Are you referring to a project management plan (a.k.a. integrated project plan) or the schedule?
The answer depends on many factors including:
- Governance requirements or standards
- Project complexity
- Approach taken to deliver the project - predictive or adaptive
- Who is performing the workstreams - if some are fully outsourced, less detail is required than for ones being performed by your team
As Kiron mentioned, it depends on the technical area of the project, the complexity, organization standards, and project approach. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Just to take the comment of Kiron I will assume that when you talk about a project plan you are talking about a document of something like that which is composed for all the individual plans which are related to the knowledge areas you need to put in place for your project (scope, risk, schedule, procurement, etc, etc). In our case, no matter the method/approach we will use to run the project, it takes 4 weeks or less from idea creation and conception to finalize the plan after the project has been approved and start working. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Vivian,
agree with Sergio that an initial plan should be done within 4 weeks from start (if the project takes longer than that!). It should be clear though, that it is a living document which is extended, detailed and corrected regularly - what PMI called progressive elaboration. And yes, it depends on the circumstances, if you have a risk of human lifes you will probably take longer, if you are experimenting with an app, it will take shorter.
There is a case study of building a mausoleum in Turkey on a greenfield hill, including road access and funeral. They had a only few days to finally bury the person and took 50% of that time planning. Or another case, there is a competition to build a house from scratch within 1 day. Planning takes weeks.
Thomas
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1 reply by Roland Vander Straeten
Jan 05, 2022 8:20 PM
Roland Vander Straeten
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out of interest: did the funeral go according to plan?
Agree with the replies above!
I guess, if influencing stakeholders from the workstream find harmony with the requirements it would be easier and faster.
Secondly, the effectiveness of the stakeholder's engagement channels is also an important determinant of the time it may take. Saving Changes...
agree with Sergio that an initial plan should be done within 4 weeks from start (if the project takes longer than that!). It should be clear though, that it is a living document which is extended, detailed and corrected regularly - what PMI called progressive elaboration. And yes, it depends on the circumstances, if you have a risk of human lifes you will probably take longer, if you are experimenting with an app, it will take shorter.
There is a case study of building a mausoleum in Turkey on a greenfield hill, including road access and funeral. They had a only few days to finally bury the person and took 50% of that time planning. Or another case, there is a competition to build a house from scratch within 1 day. Planning takes weeks.
Thomas
out of interest: did the funeral go according to plan?
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1 reply by Thomas Walenta
Jan 06, 2022 1:21 AM
Thomas Walenta
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Yes.
Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Jan 05, 2022 8:20 PM
Replying to Roland Vander Straeten
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out of interest: did the funeral go according to plan?
Yes. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Vivian
Know this is an old question but maybe it will be better to frame the question within the context of total project time i.e. how much time should a PM activity be of total project time. Since you are busy planning it is somewhat a chicken/egg situation but a good starting point would be to determine project complexity which should give you a ballpark total project duration. Since a rule of thumb is that PM activities are generally 10% of total project time you can then safely estimate the time to complete a specific PM activity from that. Saving Changes...
It will be incomplete and inaccurate, but every project schedule is incomplete and inaccurate until the project is over (and sometimes even then). They just, hopefully, get more complete and accurate as the project progresses.
I'm joking, but I'm serious. It doesn't take long, really, to put together a schedule that identifies milestones and deliverables, with rough estimates for how long you think they should take. With the right people in the room, it might only take you a couple of hours. Maybe less. Then comes the hard part.
How long does it take to understand your current state? ...your desired state? ...to get people to agree on the desired state and how to achieve it? ...to identify the tasks needed to create the deliverables and how long they will take? ...to fix bugs found during testing? (that's a challenge all by itself). Never mind external factors that may need to be taken into account.
The answer is uncertain, which is exactly what we deal with, every day - uncertainty. Eliminating uncertainty takes time, and it's rarely the same amount of time on any given project. I could go on with ways to reduce uncertainty and, more importantly, manage expectations and the gotchas involved with giving estimates for dates, but I don't want to put you to sleep. The only simple answer to eliminating uncertainty in a project is to cancel the project. Saving Changes...
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