Project Planning

Below are the important themes that you must remember from the PMI Perspective for the Planning Phase of the Project.

1. The project planning process comprise 20 of the 42 total processes in PMBOK
2. The project plan is much more than a project schedule. It is an all-encompassing document used as the basis for project controlling and executing.
3. A project charter is not a project plan. It is the starting point that is used to build/develop the project plan
4. The WBS is not the project schedule.
5. The WBS serves as the foundation for most project-planning activities.
6. The WBS should include all the work to be done as part of the project and should be developed with the project team.
7. The granularity of the WBS depends on what detail is needed for effective management and control.
8. WBS is created by decomposing the Scope Statement.
9. Activity definition is done using the WBS as input and generates the activity list.
10. A project schedule must meet three key criteria to be complete: It must have buy-in, be achievable, and be realistic and formal.
11. Developing a project schedule is a four-step process: (1) define work activities (2) identify activity/task relationships (3) estimate effort and duration of each activity (4) apply calendar and resource availability to build a schedule.
12. Network diagrams highlight relationships among project activities.
13. The three types of project network diagrams are Activity-on-Node (most popular), Activity-on-Arrow (uses dummy activities), and GERT (uses loops and conditional branches).
14. Estimating should be performed by the person doing the work.
15. Key project success factors (cost, time, scope, resources) should be managed to baselines and only changed when an approved project change has been executed.
16. All assumptions used in estimating should be documented & checked for their validity at the appropriate time.
17. Historical information is vital to improving estimates.
18. The key facts about the “critical path” in a project schedule are as follows:
o It's the longest sequence of activities.
o There is zero slack (float).
o It's the focus of any schedule-compression activity.
19. The three scheduling techniques are CPM (uses one estimate), PERT (uses three estimates), and GERT (can show various project outcomes).
20. The Monte Carlo technique is the most popular simulation scheduling technique and is also used for risk analysis.
21. The three methods for presenting the project schedule are milestone charts, Gantt charts, and network diagrams.
22. The two most popular methods for compressing the schedule are crashing (adding extra resources to critical path tasks to reduce overall time) and fast tracking (performing critical path tasks in parallel).
23. Cost estimates for an activity are affected by activity duration, resource rates, and risk level.
24. The three levels of estimating accuracy are order of magnitude (-50% to +50%), budget (-10% to +25%), and definitive (-5% to +10%).
25. The risk management plan is not a risk response plan.
26. All project management activity should be “thought about” and planned.
27. Effective project management is proactive.
28. The “core” planning processes are those that must be done in a specific sequence. (Defining Scope, Creating WBS, Defining Activities, Sequencing Activities, Estimate Resource Requirement & Durations and Creating Budget)
29. The “facilitating” planning processes are always performed, are not optional, and directly impact many of the core planning processes. (Planning communications, Planning for Human Resources, Quality etc)
30. The formality and detail of each supplemental plan will vary depending on project need.
31. Ninety percent of a project manager's time is spent communicating. Communication is the most important project management skill. Identifying all stakeholders is paramount to an effective Communication plan and directly impacts the success or failure of the Project
32. Remember the three C's in project communications: Clear, Concise, and Courteous.
33. Quality management addresses both product (goods and services) quality and project management quality.
34. The project manager has ultimate responsibility for the project product quality.
35. Quality is planned in, not inspected in.
36. The PMI definition of quality is “conformance to requirements” and “fitness of use.”
37. The identification of risks is an iterative, continual process throughout the project.
38. Risk management will change the project plan during planning, executing, and controlling.
39. After procurement planning, the other steps of procurement management (including solicitation planning) are only performed if a “buy” decision is made.
40. All requirements should be specifically stated in the contract and should be met.
41. Project communication dealing with procurement management should always be formal and written.
42. Incentives should be used to align the seller's objectives with the buyer's.
43. The risk management plan, risk response plan, procurement management plan, quality management plan, communications plan, and staffing plan are all considered part of the project plan.
44. The three main types of contracts are cost reimbursable, fixed fee, and time and materials.
45. Once a contract is signed, as a buyer we must uphold our end of the contract and be fair in all dealings with the seller. We should not request anything to be done that is not part of the contract


Other PMI Themes:

General PMI Themes
Project Framework
Project Initiation
Project Execution
Project Monitoring & Controlling
Project Closure
Ethics & Professional Responsibility

Chapter 25: Introduction to Project Planning

After the project has been initiated, you need to develop a project management plan, which becomes the primary source of information for how the project you are currently managing will be executed, monitored & controlled, and closed.

In this chapter, we are going to take a look at how a Project Manager would begin this planning phase.

So, lets get started!!!

Planning the Project

Once the project has been initiated, it’s time to do some planning. As I said in the previous chapter, any project that does not have a proper plan seldom succeeds. So, as the project manager it is our responsibility to plan properly and to ensure that our project is a success. This includes determining the project scope, during which time you’ll refine the project objectives and determine things like:

• How the scope will be executed
• How the execution will be monitored and controlled, and
• How the project will be brought to a proper closure.

Project planning is embodied in the project management plan that is developed through progressive elaboration. The project management plan is a document that defines, prepares, coordinates, and integrates all subsidiary plans, such as scope and risk management plans, into one plan. The goal here is to develop a source of information that will work as a guideline for how the project will be executed, monitored and controlled, and closed.

Trivia:
It is important for any project to have a good plan. It is possible that the project manager might leave the company or move on to another critical project where his/her expertise is needed and leave the current project to another manager. Eitherways, the presence of a good project plan will help the new manager, whomsoever it might be, to handle and manage the project effectively.

How Important is Project Planning?

Let us take a real time example to explain this. Lets assume that you are going to get married and for the sake of comparison, lets compare this marriage to a project. (I know it's a bad analogy but I think it would be a good example to explain the whole importance part of it)

Once you decide to get married, you need to fix a marriage hall, print invitations, send them to all your friends, meet up close friends & family members and invite them, arrange caterers, arrange decoration parties who will decorate the marriage hall during the events, arrange for flowers and garlands, buy new cloths, jewels for the bride, and on and on. The list is very long. Unless someone from the couples family (Usually the Fathers of the bride & groom) sit down and do extensive planning to ensure that the event is a success.

Imagine, what a disaster it would be to realize that the flowers & garlands werent ordered and the bride and groom are ready to tie the knot on the stage? Forget the disaster, it would be embarrassing for the couple and their close family members to see such an event.

Fortunately, the project managers (the dads of the couple) wouldn't let such a thing happen and plan it all out properly to result in a successful and happy wedding.

I guess, by now you have understood the importance of planning on the success of a project.

Elements of Project Planning

The planning phase of any project would involve 3 important things:

1. Refining the project objectives defined during project initiation and collecting requirements based on the stakeholder needs and expectations.
2. Determining the scope of the project.
3. Determining the course of action required to attain these objectives, which involves breaking down the scope and objectives into concrete, manageable tasks.

It is important to plan the project because not all projects need all the planning processes, nor do they all need them with the same level. Therefore, the content of the project management plan, the ultimate output of project planning, will depend upon the project under consideration.

As the project goes through different stages, the project management plan may be updated and revised through the change control process. Following are some issues that project planning phase addresses:

• Which project management processes will be used for the project, what the level of implementation for each of the processes will be, and what the inputs and tools and techniques for the processes are
• The project baseline against which the performance of the project will be measured and against which the project will be monitored and controlled
• How the changes to the approved plan will be monitored and controlled
• What the needs and techniques for communication among the stakeholders are
• How the project lifecycle looks, including the project phases if the project is a multiphase one

Note: This list is not exhaustive and the project plan may include a lot more than this.
Trivia:

The project baseline is defined as the approved plan for the scope, schedule, and cost of the project. The project performance is measured against this baseline, and therefore this baseline is also called the performance baseline. The project baseline is also referred to in terms of its components: cost baseline, schedule baseline, and scope baseline. How do you know how the project is performing? You compare the performance to the baseline. Approved changes in scope, schedule, or cost will obviously change the baseline.

Let us take a look at a pictorial representation of how the Project Management Plan is Prepared.

Before I begin explanation, this is just a high level view. The details involved in each of these steps might be more complicated and may require a lot of effort.
The output of the project Initiation Phase is the Project Charter, Stakeholder Register and the Stakeholder Management Strategy. These are the inputs in the process of creating the Project Management Plan.

Depending upon the complexity of the project, the project management plan can be either a summary or a collection of subsidiary plans and components, which might include:

• Standard plans from different aspects of project planning, such as the cost management plan, communication management plan, scope management plan, and risk management plan.
• Other components, such as the milestones list, the resource calendar, and baselines for scope, schedule, cost, and quality. A baseline is a reference plan against which all the performance deviations are measured. This reference plan can be the original or the updated plan.

In a nutshell, project planning involves determining exactly what will be done and how it will be done. Executing a project means implementing the project management plan for that project. Therefore, the project management plan contains the project scope that defines what needs to be done to meet the project objectives.

But how exactly is the project management plan actually developed? Don't worry, that is what our next chapter is going to explain…

Previous: Planning a Project

Next: Developing the Project Management Plan