10 Steps To Create A Project Plan

10 Steps To Create A Project Plan

Project Planning is a discipline addressing how to complete a project in a certain time frame, usually with defined stages and designated resources. This article provides a 10-steps critical to planning a project before execution, establishing a roadmap for project managers to follow in the future to achieve the project goal. These 10-critical steps are listed below to provide an overview conducive for project managers.

Step 1: Explain the Project Plan to Key Stakeholders & Discuss Key Components

One of the most imperative living documents in Project Management is the Project Plan which can be expected to change over the life of the project. Like a roadmap, it provides the direction for the project, and like the traveler, the project manager needs to set the course for the project, which in project management terms means creating the project plan.

A common misconception is that the Project Plan means Project Timeline, which remains only one of the many components of the plan. The project plan is a prime work product from the entire planning process, hence it contains all of the planning documents for the project.

Many project key stakeholders are those who don't understand the full nature of the project plan and are affected by both the project and corresponding results. The first step is to explain the planning process and the project plan to all of the key stakeholders, hence their familiarity with the documents set and related consent is mandatory, and later they have to review, sign and approve the documents pertaining to them.

Step 2: Define Roles and Responsibilities

Defining roles and responsibilities is an imperative component of an organization hence establishing the communication lines is mandatory so that there is an organized work execution and people are held accountable for their job activities.

Since all key stakeholders will not review all documents so it is necessary to determine their roles and responsibilities and nominate who will approve which parts of the plan and any ambiguity is averted. Some of the key people in the organization who are part of the project as well are mentioned below;

• Project Sponsor: Anyone who owns the funds and sponsors the whole project. A sponsor needs to review all project aspects and give approval accordingly. The sponsor can be a single person, organization, or group of pre-described elements, together.

• Designated Business Experts: Business experts will define their requirements and justify their end product, so they will develop the project scope baseline, and approve the documents relating to the project scope.

• Project Manager: The Project Manager (PM) will create, execute, and control the project plan, directing the involved parties to execute the job activities accordingly so that the end product is achieved. Hence he/she developed the project plan, so he doesn't need to approve it.

• Project Team: A Project Team needs to participate in the development of various project aspects as listed below;

• Identify the project target
• Identify the involved risks and evaluate the risk severity
• Project quality
• Project design issues, and controls

A Project Team can consist of the following people

• CEO/MD
• Head of Department
• Project Manager
• Assistant Project Manager
• Engineers
• Business Analysts
• All stakeholders
• Supervisors/ Foremen

• End-User: The End user is the person who uses the ready product, and also participates in the development of the plan, and reviews the plan accordingly, but rarely do they actually need to sign off. In fact, they describe what they need when in form of the product.

• Others: Other stakeholders involved in the Project Team also rarely approve the documents pertaining to them such as Quality Plan, Procurement Plan, etc., and are the following ones;
• Quality
• Risk Analysts
• Auditors
• Procurement Specialists

Step 3: Kick-Off Meeting

The involved stakeholders sit together and discuss their plans, concerns, and suggestions before the start of the work activities. It is an effective method to initiate the planning process as well. It helps in building the trust among the team members and ensures that everyone shares his/her ideas and they are taken into account. A Kick-Off meeting also demonstrates the commitment of the sponsor body to the project. A few topics are listed below that might be included in a kickoff meeting;

1. Business Vision & Strategy
2. Project Vision
3. Roles and Responsibilities
4. Team Building
5. Team Commitment
6. Collective Decision
7. Ground Rules
8. Group Size

Step 4: Scope Statement Development

The Scope Statement is arguably an imperative documented component of the project plan, providing a foundation for the rest of the project. It is developed to get common agreement among the stakeholders about the scope, and clearly describes the outcome/end product of the whole project. It is the basic component of the agreement between the sponsor and all stakeholders and miscommunication chances are decreased.

There are broad chances the document will grow with the passage of project life and change accordingly. The scope statement consists of the following points;

• Business needs and problems
• Project objectives, what will occur during the project, and how to solve the problems
• Project completion benefits, as well as the justification
• Project scope, including and excluding the deliverables
• Key milestones, the approach, and other components as dictated by the size and nature of the project

It can be treated like a contract between the project manager and sponsor, one that can only be changed with sponsor approval.

Step 5: Develop Scope Baseline

Once the deliverables are confirmed in the scope statement, they need to be developed into a work breakdown structure (WBS) which is a decomposition of all the deliverables in the project. This deliverable WBS forms the scope baseline and has these elements.

1. Identify the work activities to be done, and corresponding deliverables.
2. Big or complex work activities are broken down into sub-work activities so are deliverables.
3. The lowest level of broken work structure is called Work Package and can be numbered to correspond to activities and tasks.

Note: The WBS is often thought of as a task breakdown but technically activities and tasks are two separate things.

Step 6: Development of Schedule and Cost Baselines

Some basic but conducive steps involved in the schedule and cost baseline development are listed hereunder;

1. Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the work packages, creating a Work Breakdown Structure of tasks.
2. Identify the task-related resources.
3. Estimate each task completion timeframe.
4. Estimate each task completion cost.
5. Identify the tasks dependent on other tasks.
6. Develop the time schedule for the whole project.
7. Develop the cost baseline, which is a time-phased budget, or cost by time period.

Step 7: Create Baseline Management Plan

Once the scope, schedule, and cost baseline have been established, the team can adapt the steps to manage the variance to these plans. These management plans usually include a review and approval process for modifying the baselines.

Different approval levels are usually needed for different types of changes. In addition, not all new requests will result in changes to the scope, schedule, or budget, but a process is needed to study all new requests to determine their impact on the project.

Step 8: Staffing Plan Development

The staffing plan is a chart that shows the time periods, usually month, quarter, year, that each resource will come onto and leave the project. It is similar to other project management charts, like a Gantt Chart, but does not show tasks, estimates, begin and end dates, or the critical path.

Step 9: Analyze Project Quality & Risks

Project Quality

Project Quality is not related to the end product only but it is one that sponsors and key stakeholders actually want to use. The emphasis is on preventing errors, instead of inspecting the product at the project end and eliminating the identified errors. Project Quality also recognizes that quality is a management responsibility and needs to be performed throughout the project.

Project Quality creation involves;

• Setting the standards
• Acceptance criteria
• Metrics for usage throughout the project

Project Risks

Risk is the element that may or may not happen but has the potential to cause harm and influence the project and outcome significantly. Analyzing risk involves determining the risk probability and how many times it can happen and evaluating the corresponding risk impact/severity level. It is mandatory that both elements' probability & impact are quantified so that risk factors with the highest risk level are given more priority and controlled timely. Risk Management includes not only risk assessment but the development of risk management plans as well to understand, communicate, and control the high-risk events.

Step 10: Communicate

One important aspect of the project plan is the COMMUNICATION PLAN. This document states such things as;

1. Who on the project wants which reports, how often, in what format, and using what media?
2. How issues will be escalated and when?
3. When project information will be stored and who can access it?

For complex projects, a formal communication matrix is a tool that can help determine some of the above criteria. It helps document the project team's agreed-on method for communicating various aspects of the project, such as routine status, problem resolution, decisions, etc.

Once the project plan is complete, it is important not just to communicate the importance of the project plan to the sponsor, but also to communicate its contents once it's created. This communication should include such things as;

1. Review and approval of the project plan
2. process for changing the contents of the plan
3. Next step - executing and controlling the project plan and key stakeholder responsibilities in the upcoming phases