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Viewing Posts by Marian Haus
Project Management Plan: The Basics
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| In a previous post, 7 Essential Project Planning Documents, I referred to the "Project Management Plan" as one of the key planning documents that fosters project success. Sometimes people confuse the project management plan with the schedule or the scope plan. But it's more than that. A project management plan is the planning document, capturing the entire project end-to-end, covering all project phases, from initiation through planning, execution and closure. A comprehensive plan covers at least the followings areas and components: (Note: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide -- Fourth Edition) covers these in Chapter 3. Instead of putting the elements one by one, I grouped them by purpose/meaning.)
When writing a project management plan, the approach depends again on the project's size and context. I personally use the following approaches:
What approach do you use when crafting a project management plan? What elements do you use? |
7 Essential Project Planning Documents
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| Solid project planning is a prerequisite for project success. Poor planning, meanwhile, can lead to missed deadlines, budget overruns, poor quality deliverables, frustrated project teams and even project failure. In my previous post, I offered five steps to assist in planning the project-planning phase. One of those steps involved preparing planning documents. To foster a successful planning phase, here are seven planning documents I believe most project managers will find indispensable. This list certainly might vary depending on the project setup, project size, complexity and organizational planning guidelines. 1. Project management plan -- This is used as a reference index, encompassing all planning and project documents. 2. High-level project schedule plan -- This document captures high-level project phases and key milestones. It is the document most project stakeholders will see or want to see. 3. Project team planning -- This document provides a "who-is-doing-what" view of the project. This document fosters efficient project execution and effective project communication. 4. Scope plan -- The scope plan documents the project requirements, the agreed scope and the Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) summary. 5. Detailed project work plan -- This keeps track of the activities, work packages, resources, durations, costs, milestones, project's critical path, etc. It will be an essential document and work guideline for your core project team. 6. Quality assurance planning -- This document tracks the quality standards your project deliverables will have to align to. These may typically include product testing approach and tools, quality policies, quality checklists, deviations definitions, quality metrics, product defect severity grades, acceptance criteria, cost of poor quality, etc. 7. Risk planning -- This document contains the project risks and the related mitigation plans; as well as the project opportunities and the related exploiting plans. The importance of this document is one of the most underestimated in project planning. Be prepared to have a contingency plan in case something goes wrong or to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. Start with this checklist when you sit down to plan for your next project-planning phase. Depending on your project's needs, fine tune the checklist and tailor it by adding and removing planning assets, determining the planning time frame, the underlying details and rigor. Revisit this planning exercise, learn from it and enhance it, to continuously improve your project planning skills. What project planning documents do you find indispensable? See other posts from Marian. |
5 Steps to Plan the Project Planning
Categories:
Project Planning
Categories: Project Planning
| There is a saying: "Every minute you spend planning will save you 10 minutes in execution." As a project manager, I've learned that along with communication and execution, planning is one of the three key ingredients for project success. Planning is not just a one-off activity completed in the early stages of a project. Planning is a process (or rather a group of processes), conducted throughout the project. And like every process, planning itself requires a plan and a setup, which defines the planning scope, details and deliverables. So how do we plan the planning? Here is my five-step approach: 1. Decide on the project management methodology, framework or practice you will use on the project. Depending on the approach, you might require different planning styles, deliverables, details or rigor. You might have to go ahead with a detailed planning process if you will use a waterfall approach. Conversely, you might have to keep the planning thin if you will use an agile approach, such as scrum. Or, your planning might be predefined and framed if you have to use your organization's proprietary methodology. 2. Plan project time for planning. In average, at least 10 percent of management time should be allocated to project planning. 3. Write down a checklist of all project documents you plan or need to deliver. The list will mostly depend on your project's complexity, organization and methodology. (More on this in my next post.) 4. Start planning early and continue planning throughout the project. Some of the planning documents, such as the high-level schedule or scoping documents, might have to be kept frozen upon sign-off. Other documents, such as the risk management planning or rollout planning, will typically require updating as the project progresses. 5. Continuously improve your planning. Improve planning by communicating the planning outcome with your project team and by collecting their feedback regarding your planning performance. You can use this feedback for continuous planning improvement. As the project progresses, keep a log of your planning issues to track gaps you encounter along the way. This is the "planning lessons-learned" document that you can also use for continuous improvement. What do you think? How do you plan for project planning? See more on project planning. |