Illustrated example of project planning and management

archdevil

Royal Member
Planning Process

Most people think that planning a project is simply a matter of listing tasks and assigning resources to them to create a project schedule. However, there is much more to it than that. You don’t just plan resources and tasks to deliver a project. You also need to plan for costs, quality, risk, communications and procurement. In fact there are 10 steps to planning a project, as identified

project planning.jpg

Here’s a brief description of each of the steps presented in the diagram followed by a more detailed explanation about how to do them.

Create a Project Plan

Creating a comprehensive Project Plan is critical to the success of your project. The Project Plan identifies the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of processes, activities and tasks that need to be undertaken to complete the project. It identifies the sequencing, duration and dependencies of tasks as well as the generic resources and financial expenditures required to complete the project.

Create a Resource Plan

Once you have created a Project Plan, you need to make a detailed assessment of the resources required to carry out the project. The required labor, equipment and materials should be listed and the amount of each resource quantified. The resource usage should be scheduled to provide a complete picture of the total amount of resources needed for each stage of the project.

Create a Financial Plan

The Financial Plan describes the total quantity of financial resources required during each stage of the project. The total cost of all labor, equipment and materials should be calculated, as was the total cost of undertaking each activity within the Project Plan.

Create a Quality Plan

To ensure that the project deliverable s meet customer requirements, you’ll need to develop a Quality Plan. This plan explicitly lists the quality targets to be achieved, and a suite of quality assurance and quality control activities should be scheduled to ensure that the required level of quality is achieved throughout the project.

Create a Risk Plan

Managing Project Risk is a critical process within the Project Life-cycle. To mitigate risk effectively, all foreseeable project risks need to be identified and rated in terms of their likelihood of occurring and potential impact on the project. You’ll need to prioritize the risks and identify a set of actions to reduce the likelihood of each risk and its impact on the project should it occur.

Create an Acceptance Plan

The key to customer satisfaction is in gaining approval from the customer that the deliverable s meet the quality criteria stated in the Quality Plan. An Acceptance Plan should be created to ensure that customer acceptance is sought for each deliverable produced by the project. The Acceptance Plan provides a schedule of Acceptance Reviews which are undertaken to gain customer acceptance for the completion of each deliverable within the project.

Create a Communications Plan

A Communications Plan describes the information to be provided to project stakeholders to keep them informed of the progress of the project. In it you’ll list each stakeholder and clearly identify their information requirements. A schedule of communication events and activities should be set out to ensure that the right information is communicated to the right people at the right time.

Create a Procurement Plan

A Procurement Plan helps you procure products and services from external suppliers. By planning your procurement carefully, you can ensure that you buy the right products for your business, at the right price. In it, you’ll define the items you need to procure, the process for acquiring them and the schedule for delivery of each item.

Contract the suppliers

A Procurement Plan helps you procure products and services from external suppliers. By planning your procurement carefully, you can ensure that you buy the right products for your business, at the right price. In it, you’ll define the items you need to procure, the process for acquiring them and the schedule for delivery of each item.

Perform Phase Reviews

Phase reviews should be conducted at the end of the project planning phase. The review shows the Project Sponsor whether the project has achieved its objectives to date, and whether it should continue to the next phase of the project.
 

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