Project Plan is a document used by the project managers as a guide to project execution and control. Project plan is primarily used to document the assumptions and decisions that facilitate communication among stake holders, project budget, scope and schedule. A project plan should answer following questions
a. What is the problem that project plan is trying to address?
b. What are the major project deliverables?
c. Who will be involved and what would be their responsibilities?
d. What is the project timeline and what are individual milestones?
This document outlines five simple steps to create a project plan which can act as a checklist and prevent project managers from taking wrong path.
Step 1: Create a task list and Work Breakdown Structure
Project manager often underestimates the total time duration and total number of tasks involved. A good project manager would create a WBS – a Hierarchical list of the project phases, tasks and milestones. A good manager will be able to identify all the phases of the project. WBS is critical because its drives the scope of the project. By properly mapping WBS to individual steps will avoid rework and false starts.
1. Identify the major pieces of the project.
2. Break down the major piece to the smallest individual piece.
3. Identify individual milestones, completion points – at the end of each of the major activity to help measure project progress and for bench marking.
4. It is also important to give names for individual milestones.
Step 2: Indent or Outdent tasks to finalize the WBS
Once the project is broken down into tasks, project manager should prioritize each task. A good task list would differentiate major phases of work called summary tasks and the smaller phases of work called sub tasks. Summary Tasks have sub tasks indented underneath them. Subtasks represent the actual work a resource will do, and they don’t have an additional subtasks underneath them.
Step 3: Enter Task durations or work estimates
Work is the amount of effort or person hours needed to complete the task. Duration is the amount of actual time that will pass before the task is completed. If a task is completed by one person in 16 hours, assuming each day working hours is 8 hours; duration will be equal to 2 days. Units can be either in hours, days or weeks. When duration is entered for the task it is important that the duration is entered at the sub task level estimate accurately.
Step 4: Create dependencies between tasks
One of the most critical steps in scheduling is to create task dependencies, or links. This step makes the difference between a plan that can be used as an effective management tool and a plan that can be used a presentation tool.
A dependency occurs when start or finish of one task depends upon start or finish of another task. After the dependencies are set, you can easily identify the critical path and understand the driving factors of the project end date. You can also see the ripple effect in the project when changes are made to a particular task. The challenge planners have is to ensure that all tasks are in the dependency chain.
Step 5: Assign Resources
Resources are allocated based on the needs and priority of the tasks. There are three possible approaches
1. Use project to show responsibility for tasks: This approach takes the least effort to enter and maintain. However, it does not give you any real insight into the status of work during the course of the project.
2. Use project to forecast resource requirements: This approach requires additional effort to enter and maintain assignments, and also requires assigning the correct work and unit values up front in the planning process. It provides more accurate information upfront but does not provide information about the status of work during the project.
3. Use project to forecast resource requirements and track what work resources actually do on tasks: This approach allows managers to see how work on tasks is progressing during the course of the project.
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