Project Management Home

Project Planning: Putting It All Together. Template:

  • Schedule : how to make accurate time estimates, and how to set milestones.
  • Budget : how to build and manage a budget and how the procurement processes work.
  • Risk Management : tools help to identify and manage different types of risk and how to use a risk management plan to communicate and resolve risks.
  • Communication Plan : how to draft and manage a communication plan and how to organize project documentation.

Components of a project plan:

  • Project scope and goals, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), the budget, and management plans.
  • Tasks. Milestones. People. Documentation. Time.

1. Schedule

Project kick-off meeting agenda: Introduction, Background, Goals and scope, Roles, Collaboration, What comes next, Questions.

1.1 Milestones

Set up Milestones and Deadline.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) : sorts project milestones and tasks into the order they need to be completed. (how and why)

  • Start with the high-level, overarching project picture. Brainstorm with your team to list the major deliverables and milestones.
  • Identify the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet those milestones.
  • Examine those tasks and break them down further into sub-tasks.

1.2 Time Estimation

The planning fallacy : our tendency to underestimate the amount of time used, due to optimism bias. -> adding task buffers.

Capacity planning (allocate enough people and resources to tasks) and the Critical path (tasks with top priority) (reading 1, reading 2):

  1. Capture all tasks
  2. Set dependencies
  3. Create a network diagram
  4. Make time estimates
  5. Find the critical path

Getting accurate time estimates from your team (using Soft Skills) : Asking the right questions; Negotiating effectively; Practicing empathy.

1.3 Tools

Best practices:

  • Carefully review deliverables, milestones, and tasks.
  • Give yourself time to plan.
  • Recognize and plan for the inevitable: things will go wrong.
  • Stay curious.
  • Champion your plan.

Tools: Gantt chart, Spreadsheets and Asana.

2. Budget

Key components: Resource cost rate (Direct/Indirect costs), Reserve analysis, Contingency budget (buffer funds), Cost of quality (all of the costs that are incurred to deliver a quality).

  • Understand stakeholders’ need.
  • Budget for surprise expense.
  • Maintaining adaptability.
  • Reviewing and re-forecasting throughout the project.

Create project a budget: (1) Historical data. (2) Leverage (use to maximal advantage) experts. (3) Bottom-up. thinking from beginning to end. Break the project into tasks, then evaluate. (4) Confirm accuracy. (5) Baseline.

Maintain a project budget. Monitor & Cost control.

Procurement : obtaining all of the materials, services, and supplies required to complete the project. Vendor management.

  1. Initiating - Non-Disclosure Agreement;
  2. Selecting vendor - Request for Proposal used to solicit bids from vendors so the project team can select the best vendor for a project;
  3. Contract writing - Statement of Work describes the products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for an organization;
  4. Controlling. making payments and maintaining and ensuring quality.
  5. Completing. measuring your success.

3. Risk Management

Risk Management Process

  • Identify, analyze, evaluate, treat, and control.
  • An opportunity is a potential positive outcome of a risk.
  • Identify risk by create a fishbone diagram, help the team to brainstorm potential causes of a problem or risk and sort them into useful categories.
    • (1) Define the problem; (2) Identify the categories; (3) Brainstorm the causes; (4) Analyze the causes.
  • Risk type : (1) internal : time, budget, scope; (2) external risk; (3) single point of failure.

Risk mitigation strategies.

  1. Avoid the risk
  2. Accept the risk
  3. Reduce or control the risk
  4. Transfer the risk

Risk management plan: Probability chart, Impact chart, Probability and Impact Matrix, Risk to project.

4. Communication Plan

Effective communication:

  • Recognize and understand individual differences
  • Brainstorm and craft the appropriate message
  • Deliver your message
  • Obtain feedback and incorporate that feedback going forward

Communication Plan template : organizes and documents the process, types, and expectations of communication for the project: what (types), who, when (frequency, key dates), how (delivery method), why (goals), where (resources links).

Project documentation -> Knowledge management. what to share with who and when.