Creating a Project Plan

We need plans to keep all thing organized and on track. An effective project plan will help start work with everything necessary, from goals and budgets to crucial milestones — all in one place.

Having a proper plan in place, you’ll be able to recognize and respond to unforeseen changes before they get out of hand. How to create a work plan that will lead your project to success?

In this post, we describe the secrets of creating effective project plans. Let’s dive in!

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

What is a project plan?

A project plan is a formal document that contains all planning decisions, approved project scope, and costs.

Project planning includes defining the scope, objectives, and ways in general to achieve them. This process goes before a plan as it is here where everything is discussed. All crucial planning points and outputs then make up a plan.

Creating a plan, a manager should have a good command of knowledge and skills from the very beginning. Knowing them, they will raise the bar for the successful project’s implementation. It will also help to foresee and avoid unnecessary mistakes and wrong decisions and help to save time and reduce costs.

What is the purpose of the project plan?

Project management plans should address and consequently answer the following questions:

Why?

This question is about the reasons why a project is sponsored and the problem it addresses.

What?

This is about involved people, their roles and responsibilities, and how they are organized.

Who?

This is about involved people, their roles and responsibilities, and the way they are supposed to be organized.

When?

It is about the project’s schedule/timeline.

The components of a project plan

There are no identical plans. However, we can define standard elements they should contain:

• A vision with all project objectives and goals.
• Target audience description.
• Roles and responsibilities.
• Context details.
• Communication strategy.
• Project timelines.
• Tasks and deliverables that are required to achieve the objectives.
• Resources needed (people, organizations, real and virtual resources, etc.)
• Budget and costs.
• A contingency plan.
• A document management system.

What is the difference between a project plan and a project management plan?

Both plans refer to two different concepts and differ in many ways, although many companies use both terms as synonymous.

• A project plan is a higher-level plan. This is a visionary document that has a low level of detail. It provides the vision of the project steps, and the “what” question accompanies all the details.
• A project management plan is an execution document with a high level of revitalization. This doc typically provides a complete picture and executes the vision of the plan. All the details go with the “how” question.

Sometimes, these two terms can be merged for small projects. In larger projects, they should be divided to refer to different concepts.

7 project planning steps: how to build a winning project plan?

Let’s define what goes into a project plan and what project managers should do to succeed while planning effectively.

1. Communication

Communication is the key to successful management. Efficient planning should start with communicating project goals, participants, tasks, etc. Project managers define who will be responsible for particular tasks, set deadlines, and stay in touch with everything going on in a project.

This stage of project planning should be addressed during the entire project implementation.

2. Identifying stakeholders and defining goals

Stakeholders can be direct or indirect with more or less significant impact on a project respectively. It is critical to determine those who directly influence a plan and then seriously consider their needs.

Who can be a stakeholder?

• A project manager who performs planning with the next creation, execution, and control.
• A sponsor who funds the whole project and approves it.
• A team that participates in many crucial aspects (development, quality, design issues, etc.).
• End users.

At this stage, the interviews with key stakeholders are held. During these interviews, a project manager defines what problem the project addresses and why it is sponsored.

This is the WHY question.

3. Defining a project scope

This critical stage of project planning includes discussing the plan basics (product description, justification, acceptance criteria, deliverables, constraints, assumptions, exclusions, cost estimates, and so on).

All stakeholders come to a complete understanding and agreement. As soon as it is accomplished, all those points make up a project scope statement.

This is the WHAT question.

4. Identifying roles and responsibilities

One of the essential duties of project managers is to assign tasks. Everyone in a team should know their roles and responsibilities. Each task should have a definite number of participants.

This is the WHO question.

5. Project scheduling

As soon as the project manager defines roles and responsibilities for all team members, the next step is to set work duration for each resource with start and end dates.

This is the WHEN question.

Now it is time to approach the next point — what management tools can be used for effective project scheduling.

6. Visualizing a project plan with Gantt charts

Scheduling with its visualization is only part of planning. The entire project is a much more complicated entity.

An effective online Gantt chart maker such as GanttPRO helps project managers and their teams in the following fields:

• Create tasks and subtasks.
• Assign them to team members.
• Define duration (with start and end dates).
• Set task dependencies between tasks and events.
• Set project milestones.
• Identify resources needed for each task.
• Track the progress of tasks and the whole project.
• Enable a critical path — the shortest time needed for project completion.
• Define costs.
• Collaborate with all team members involved.

GanttPRO visualizes all necessary actions that make up a planning process and a plan.

7. Managing risks

Project management includes managing risks. Almost every stage in every sphere goes with risks. That is why it is recommended to define what can go wrong in the early stages.

Professional project managers assess risks and generate plans of how to handle them. Their teams should also know the possible reaction to any changes.

To sum up

Seems like now you’re officially a work planning pro!

Moving forward, you will be able to keep your team on track and address challenges without trouble. And a powerful project management tool like GanttPRO will assist you in working through each of the steps of your project plan with confidence.

Keep reading and get more details here: How to Create a Project Plan in 7 Steps https://blog.ganttpro.com/en/how-to-create-a-project-plan-step-by-step/.