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Poor planning can doom your project before work even begins. Changing
expectations, shrinking budgets, and frustrating miscommunications can derail
even the simplest project—and make life stressful for everyone involved.
A thorough project plan can prevent scope creep, overblown budgets, and missed
goals. But actually sitting down and planning a project can be an
overwhelming task. How do you accurately predict how long tasks will take? How
do you translate stakeholder expectations into concrete deliverables? What if
something goes wrong?
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Risk Management Plan & Risk Log: Even if you budget every penny and
map out each milestone, no project, no matter how small, is free from risk.
Create a plan for identifying and mitigating risk from the very beginning. Find
a step-by-step guide to assessing and managing risk here.
Budget Details: Include projected overtime hours, training courses, consulting
fees, equipment and supplies, software purchases, travel expenses, etc. Some
of these figures can be tricky to nail down ahead of time, but try to be as
precise as possible and remind everyone that your budget is an estimate.
Communications Plan & Reporting Schedule: Include details on who you’ll
be communicating with, what you’ll share, how often, and in what form.
Procurement Plan: If you need to buy something as part of the project
(software, materials, etc.) this is where you explain how you’ll research and
choose a vendor and manage the contract.
Information Management Plan: Detail how you’ll store and share project
information, control documentation, and keep your project data safe.
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Quality Management Plan: Explain how you’ll manage quality on the project,
what your quality standards are, and how you plan to maintain these standards,
as well as your proposed schedule for quality audits or checkpoints.
This can seem like a lot of information to cover, but remember that this is just a
project management plan example. A good project plan doesn’t necessarily include
everything on this list.
As Harrin notes, “A longer document does not make you look more clever or
organised. It just raises the likelihood that no one will read it except you.” A simple
project plan that’s easy to follow is best.
Set a Timer
Max Wideman, famed project manager and co-author of the original PMBOK,
advocates a streamlined method for project planning. His SCOPE-PAK
Approach will help you knock out a project plan in 60 minutes or less (Wideman
encourages you to actually set a timer). Assemble key stakeholders and team
members to determine what you want to accomplish and how you’ll go about it.
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Don’t Overplan
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For Ricardo Vargas, an internationally renown project management specialist, a
sense of urgency is the most important ingredient of a successful project. Project
managers need to be able to respond to customer and stakeholder requests
quickly, and that means executing, not sitting around a conference table hashing
out timelines and budgets.
Your project isn’t doing anyone any good on paper, so streamline the planning
process as much as possible. Only include what’s essential in your project plan,
and then just get going!
Vargas uses a consolidated version of the planning guide outlined in the PMBoK,
and you can learn more about the specifics of each aspect of his planning
process on his blog.
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Keep It Simple
Project plans can get unwieldy fast, especially once stakeholders and project
sponsors start weighing in. To ensure you’re not over-complicating things, project
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management blogger Kiron Bondale suggests starting with the 5 Ws to provide
context and perspective for the details of your project plan.
Why: What are the fundamental business benefits of undertaking this project?
What: What is included in the project scope?
Who: What are the critical roles required to deliver the What?
When: When must the What be delivered, in order to achieve the Why?
Where: Where is the best place for the work to be performed? Where will the
What be used by customers and end users?
Only after you’ve stopped to answer these questions should you move on to the
“How” of the project.
As you can see, even among project management experts there are a few different
approaches to creating a project plan. There’s no one right way, but one best
practice experienced PMs agree on: take the time to define and agree on the main
objectives with the project’s stakeholders before you start executing.
Another best practice to follow: hold a project kickoff meeting. Take the
opportunity to align your team around project goals, clarify roles and
responsibilities, establish standards for success, and choose your project
management methodology and tools. Get our tips for hosting the perfect project
kickoff that will set the right tone for your team.
Finally: document as much as possible. Recording your project’s progress will help
you analyze your performance and make more informed decisions.