Project Planning
By: Matthew Madar
Project Goals
You must identify your stack holders in your project. The project sponsor, the customer who receives the deliverables, the users of the project outputs, the project manager, and the project team are all examples of stack holders. Then find out the needs of the stack holders by conducting interviews so you can create a true benefit to the project. Once all the interviews are conducted and a comprehensive list of needs is to prioritise them. Create a set of goals that can be easily measured. Using the SMART principle will help you with that. After you have established a clear set of goals, they should be recorded in the project plan.
Project Deliverables
Using the goals you defined will be used to create a list of things the project needs to deliver in order to meet those goals. Add the deliverables to the project plan with an estimated delivery date.
Project Schedule
Create a list of tasks to be carried for each deliverable identified in project goals step. For each task you must identify the amount of effort (hours or days) required to complete the task and the resource who will carryout the task. Once you established the amount of effort for each task. you can workout the effort required for each deliverable, and an accurate delivery date. At this point you should choose to use a software package such as Microsoft Project to create your project schedule. Input all of the deliverables, tasks, durations and the resources who will complete each task. A common problem at this point is when a project has an imposed delivery deadline from the sponsor that is not realistic based on your estimates. In this case your options are delay the project, increased cost, or reduce scope of the project.
Supporting Plans
Human Resource Plan: Identify by name, the individuals and organizations with a leading role in the project. For each, describe their roles and responsibilities on the project. Next, describe the number and type of people need to carry out the project. For each resource detail start dates, estimated duration and the method you will use to obtain them. Communications Plan: Create a document that show who needs to be kept informed about the project and how they will receive the information. A common mechanism is a weekly or monthly progress report, describing how the project is performing. Risk Management Plan: Common project risks are time and cost estimates are too optimistic, customer review and feedback cycle too slow, unexpected budget cuts, unclear roles and responsibilities, stack holder input is not sought, or their needs are not properly understood, stack holders changing requirements after the project has started, stack holders adding new requirements after the project has started, and lack of resource commitment. Risk can be track using a log add each of these risks to your log and what you will do to prevent it. Review you log on a daily basis.