What is project planning?
After we have the approval from project sponsor, we may start our project planning stage. In my opinion, it is actually the most critical phase to a project’s success.
At the project planning stage, we will start from forming the project team and define the ground rules for the team to follow, including the way to communicate, the timeline and milestones, the roles and responsibilities, the tools to be used, and the task breakdown.
We are targeting to get the consensus of the project team and project stakeholders on our detail plan. Therefore, we need to think about how our suggested plan would achieve win-win outcomes to our team and stakeholders.
Project kick-off for the project team
You may find there are lots of articles saying you shall create the detail project plan at the project planning stage. I am not saying it is wrong, instead I would like to point out the practical steps we may take in formulating the project plan.
Usually, we start the project planning phase from the project kick-off meeting for the project team. In my experience, I would take the opportunity to recap the information at PID / proposal that we created at the project initiation phase. The PID was usually agreed and approved by senior management or project sponsor, which means the contents were agreed at the business level. And, through the project planning phase, we are to re-fine the PID / proposal in details by a series of meetings and discussions with the project teams and stakeholders.
Deliverables of Project Planning Phase
I would simply say we are extending the PID / proposal to form the project plan. So, here are the elements we may include in our project plan.
1. Executive summary
We usually start the project plan with an overview of the project. It may consist of:
- Project name and project background
- Project management methodology chosen (e.g. waterfall, agile, hybrid)
- Key deliverables and acceptance criteria
- Project team structure
- Project budget
- Project duration
2. Role and responsibilities
As we gathered the project team and stakeholders, it is important to let those understand the roles and responsibilities they played in the project. We may use RACI chart to determine if someone would be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for individual task.
It is really a critical document to mitigate future conflicts. Once the RACI chart has been agreed by the team, we understand who is actually the accountable person on decision making. Given you may encounter conflicting opinions from the team, it serves as a black-and-white when we need a decision.
3. Communication plan
Throughout the project life cycle, we need the team to meet regularly in order to keep the momentum and respond to risks and issues timely. Defining the future communications channel (virtual or face-to-face), tools (document, email or video call), frequency (weekly, monthly or as required), and audience (who shall be joining) would facilitate effective and efficient communications.
It is also served as expectation management to stakeholders on their involvement.
4. Scope of work / requirement list
Sometimes we may have the detail requirement list at project initiation phase. However, most of the time, we would be meeting with end-users after the project kick-off meeting with project team. In this case, depends on projects, we can arrange requirement gathering sessions with the end-users, in order to understand the requirements in details.
It is often that we may update the requirement list during the project planning phase once we understand the details from the end-users. And, although we may update the scope, we must ensure that the updated scope of work shall be within the project budget. Re-estimation would be required with the implementation team.
And, sometimes, we may have to document the as-is and to-be diagrams, so that the project stakeholders fully understand the impact of the project. It is for the sake of expectation management for successful delivery of the project outcomes.
5. Task breakdown and timeline
Under waterfall methodology, we normally start from breaking down the requirements into tasks and milestones. Then we will determine the dependencies of the tasks and form the project timeline. When you input the data to task management tools, you would probably get a WBS and gantt.
Final words
In conclusion, we are creating the mutual agreed project plan during the project planning stage. There would be lots of discussions and reviews to get the consensus from the team. So, project managers are required to perform analysis and create the appropriate project plan that is best fit to the project and to the team. After that, we are mainly following the project plan to respond and act in the coming project phases.
And, to make it easier to understand, we are actually creating a document responding the 6Ws (Who, what, when, where, why, how) for the project.
- Executive summary – mainly responding why we work for the project
- Role and responsibility – defining who are in the projects
- Communication plan – providing the way how and where the project team would work together
- Requirement list – showing what we have to achieve and deliver
- Task breakdown and timeline – illustrating when the tasks would be started and completed
In near future, I will drill down into the templates and tools for creating project plan, please stay tuned!