliminary Project Scope Statement if available.

6.     Project Roles and Responsibilities

Identify the key project stakeholders here and their responsibilities on the project.

Role Responsibilities

Project Sponsor Sponsor   of the project.  Provides the budget and   funding for the project.
Sets the strategic   goals and objectives.

Project Manager Responsible for the   overall success of the project.  Delivers   the product
with an acceptable level of quality, on budget and on time.  Responsible
for the project team, the project   schedule and maintaining the project
scope.  Responsible for providing status report to the   project sponsor
periodically and escalating issues to the project sponsor and   program
manager as needed.

Project Risk Lead …

Project Schedule Lead …

Project Testing Lead …

Project Quality Lead …

…

7.     Project Scope Management

Describe the process for managing requirements.  Specifically, describe how requirements
are baseline and maintained.  Describe how decisions are made to accept modifications to the
project scope.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Scope Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document.  For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main
documentation for how requirements are managed and project scope is maintained.

8.     Project Time Management

Explain how the project schedule is developed and managed.  Identify the procedures for
monitoring progress against the schedule baseline and making changes to it.  For example, if
there are weekly meetings to monitor progress against the project schedule, provide that
information here.  Identify who must attend and what decisions can be made in the meeting.
Explain the project schedule format.  Identify specific tools used to develop and maintain the
project schedule.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Time Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document.  For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main
documentation for how the schedule is managed.

9.     Project Cost Management

Explain how the project cost is developed and managed.  Identify the procedures for
monitoring project cost.  Identify who has the authority to make spending decisions.  Identify
who has authority to change funding for the project.  Define the procedures for requesting
additional funding.   Explain specific thresholds for cost monitoring and control.  For
example, if the project begins to incur cost overruns, at what thresholds must specific actions
take place?  For example, if the cost variance exceeds 10%, then the project must undergo a
Program review with the project sponsor and the project manager to determine what actions
must take place to bring the project back into alignment.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Cost Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document.  For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main
documentation for how project cost is monitored and project budget (funding) is allocated
or modified.

10. Project Quality Management

Explain how quality will be measured on the project in order to ensure that the project
deliverables meet a minimum level of quality.  Explain the specific measures that will be
used and why the measures were selected.  The collected measures should provide
information on whether the project is meeting its stated objectives.  The measures should
focus on whether the project is delivering the defined requirements at an acceptable level of
quality to the customer.  For example, if the project is intended to improve efficiency of order
fulfilment by 50%, then the project should track the number of orders filled.  Also collect
baseline measures at the start of the project for all quality measures that will be tracked.
Additionally, if the project wants to improve the online user shopping experience, then the
online shoppers should be polled before and after the changes to see if the feedback has
improved.  (Tip:  When conducting a survey of customers, you can quantify the feedback by
using a Likert-scale questionnaire).

Define the quality baseline measures here:

Quality Quality Measure Goal Baseline

Measure

Web Site At   least 6 second Average Response time   is 13.5 seconds at peak load
Response average response time
Time at peak load

Errors Less than 1% response   3 percent page errors due to load issues
page errors

Customer Customer   issues Number of customer issues   due to load issues is high.
resolution resolved 50% faster Expect that   as the load errors decrease, customer issues
will decrease – thus allowing customer   service to respond
to issues faster

Deploy Deployment without   N/A

Product production downtime

Note: For larger projects, the Project Quality Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document.  For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main
documentation for how project quality is measured.

11. Project Human Resource Management

Explain how resources will be applied to the project.  Identify resources here for small
projects.  For larger projects, explain the process for ensuring that the project maintains 100%
resource allocation, meaning that there are no activities that should be started but are waiting
to be resourced.  In a matrixes project, where the resources are provided by authority from
external organizations or divisions, provide information on who provides the authority.
Provide information on where the priority of the project falls with respect to other
responsibilities of the project team members.  For example, resources allocated to a project
might have other operational responsibilities that cannot be put on hold.   In this situation, the
project needs to be able to have a strategy for how to maintain the momentum of the project if
key resources have to move off the project for a period of time.  In such a scenario, a possible
strategy might be to ensure that every activity has a backup resource.

Include a resource calendar, if possible, to show the key roles and when they will be needed.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Human Resource Management section could be a
separate subsidiary Plan document.   For smaller projects, this section could serve as the
main documentation for how project resources are managed.

12. Project Risk Management

Identify the process by which risks will be managed.  A detailed and well-defined risk
management process is critical to project success – specifically on larger projects.  Document
the procedures for identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, assigning and mitigating a risk.
Identify the procedures for implementing a contingency plan should a risk be realized and
become an issue.  Identify the tools used to maintain the Risk Ledger.  Define key roles and
responsibilities for risk management activities.  Define the escalation procedures for risks.
Not all risks are managed at the same level.  Think about how a risk would escalate within
the project and even beyond the project to a higher level of authority.  What types of risks
would go above the project to the program or organization level?  And who would be
responsible for managing the risk?  Document how to write risks. For examples on how to
write a risk statement, visit http://www.pmdocuments.com/category/risk-management/

13. Project Communications Management

Communications management is another key component to project success.  Define the lines
of communication and the methods of communication to be used.  For example, if an issue is
identified (meaning that something is currently having a negative impact on the project),
define how the risk should be communicated, and to whom.  Communications planning
requires some foresight and careful planning.  Imagine if everyone was responsible to
communicate everything.  It would make for a challenging web of communication patterns.
Often, the results of an incomplete communications strategy manifest itself as excessive
meetings attended by the same people with repeated topics.  To avoid this, the ultimate goal
of communications management is to ensure that stakeholders receive the information they
need to know at the appropriate time and at the appropriate level of detail.

Identify roles and responsibilities with respect to communications activities.  Identify what
they each role is responsible for communicating, how often they need to communicate, what
communication tool and medium to use and any specific triggers for communication.  Also
identify who should receive communications and how often.  For example, the project
sponsor would probably like to receive periodic status updates on the project.  This
information should be included here.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Communications Management section could be a
separate subsidiary Plan document.   For smaller projects, this section could serve as the
main documentation for how project communications is managed.
14. Project Procurement Management

Explain the procurement strategy here.  Explain the procedures for making purchases and
soliciting requests for quotes (RFQ) from service providers.  Explain how the RFQ
respondents will be evaluated against the Statement of Work (SOW).

Explain the strategy for purchases, specifically on longer term projects.  For example, if a
project takes three years to launch the final product, then ensure that the final production
hardware purchase is made in year three and not year one.  This will ensure that the latest
technology is obtained.  A good example would be servers.  Purchasing production servers
for a project that will launch in three years would be an inefficient use of the first year funds
and would not take advantage of year three technology.

Identify who has purchasing authority.  If there are different levels of purchasing authority,
identify it here.  For example, the network administrator might have a budget and purchase
authority limit that is different from the program manager.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Procurement Management section could be a
separate subsidiary Plan document.   For smaller projects, this section could serve as the
main documentation for how project procurement is managed.

[Download the Project Management Plan template]

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