Project Planning

By. Dr. Ritu Bibyan Khosla

 Introduction
Project planning refers to the phase in project management in which you determine the actual
steps to complete a project. This includes laying out timelines, establishing the budget, setting
milestones, assessing risks, and solidifying tasks and assigning them to team members.
When planning your project you will define the following:
•The scope of the project
•Deliverables and the tasks you need to meet them
•The sequence and schedule of those tasks, with a timetable and deadlines
•Roles and responsibilities
•Resources, such as staffing, budget, and equipment
•Plans to manage time, staff, suppliers, costs, risk, and quality
•Baselines and performance measures
•Management plans to monitor your progress
 Why Project Planning
No matter the size and scope of your project, you’ll need a plan to
succeed.
For example, you may want to build a faster system for your web users.
Once you’ve identified how quickly you want your system to load, you
can determine the tasks to reach the goal, who will do that work, when
it’s due, how much it will cost, and who will give final approval. Without
setting those parameters, all you have is an idea, not a project.
A project plan is the main communication document for the project and
acts as the roadmap for your team throughout project execution. Not
only does it tell everyone what you are going to do, but it also
establishes, identifies, and organizes the business requirements, resource
plans, cost, schedule, goals, list of deliverables, milestones, quality
standards, and delivery dates.
Additionally, without a plan you can run into unanticipated problems,
costing you — and your organization — time and money. But by taking
the time to develop one, it can help you to identify and anticipate
roadblocks.
 Need of Project Planning
The final document will define how your project is implemented, executed, monitored,
and controlled. In short, the project plan answers these questions:
• What is the project’s scope?
• What are the objectives?
• What are the specific outcomes?
• What are the major deliverables?
• How will you get to those deliverables?
• What are the deadlines?
• When will the team meet specific milestones?
• How will you define roles and responsibilities?
• Who will provide feedback?
As you plan the work, you can spot any conflicts among the schedule, cost, and
resources, so you can identify the tradeoffs you need to make in order to stay within
scope and meet your objectives.
Plus, once you’ve created the plan, you can get management approval and proceed
confidently to the next phase: project execution.
 What Is in a Project Plan?
t is a management document, with a set of tasks that guides your team in implementing the project and identifying the
baselines for scope, schedule, cost, risk, and performance measurement. It helps you finish your project on time and on
budget, allowing you to meet the standards identified at the beginning of the project. As the foundation for managing
the project, your plan should include the following components:
• Executive Summary or Introduction: Overview of the goals and objectives of the project, including your project
management approach
• Project Scope: Based on the scope statement we can manage what falls within scope and identifying what is out of
scope
• Deliverables: The major components that will be delivered throughout the project
• Schedule Baseline and Plan: The estimated project schedule and milestone deadlines and how you plan to manage
time and schedule
• Cost Baseline and Plan: The estimated budget and an explanation of how you will manage expenses and cost
• Resource Baseline: Estimated resources needed and details around managing those resources.
• Work Breakdown Structure: The deliverables, milestones, and resources that will ensure the project is completed
•Communication Plan: A description of who will be informed about the project, how often, and how they will
receive this information
•Change Management Plan: The formal process to receive, review, and accept or reject changes to the project

•Risk Management Plan: The risks to the project and the contingency plans

•Configuration Management Plan: The components of the project and the audit changes

•Quality Plan: The quantification of the baseline standards the project must meet

•Process Improvement Plan: A document of how the team will analyze the effectiveness of the project,
including the identification of where and how they can make improvements
•Related Issues: The internal and external factors that could affect the completion of your plan

•Material and Equipment Requirements: A list of what you need to accomplish the work

•Approvals and Stakeholder Management: The details of the milestones that need formal approval and
the identification of how stakeholders will be included in the approval proces
 Who Uses a Project Plan?
• Project Manager: The plan is the blueprint and roadmap for keeping the project on track and a project manager uses to make sure the project
succeeds.

• Project Sponsor: Since the sponsor has the overall accountability for the project, they approve the plan and use it to ensure the project has
the necessary resources, staffing, and support within the organization.

• Designated Business Experts: These experts provide insight into the project’s requirements and deliverable standards and use the plan to
ensure that the end product is what they want and that it is delivered on the schedule they need.

• Project Team: tells team members know what they are assigned to do, when they will do it, and who they will work with.

• End Users: Internal or external customers are the ones who most clearly understand the problem you are trying to solve and can offer insight
into the requirements and quality of the solution your project offers. They can tell you whether the output of your project meets their needs.

• Auditors: They will assess the project to ensure whether the project’s objectives are aligned, whether you have the resources and processes to
ensure your success, and whether you have achieved what you set out to do.

• Quality and Risk Analysts: Use their expertise to ensure that you have considered all possible risks or roadblocks and can still meet the
standards, budget, and timelines of the project.

• Procurement Specialists: These stakeholders find the best vendors for all necessary project resources or materials and can help the project
manager by managing the relationship with the vendor.
What Happens in the Planning Phase of a Project?

In the planning phase of any project, you take the inputs of both the project charter and the
concept proposal and produce the outputs of the project requirements, project schedule, and
project management plan. The work during this phase involves thinking about and planning
what you need to do and then putting the structure in place to accomplish the project’s goals.
Working with your team, define and refine the project’s objectives, determine the methods
you’ll use to achieve those objectives, identify the deliverables and the tasks to achieve those
deliverables, specify the baselines of the project plan, and schedule and write all the necessary
supporting documents.
This doesn’t happen all at once. When you review the outline, you’ll discover other options
for completing the project, adjust the resources and schedule, and receive feedback from your
stakeholders. The project planning process actually involves two kinds of processes: core
processes and facilitating processes.
Core processes follow a set sequence, regardless of the project. They include the following:
•Scope Defining and Planning: Identify the deliverables and requirements of the project.
•Activity Defining, Planning, and Sequencing: Break down the deliverables and
requirements into activities or tasks and estimate the time for each, as well as the sequence in
which they must be completed.
•Resource Planning: Identify the people, equipment, facilities, and materials needed for the
activities.
•Cost Estimating and Budgeting: Estimate the amount of money you need, based on staffing
or external vendors, the materials and goods required, and any other expenses.
•Schedule Developing: Create the project schedule, based on the sequence of tasks, your
budget, and your resources.
•Project Plan Developing: Finalize the plan and all supporting documents for formal approval.
The facilitating processes depend on the project and how the core processes interact. They
can follow any sequence in your project. Facilitating processes include the following:
•Organizational Planning: Determine the roles for each of your team members, assign them
responsibilities, and acquire additional staff as needed. This process may include the work
breakdown structure.
•Quality Planning: Establish the quality assurance standards and criteria for the project, and
how you will ensure that you meet them.
•Risk Management Planning: Identify any risks to the project, consider their probability and
impact (quantitative risk analysis), prioritize their impact (qualitative risk analysis), and
develop a plan to minimize or reduce those risks.
•Procuring and Solicitation Planning: Decide what goods and services you need to acquire
for the project, and identify potential vendors.
•Communication Planning: Establish how and what you will communicate to stakeholders,
the project sponsor, your team, and any others with an interest in the project.
What Are the Steps for Planning a Project?
Step One: Define the Project Goals, Objectives, and Scope
• Start by asking these questions:
 What needs to be completed?
 What product or service will be delivered?
 What does the client expect? What does the client need?
 What is the deadline?
 What are the reasons, events, or factors for that deadline?

The answers will help you capture your big-picture goals for the project.. Now that you’ve set some goals, it’s time to
put priorities around those expectations.
To get more clarity for your objectives, spend time with the project stakeholders to understand their needs,
expectations, deliverables, and deadlines. Use one-on-one meetings, interviews, workshops, and focus groups to
uncover the requirements or functionality that offer real benefits. Remember that stakeholders are everyone who is
affected by the product or service, including clients, the project sponsor, the project manager, the project team, and
the customers who are the end-users.
Also, identify the responsibility of the developer and the user by determining the need that your project is addressing
and how you will educate users about the product. Finally, identify the project’s supporters within your organization.
Use their feedback to ensure your goal. While your goals may be broad, the objectives must be specific and
measurable. Refine project objectives by providing quantifiable definitions (i.e., schedule, cost, quality) for
qualitative or subjective terms.
 By clarifying and quantifying the goals and objectives, you can understand and define the project’s scope and value. Now
you’re ready to write a scope statement for the project that covers the following elements:
• Business Needs: A high-level summary that outlines the benefits and puts this project in context for stakeholders and other
decision makers in your organization
• Objectives: Specifically what the team will do
• Roles and Responsibilities: Who owns the project, who is on the project team, and what role each member plays
• Requirements: Qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the expectations of the stakeholders
• Deliverables: The tangible and measurable work products that you will produce
• Milestones: Dates you establish for key deliverables
• Quality Standards: The acceptance criteria your deliverables must meet, including who is responsible for signing off on the
acceptance criteria
• Exclusions: Any products or services that you will not create as part of this project

The outcome of this work is a clear communication tool that documents the project goals and the effort required to meet them.
You can leverage this information to create a product breakdown structure (PBS) that defines the project outcome clearly so
the sponsor and stakeholders can agree on your direction. The document also feeds into the work breakdown structure that you
will soon develop.
Step Two: Break Down the Project into Tasks
With your scope document in hand, you can now identify the activities and tasks needed to create the
deliverables. For every project, the activities will be different, but you can use previous project plans to
guide what you might need for your project.
At this point, you will begin to break down the larger project into smaller sections. Work with your team to
identify the activities, tasks, and processes needed to fulfill your requirements and objectives. For each
task, identify the amount of effort it will take to complete the task and who will do the work.
By spelling out the breakdown of the project in this way, you are creating your work breakdown
structure (WBS) — a structured listing of the work and end items that serves as the basis for cost
accounts, budgets, schedules, and project life-cycle cost estimates. The WBS is accompanied by the WBS
dictionary, which describes every component of the WBS, including milestones, deliverables, scope, and
activities. These downloadable templates can help you create your own WBS.
As you create the network of tasks and the WBS, you can link the tasks based on dependencies, to develop
the critical path , or network activity diagram, which helps you identify the tasks necessary to complete
your project as scoped. Additionally, the critical path method helps you stay on track throughout your
project.
Step Three: Map Out the Resources
Now that you have the tasks mapped out, it’s time to identify the resources you need to complete the
work. Identify the necessary facilities, equipment, supplies, raw materials, staffing, and special skills for
each task and deliverable. These activities form the core process of resource planning, including who will
do what work, when will they do it, and how much will it cost.
• Staffing: Determine the staff and skills available in house, and identify what skills you’ll need to procure
from outside vendors and subcontractors.
• Costs and Budget: Estimate the cost of each task, depending on the resources the task will consume. The
total of those budgeted costs leads to the total project cost, which is incurred upon the completion of the
project.
• Time: Estimate how much resource time will be spent to complete each task or deliverable. Since you have
to estimate the duration, consider weighing your estimates with optimistic, normal, or pessimistic variables.
• Resource Constraints: As you estimate and assign resources, consider how much time each person can
realistically devote to the project or whether you can procure all the materials and budget you need.
 Step Four: Outline Your Plan and Schedule
Armed with the information about the tasks and resources, you can draft an outline of your project
plan and create the sequence of events that will build your schedule. The outline starts with the
questions you have addressed in your project planning, including:
• Who will do the work (staffing)?
• What work will they do (goals, objectives, deliverables)?
• When should it be accomplished (project deadline)?
• How will it be done (tasks and work breakdown structure)?

Your draft plan will map out the schedule of activities, the dependencies among them, the sequence in
which they will be implemented, and how resources will be allocated at each stage. At a basic level, the
schedule is a timeline of all the tasks and resource estimates.
In addition to showing the amount of effort and resources needed to complete each task, the project
schedule should help you balance the amount of resources with the duration of the task or project. If one
task takes longer than you estimated or requires more materials, the schedule will need to be updated so
you can ensure you still meet your objectives.
Step Five: Review and Refine Your Plan

Once the plan is drafted, gather feedback to help refine and finalize the work plan. Present and explain
the project plan to stakeholders and discuss the key elements like deliverables, resources, and milestones.

Use your presentation as an opportunity to ask tough questions that will test the assumptions of your plan
and ensure that you will be successful in meeting their expectations. Request feedback on the process,
politics, and risks, and consider asking the following questions:
Are the estimates, assumptions, and constraints for budget, resources, and schedule realistic?

What are the preferred options for dealing with unrealistic estimates: renegotiating the schedule, adding
additional resources, reducing the scope, etc.?
Are the standards for quality in the project realistic or overly ambitious?

Are there additional pressures that accelerate how quickly the project needs to be completed?

What internal factors have changed that could affect the resources or schedule?

What external factors have changed that could affect the project?

What is the best way to measure and report on actual progress?

 Is there a stakeholder that needs to be considered who is not on the list? (A president, division director,
supplier, customer, etc.?)
 Is there anything else that would prevent the project from being successful?

 Some issues and project risks that could surface in these conversations include:
o The time, staffing, and cost estimates are too optimistic.
o The roles and responsibilities are unclear.
o No stakeholder input has been obtained.
o Changing requirements or new requirements have emerged.
o There is a lack of organizational commitment to the project, and there is competition for a share of
company resources.
At this point in your project planning process, consider your risk management plans, specifying any
contingency plans and mitigation strategies.
Step Six: Write the Full Project Plan
Now, it’s time to assemble the final plan. Your final plan will, first and foremost, focus on
the performance measurement baseline. This baseline is a combination of the following elements:
•Scope Baseline: The approved version of the scope statement, work breakdown structure, and
WBS dictionary
•Cost Baseline: The approved spending plan or time-phased budget that includes all the costs by
time period and money set aside to respond to risks
•Schedule Baseline: The fixed project schedule that has been approved by project stakeholders
These baselines are fixed standards for the project and reflect all the hard work of defining scope,
schedule, costs, staffing, deliverables, resources, quality, risk management, and more. They must
be fully defined and documented before you can begin the project.
Once they are approved, they become the official plans for your project and can only be changed
through the approved change control and management process. The final project plan also includes
the baseline management plans and the supporting plans for core and facilitating processes
previously mentioned.
Step Seven: Launch Your Project

The plan is approved, so you can publish and share it with your team. Schedule a
kickoff meeting to walk them through the project, making sure everyone has read
the plan and is ready to dig in. Be ready to answer any questions and set an
effective leadership tone. A strong start will help you get across the finish line
with an enthusiastic team and high morale.
Step Eight: Monitor and Review Your Progress
Project planning isn’t finished until the project is finished. You will need to monitor progress and project scope, compare it to
the baselines, and manage any changes. No plan is perfect, so be prepared to adjust the plan and making critical decisions as
issues arise.
During the project planning phase, you put time into the core and facilitating processes. Now you focus on change
management, quality control, and governance to keep everything running smoothly. You should regularly analyze the
progress by comparing it to baseline plans. Measuring project performance and progress is called earned value
management (EVM). EVM takes project tracking a step further and helps you evaluate your progress more accurately.
Another area to monitor is project risks. Keep a log that identifies all the risks you’ve anticipated and the plans for preventing
or addressing those risks. Review the risk log regularly to see what’s happened, any new risks that may occur, and what is no
longer at risk.
As project manager, you should document everything in this phase. Record changes that go through the change management
process, as well as smaller factors that can shift the deliverables on your project. These documents can be the basis for your
communication with team members, stakeholders, and clients. They can also serve as part of the archive for the project to be
used by another project manager the next time a similar project arises.
Managing successful projects is hard. But you’ve put a lot of hard work into building this plan, so enjoy the parts that go
well, be enthusiastic about leading your team when tough calls have to be made, and continue to inspire creativity as the
project unfolds.
 Benefits of project planning
Project planning is important because it helps form the steps needed to complete a project
successfully. Planning helps teams avoid potential problems and roadblocks to ensure the project
stays on track. These are some benefits of a good project plan:
•Helps ensure projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the required
standard
•Facilitates effective communication between all members of a project team
•Helps identify potential risks and issues at an early stage
•Helps you communicate your vision and objectives to your team
•Keeps everyone focused on the goal