Improving the process of project planning as project manager

The success of a business idea for your company often depends on the methodology you use to bring it to market. Many small businesses don’t have the layers of management that allow for expert contributions from different departments to a development project. Streamlining your project planning and instituting good reporting mechanisms will help you avoid hiccups that shouldn’t, but often do, doom a great product or service idea.

Project Planning is part of project management, which relates to the use of schedules such as Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress within the project environment. Initially, the project scope is defined and the appropriate methods for completing the project are determined. Project planning is a discipline for stating how to complete a project within a certain timeframe, usually with defined stages, and with designated resources. One view of project planning divides the activity into:

• Setting objectives (these should be measurable),
• Identifying deliverables,
• Planning the schedule,
• Making supporting plans

Supporting plans may include those related to: human resources, communication methods, procurement, Cost, quality, and risk management. Computer hardware and software project planning within an enterprise is often done using a project planning guide that describes the process that the enterprise feels has been successful in the past. Tools popularly used for the scheduling part of a plan include the Gantt chart and the PERT chart.

1. Identify each person who will be involved in the project and what his role will be to make sure no parts of a project fall through the cracks. Review your initial personnel decisions after you have created the project’s goals, processes and timelines.

2. Set specific outcome goals for the project. Make sure everyone is clear on specific goals before you begin creating the process for development of a project. For example, increased revenue might be too broad a goal. Determine where you want those revenues to come from, as well as the dates they need to occur to create success benchmarks. If your goal is cost-reduction, ask yourself why you think this is necessary, not just desirable. It might be that you have high costs because of poor purchasing, waste, old equipment or high overhead costs. Knowing these specifics will help you set realistic outcome goals.

3. Create the process for managing and implementing the project, including reporting mechanisms. For example, if you are looking to launch a new product, have one part of your project team identify the machinery, material, staff and costs to develop the project. Assign to another group the process for marketing the product. Set goals for creating the finance, IT and office administration support for the launch.

4. Create a project process that ties all of the various teams together with a project management system. The system might be as simple as a basic spreadsheet that gets updated and shared every week, or more complex project management software that’s shared on a cloud or company server. Some of your processes might focus on identifying what needs to be done, with subsequent parts of your process centering on how these task will be executed.

5. Set specific deadlines for each activity. Make sure your project doesn’t get stalled because one or more team members aren’t given a deadline or deadlines. Update the deadlines on different phases of your project as each phase is completed. Your project might require various phases, and each component of the project should be given a deadline you can update, if necessary, after each segment is completed.

6. Create a reporting system that keeps everyone in the loop by including team members, as well as team leader. This could include weekly meetings, a master project document you update and share regularly or required reports submitted by team members to the project leader at regular intervals. Include a status column in your group spreadsheet or software that allows the group to see where everyone is during the project. This will help you spot potential problems before they happen or become too difficult to handle.

Approaches in Building Project Plan

Explain the project plan to key stakeholders and discuss its key components: One of the most misunderstood terms in project management, the project plan is a set of living documents that can be expected to change over the life of the project. Like a roadmap, it provides the direction for the project. And like the traveler, the project manager needs to set the course for the project, which in project management terms means creating the project plan. Just as a driver may encounter road construction or new routes to the final destination, the project manager may need to correct the project course as well. A common misconception is that the plan equates to the project timeline, which is only one of the many components of the plan. The project plan is the major work product from the entire planning process, so it contains all the planning documents for the project. Typically many of the project’s key stakeholders, that is those affected by both the project and the project’s end result, do not fully understand the nature of the project plan. Since one of the most important and difficult aspects of project management is getting commitment and buying, the first step is to explain the planning process and the project plan to all key stakeholders. It is essential for them to understand the importance of this set of documents and to be familiar with its content, since they will be asked to review and approve the documents that pertain to them. Components of the Project Plan Include:

• Baselines are sometimes called performance measures, because the performance of the entire project is measured against them. They are the project’s three approved starting points and include the scope, schedule, and cost baselines. These provide the ‘stakes in the ground.’ That is, they are used to determine whether or not the project is on track, during the execution of the project.

• Baseline management plans.These plans include documentation on how variances to the baselines will be handled throughout the project. Each project baseline will need to be reviewed and managed. A result of this process may include the need to do additional planning, with the possibility that the baseline(s) will change. Project management plans document what the project team will do when variances to the baselines occur, including what process will be followed, who will be notified, how the changes will be funded, etc.

• Other work products from the planning process. These include a risk management plan, a quality plan, a procurement plan, a staffing plan, and a communications plan.

Define roles and responsibilities: Not all key stakeholders will review all documents, so it is necessary to determine who on the project needs to approve which parts of the plan. Some of the key players are:

• Project sponsor, who owns and funds the entire project. Sponsors need to review and approve all aspects of the plan.
• Designated business experts, who will define their requirements for the end product. They need to help develop the scope baseline and approve the documents relating to scope. They will be quite interested in the timeline as well.
• Project manager, who creates, executes, and controls the project plan. Since project managers build the plan, they do not need to approve it.
• Project team, who build the end product. The team needs to participate in the development of many aspects of the plan, such as identifying risks, quality, and design issues, but the team does not usually approve it.
• End users, who use the end product. They too, need to participate in the development of the plan, and review the plan, but rarely do they actually need to sign off.
• Others, such as auditors, quality and risk analysts, procurement specialists, and so on may also participate on the project. They may need to approve the parts that pertain to them, such as the Quality or Procurement plan.

Hold a kickoff meeting: The kickoff meeting is an effective way to bring stakeholders together to discuss the project. It is an effective way to initiate the planning process. It can be used to start building trust among the team members and ensure that everyone’s idea are taken into account. Kickoff meetings also demonstrate commitment from the sponsor for the project. Here are some of the topics that might be included in a kickoff meeting: Business vision and strategy (from sponsor)¹, Project vision (from sponsor)², Roles and responsibilities³, Team building⁴, Team commitments⁵, How team makes decisions⁶, Ground rules⁷ and How large the group should be and whether sub-groups are necessary⁸

Develop a Scope Statement: The Scope Statement is arguably the most important document in the project plan. It’s the foundation for the rest of the project. It describes the project and is used to get common agreement among the stakeholders about the scope. The Scope Statement clearly describes what the outcome of the project will be. It is the basis for getting the buy-in and agreement from the sponsor and other stakeholders and decreases the chances of miscommunication. This document will most likely grow and change with the life of the project. The Scope Statement should include: Business need and business problem¹, Project objectives², stating what will occur within the project to solve the business problem³, Benefits of completing the project, as well as the project justification, Project scope, stated as which deliverables will be included and excluded from the project⁴, Key milestones, the approach, and other components as dictated by the size and nature of the project⁵. It can be treated like a contract between the project manager and sponsor, one that can only be changed with sponsor approval.

Develop scope baseline: Once the deliverables are confirmed in the Scope Statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS), which is a decomposition of all the deliverables in the project. This deliverable WBS forms the scope baseline and has these elements: Identifies all the deliverables produced on the project, and therefore, identifies all the work to be done¹. Takes large deliverables and breaks them into a hierarchy of smaller deliverables². That is, each deliverable starts at a high level and is broken into subsequently lower and lower levels of detail³. The lowest level is called a “work package” and can be numbered to correspond to activities and tasks⁴. The WBS is often thought of as a task breakdown, but activities and tasks are a separate breakdown, identified in the next step⁵.

Develop the schedule and cost baselines: Here are the steps involved in developing the schedule and cost baselines. Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the work packages, creating a WBS of tasks, Identify resources for each task, if known, Estimate how long it will take to complete each task, Estimate cost of each task, using an average hourly rate for each resource, Consider resource constraints, or how much time each resource can realistically devoted to this project, Determine which tasks are dependent on other tasks, and develop critical path, Develop schedule, which is a calendarization of all the tasks and estimates. It shows by chosen time period (week, month, quarter, or year) which resource is doing which tasks, how much time they are expected to spend on each task, and when each task is scheduled to begin and end and Develop the cost baseline, which is a time-phased budget, or cost by time period. This process is not a one-time effort. Throughout the project you will most likely be adding to repeating some or all of these steps.

Create baseline management plans: Once the scope, schedule, and cost baselines have been established, you can create the steps the team will take to manage variances to these plans. All these management plans usually include a review and approval process for modifying the baselines. Different approval levels are usually needed for different types of changes. In addition, not all new requests will result in changes to the scope, schedule, or budget, but a process is needed to study all new requests to determine their impact to the project.

Develop the staffing plan: The staffing plan is a chart that shows the time periods, usually month, quarter, year, that each resource will come onto and leave the project. It is similar to other project management charts, like a Gantt chart, but does not show tasks, estimates, begin and end dates, or the critical path. It shows only the time period and resource and the length of time that resource is expected to remain on the project.

Analyze project quality and risks: Project Quality¹: Project quality consists of ensuring that the end product not only meets the customer specifications, but is one that the sponsor and key business experts actually want to use. The emphasis on project quality is on preventing errors, rather than inspecting the product at the end of the project and then eliminating errors. Project quality also recognizes that quality is a management responsibility and needs to be performed throughout the project. Creating the Quality Plan involves setting the standards, acceptance criteria, and metrics that will be used throughout the project. The plan, then, becomes the foundation for all the quality reviews and inspections performed during the project and is used throughout project execution. Project Risks²: A risk is an event that may or may not happen, but could have a significant effect on the outcome of a project, if it were to occur. For example, there may be a 50% chance of a significant change in sponsorship in the next few months. Analyzing risks includes making a determination of both the probability that a specific event may occur and if it does, assessing its impact. The quantification of both the probability and impact will lead to determining which the highest risks that need attention are. Risk management includes not just assessing the risk, but developing risk management plans to understand and communicate how the team will respond to the high-risk events.

Communicate: One important aspect of the project plan is the Communications Plan. This document states such things as: Who on the project wants which reports, how often, in what format, and using what media. How issues will be escalated and when. Where project information will be stored and who can access it. For complex projects, a formal communications matrix is a tool that can help determine some of the above criteria. It helps document the project team’s agreed-on method for communicating various aspects of the project, such as routine status, problem resolution, decisions, etc. Once the project plan is complete, it is important not just to communicate the importance of the project plan to the sponsor, but also to communicate its contents once it’s created. This communication should include such things as: Review and approval of the project plan, Process for changing the contents of the plan.

Executing and Controlling the project plan and key stakeholder roles/responsibilities in the upcoming phases.

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