I'm a new PM and am currently learning from more senior PMs how to create project plans. The question I have are there set tasks that every project plan should include? One thing I notice in whenever I create a plan, they are always ripped apart for not having this or that, but I did not know there were tasks that all plans should have? Could someone please provide some insight into this? Saving Changes...
I'm sorry, I did not explain, I meant in actually preping the project in MS Project. Saving Changes...
George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Susan, there are several good templates you can use – go to advanced search and display all in “project plans” category. Starting with one of those you should be able to adjust it to include your activities. Make sure that at least the following are done before you show your plan to others:
- all tasks and milestones (tasks of 0 duration), other than Project Start and Project Complete, have at least a predecessor and a successor – in other words, all tasks are on a path from start to end;
- only Start and milestones representing external events have a fixed date, all others are free to float as needed – to enable critical path calculation and show real impact of delays;
- the dependency links are only established between regular tasks, not roll-ups – the first task in a group depends on the last tasks within the previous group (logical, not based on line numbers), so the group (roll-up) start and duration is freely defined based on subtasks not artificial links;
- use Finish-to-Start dependencies to indicate tasks in sequence, Start-to-Start to indicate parallel activities and Finish-to-Finish to indicate conditionality.
- assign resources to tasks and enable resource levelling to not end up with resources used 500% of their time;
Hope it helps,
George Jucan
Saving Changes...
Ramakrishna CH PMPDelivery Manager| Value MomentumHackensack, Nj, United States
Pretty complete Answer from George regd. Project Shcdule Preparation. To reiterate any Project Schedule, at the min. should have built with a
A) starting task and and project end task. All other tasks fall with in this boundary (thru linking)
B) There are at min. Fixed dates ( mostly for recurring taks and either project end Or project start but not both) and as many milestones as possible and all the tasks should have links on both the ends (except as stated by george and also not recommended on summary tasks)
C) And task category, namely Fixed Duration / Fixed Work etc. is pretty well decided before the preparation of the schedule.
But this is part of the story, namely Schedule Preparation. A Project Plan should encompass many more artifacts beyond just the schedule, like Communication Plan, Risk Management Plan, Scope Management plan, Resource management Plan etc..Please refer to PMBOK for complete details, but in nutshell a Project Plan is far beyond just the schedule. It's a near complete reference for PM in handling the project, all thru the Project life cycle.
Hope this helps.. Saving Changes...
Dirk KittredgeProject Manager| Marex GroupCentennial, Co, United States
From my perspective, EVERY project requires the goals and objectives be written so that everyone is clear. The objectives must be mutually exclusive and strive to be a balance between being concise and compreshensive. If there are more than five or six objectives, then the project should be divided or objectives reviewed for necessity. Finally the scope statements with inclusions and exclusions must be written, each being tied to the stated objectives. Only after this is done can one put together a comprehensive and accurate MS Project plan. My team of project managers has put together a list of grouped categories that we use for consistency. They include Discovery, ProjMgt, Custom Coding, Integration, Workflow, Installation, Testing, Training & Other. --Hope this helps -DK Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Do you mean a project schedule or a project plan? They are very different. A project plan is a document that details how you manage the project and includes sub plans such as the scope managment plan, the communication plan, the risk management plan, resource management plan and possibly others depending on the project. The project plan also contains the project objectives and goals and a WBS for the project. The WBS is then used to develop the Statement of Work and your project schedule (done in MS Project). The WBS is crucial to creating an accurate project schedule because your WBS describes 100% of the work required to complete the project. So an accurate and complete WBS ensures that you have everything in your project schedule. Saving Changes...
Susan - the anonymous post about the difference of WBS and a project plan struck a cord. It sounds, to me too, that you're trying to document a work breakdown structure. The Project plan will have many components - the WBS is but one.
However - if you're concern is one of missing items in the WBS, then take heart. Unless you have become a Subject Matter Expert in every aspect of the work your entire team is doing - it is unlikely(tho no impossible) that you will know every single item in the WBS, every item that needs to be performed to create a deliverable. Thus - meetings with each area responsible for each deliverable. They need to collaborate on what needs to be tracked and measured in the time line for delivery. Until you have met with each deliverable owner - and have ALL of the tasks - you're right - you've missed some stuff....
As some of the others have posted here - there are templates for WBS's and MS Projects. They may include the missing scope you're worried about - but then they may not. Every project is both unique and the same - they all have planning, design, scheduling, costing, development, testing, delivery/implementation, and closeout. So templates that include that kind of stuff would be helpful... but don't rely on that alone - set up a series of planning meetings with the technical gurus - get the straight poop from the team... add it to your MS Project WBS... and have fun. Saving Changes...
PMI Team Member
