Intermediate Planning Steps: The Rodney Dangerfield of Project Management (Part 1)

• Stakeholders missed in planning.        
• Tasks where a person or group responsible has stopped work for no apparent reason, and you do not hear about it until it's too late.        
• Inadequate hand-off of a task from one individual to another or from one team to another.        
• Inadequate communication between functional groups in a project.

It can happen to any of us, but it will happen to you more than others if you do not plan deliberately. It’s a common mistake to go from general scoping to specific project resourcing and scheduling too quickly, leaving yourself open to problems like these. Intermediate planning steps just don't get any respect!

Who's Responsible?
Formalize your approach to show departmental interdependencies and expectations prior to creating a detailed list of resources. The responsibility matrix is a technique that can help you do this. It is designed to:

• Ensure all stakeholders are involved as soon as necessary.        
• Improve communication.       &…