The planning phase of a project is a crucial stage where the project’s objectives, scope, resources, and timelines are defined. It involves creating a comprehensive project plan that outlines the key tasks and activities required to successfully complete the project.
The planning phase is accomplished thru many meetings with all stakeholders to gather both facts and ask open ended questions in order to uncover hidden expectations and find out how open various stakeholders are to accept the new change.
The primary outputs of the planning phase include:
Project Charter: The project charter is a formal document that authorizes the project’s existence and provides a high-level overview of its objectives, stakeholders, and overall approach. It sets the project’s direction and establishes the authority for the project manager to proceed. You will find out what constraints you have to work with, eg fixed timeline. This is a good document to also reiterate the company’s commitment to ethical and responsible behaviour.
Project Scope: The project scope defines the boundaries of the project, including what is included and excluded. It outlines the deliverables, features, functions, and constraints of the project. Defining the scope helps ensure clarity and prevents scope creep during project execution.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): The WBS breaks down the project’s work into manageable and hierarchical components called work packages. It provides a visual representation of the project’s tasks, sub-tasks, and their relationships. The WBS is a key tool for organizing and understanding the project’s scope and structure. Lessons Learned: You *will* need 3rd party help from experts to help list tasks and get estimates. These key experts are often senior staff, and are very busy, but are critical to your project success. They may try to put you off for weeks, as this may not be a priority for them. You may need to escalate to get their time. Try to come to them with a start of a task structure, from a template, so that they are not being asked to create a plan from zero.
Project Schedule: The project schedule is a detailed timeline that identifies the start and end dates for each activity and task within the project. It includes dependencies, milestones, and deadlines. The schedule helps the project team understand the sequence of tasks and their estimated duration, facilitating resource allocation and coordination.
Resource Plan: The resource plan identifies the resources, both human and non-human, required to complete the project successfully. It outlines the roles and responsibilities of the project team members, identifies any external resources needed, and considers factors such as equipment, facilities, and budgetary requirements.
Risk Management Plan: The risk management plan assesses potential risks and uncertainties that could impact the project and outlines strategies for their identification, analysis, response, and monitoring. It helps mitigate potential threats and exploit opportunities, ensuring effective risk management throughout the project lifecycle.
Communication Plan: The communication plan defines the project’s communication objectives, stakeholders, channels, and frequency of communication. It ensures that the right information is communicated to the right stakeholders at the right time, facilitating effective collaboration and coordination. Lessons Learned: Take care to define if this includes working with marketing or social media/PR teams. Too many status meetings can drain your time as a PM, taking your focus away from building relationships and trust. Try to deliver status reports via re-useable templates, and only hold meetings to raise exceptions or escalations.
Quality Management Plan: The quality management plan outlines the processes, activities, and standards that will be used to ensure that the project’s deliverables meet the required quality expectations. It includes quality assurance activities to prevent defects and quality control measures to identify and address any deviations.
Cost Estimation and Budget: The planning phase involves estimating the project’s costs based on the identified activities, resources, and timelines. The cost estimation helps create a budget that outlines the expected expenses and provides a financial framework for the project’s execution and monitoring.
Procurement Plan: If the project requires external resources or services, a procurement plan is created to outline the procurement strategy, selection criteria, and contractual arrangements. It ensures that the necessary resources are procured efficiently and effectively, aligning with project goals and requirements.
Change Management Plan: Your project will affect certain stakeholders both in positive and negative ways. You need to find out who will be responsible for this preparation communication and training, and who the managers are that will enforce or manage non compliance with the new changes. Usually this scope is forgotten or neglected, but internal politics will cause a project to fail.
Think of this like “marketing” where you are selling the benefits and getting them to visualize the “future state” to make this extra work and change worthwhile.
As you can see, this is a LOT of work. You will also need time in your schedule to write these plans up, AND get them reviewed and approved by your PMO / or Manager.
Overall, the planning phase focuses on defining project parameters, establishing a clear roadmap, allocating resources, identifying risks, and setting up effective communication and quality management systems. The outputs generated during this phase provide a solid foundation for the project’s execution and control.