Chapter- 08

Project Planning

After the project has been defined and the project team has been appointed, you are ready to
enter the second phase in the project management life cycle: the detailed project planning phase.
Project planning is at the heart of the project life cycle, and tells everyone involved where you’re
going and how you’re going to get there. The planning phase is when the project plans are
documented, the project deliverables and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is
created. It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation
and closure phases of the project. The plans created during this phase will help you manage time,
cost, quality, changes, risk, and related issues. They will also help you control staff and external
suppliers to ensure that you deliver the project on time, within budget, and within schedule. The
project planning phase is often the most challenging phase for a project manager, as you need to
make an educated guess about the staff, resources, and equipment needed to complete your
project. You may also need to plan your communications and procurement activities, as well as
contract any third-party suppliers.

The purpose of the project planning phase is to:

Planning phase includes set of plans to be followed by team throughout the execution of the
project.

- The planning phase helps to manage time, cost, changes, risks and issues involved.

- It helps in allocation of the tasks and manages delivery of the project within the deadlines.

- It helps in defining the scope of the system and to plan and refine this definition as the project
progresses.

- It can also help in identifying the team members for the project.

• Establish business requirements

• Establish resources plans

• Obtain management approval and proceed to the next phase

The basic processes of project planning are:

The project planning process starts before work on the actual project begins and continues
throughout the life cycle of the project. Its main goal is to adequately plan the time, cost and
resources needed for the project and thus to minimize risk. The main output of the project
planning process is the project plan (or project management plan), which includes the project
schedule as well as various supporting plans.

• Scope planning – specifying the in-scope requirements for the project to facilitate creating

the work breakdown structure

• Preparation of the work breakdown structure – spelling out the breakdown of the project
into

tasks and sub-tasks

• Project schedule development – listing the entire schedule of the activities and detailing their

sequence of implementation

• Resource planning – indicating who will do what work, at which time, and if any special

skills are needed to accomplish the project tasks

• Budget planning – specifying the budgeted cost to be incurred at the completion of the project

• Procurement planning – focusing on vendors outside your company and subcontracting

• Risk management – planning for possible risks and considering optional contingency plans

and mitigation strategies

• Quality planning – assessing quality criteria to be used for the project

• Communication planning – designing the communication strategy with all project stakeholder

Project Stakeholders- Start your project planning process by identifying the stakeholders of
your project. Project stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations who may affect or be
affected by a project. They include:
Project Scope Planning

https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-9-scope-planning-project-management/

Scope planning involves identifying the goals, objectives, tasks, resources, budget, and timeline.
This chapter includes a number of high-impact tools that can be added to a project manager's PM
Toolbox to assist with the process of scope planning.

1. Project Requirements

After all the deliverables are identified, the project manager needs to document all the
requirements of the project. Requirements describe the characteristics of the final deliverable,
whether it is a product or a service. They describe the required functionality that the final
deliverable must have or specific conditions the final deliverable must meet in order to satisfy
the objectives of the project. A requirement is an objective that must be met. The project’s
requirements, defined in the scope plan, describe what a project is supposed to accomplish and
how the project is supposed to be created and implemented. Requirements answer the following
questions regarding the as-is and to-be states of the business: who, what, where, when, how
much, and how does a business process work?

2. Functional Requirements

Functional requirements describe the characteristics of the final deliverable in ordinary non-
technical language. They should be understandable to the customers, and the customers should
play a direct role in their development. Functional requirements are what you want the
deliverable to do.

Vehicle Example

If you were buying vehicles for a business, your functional requirement might be: “The vehicles
should be able to take up to a one ton load from a warehouse to a shop.”

3. Non-Functional Requirements

Non-functional requirements specify criteria that can be used to judge the final product or service
that your project delivers. They are restrictions or constraints to be placed on the deliverable and
how to build it. Their purpose is to restrict the number of solutions that will meet a set of
requirements. Using the vehicle example, the functional requirement is for a vehicle to take a
load from a warehouse to a shop. Without any constraints, the solutions being offered might
result in anything from a small to a large truck. Non-functional requirements can be split into two
types: performance and development.

non-functional development constraints:

Time: When a deliverable should be delivered

Resource: How much money is available to develop the deliverable

Quality: Any standards that are used to develop the deliverable, development methods, etc.

4. Technical Requirements

Technical requirements emerge from the functional requirements to answer the questions: how
will the problem be solved this time and will it be solved technologically and/or procedurally?
They specify how the system needs to be designed and implemented to provide required
functionality and fulfill required operational characteristics.

5. Business Requirements

Business requirements are the needs of the sponsoring organization, always from a management
perspective. Business requirements are statements of the business rationale for the project. They
are usually expressed in broad outcomes, satisfying the business needs, rather than specific
functions the system must perform. These requirements grow out of the vision for the product
that, in turn, is driven by mission (or business) goals and objectives.

6. User Requirements

User requirements describe what the users need to do with the system or product. The focus is on
the user experience with the system under all scenarios. These requirements are the input for the
next development phases: user-interface design and system test cases design.
Here are six simple steps to create a work breakdown structure.

Define the Project Scope, Goals and Objectives. Your project goals and objectives set the rules
for defining your project scope. ...

Identify Project Phases & Control Accounts. ...

List Your Project Deliverables. ...

Set WBS Levels. ...

Create Work Packages. ...

Choose Task Owners.

Project Schedule Development

https://www.simplilearn.com/project-schedules-management-practical-steps-article

A project schedule is created during the planning phase and includes the following: A project
timeline with start dates, end dates and milestones. The work necessary to complete the project
deliverables. The costs, resources and dependencies associated with each task.