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Project Planning

Overview

  • Kicking-off the planning phase

  • Setting and reaching milestones, and identifying tasks

  • Budgeting process

  • Identifying and planning for risks

  • Documentation

Planning Phase Overview​

  • PM gets assigned

  • Project goals, scope, and deliverables have to be approved

  • Team members get assigned

  • Sign off on project charter

Benefits of Planning​

  • Understand the work needed to achieve your goals

  • Coordinate efforts and timelines with other teams, contractors, and vendors

  • Understand and prepare for risks

  • Get buy-in from key members of the teams

  • Demonstrates to stakeholders that the team is taking care to start the project with a detailed plan.

Launching the Planning Phase​

Usually involves the following:

  • Budget

  • Schedule

  • Risk management plan

Project kick-off meeting: The first meeting in which a project team comes together to ground everyone in a shared vision, gain a shared understanding of the project's goals and scope, and to understand each person's individual roals within the team.

Kick-off meeting agenda:

  • Introductions

  • Backgounds

    • How the project came to be

    • Why the project matters

    • Shared vision

  • Goals and scope

    • In-scope and out-of-scope

    • Target launch date

    • Milestone

  • Roles

    • Everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities

  • Collaboration

    • Shared tools and docs

    • Communication mediums and protocols

  • What comes next

    • Set expectations

  • Questions from group

Best Practices

  • Ask a teammate to take notes on key points and action items.

  • After the meeting, send a follow up email that summarizes the key points and outcomes from the meeting, and any action items to attendees.

  • Invite attendees to reach out for queries.

Tasks and milestones​

Milestone: An important point within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project.

Task An activity that needs to bee accomplished within a set period of time.

One or more task completions may lead to the completion of a milestone and similarly one or more milestone completions may lead to the goal.

Setting milestones gives you a clear understanding of the amount of work your project will require.

Setting milestones​

  • Top-down Scheduling: The PM lays out the higher-level milestones, then works to break down the effort into project tasks. The PM works with their team to ensure all tasks are captured.

  • Bottom-up scheduling: PM looks at all the tasks that need to be done and then rolls them into milestones.

Work breakdown structure​

WBS: A tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project in a hierarchy, in the order they need to be completed.

After creating a WBS, you will have:

  • Sets of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each of your milestones.

  • Team members assigned to each task

After creating a WBS, you will have:

  • Sets of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each of your milestones.

  • Team members assigned to each task.

To assign tasks between 2 or more team members with the same roles, take into consideration each person's familiarity with the tasks at hand.

Project Plan​

Essential elements:

  • Tasks

  • milestones

  • Team

  • docs

  • Time

Time Estimates​

Time estimation: A prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task.

Effort estimation: A prediction of the amount of difficulty of active work required to complete a task.

Example: Effort estimate for painting a wall maybe 30 mins, but the time estimate for the task will be 24 hours because it takes into account the total time taken for the wall to be ready for use aka drying of paint included.

Unrealistic effort estimate: When you've underestimated the amount of time it'll take to complete a task.

To avoid unrealistic estimates, communicate with the teammates working on the task as they will have the most realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task, and will be able to provide you with the best estimate.

Buffer: Extra time added to the end of a task or project to account for unexpected slowdowns or delays in work progress. Types include:

  • Task Buffers: To be used primarily for tasks that are out of the project team's control. Ex: things that rely on external factors like deliveries of products before commencing work etc. To be used sparingly for tasks within the project team's control.

  • Project Buffers

Capacity planning and Critical path​

Capacity: The amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time.

Capacity Planning: Refers to the act of allocating people and resources to project tasks, and determining whether or not you have the necessary resources required to complete the work on time.

Critical Path: The list of project milestones you must reach in order to meet the project goal on schedule, as well as the mandatory tasks that contribute to the completion of each milestone.

It is the brare minimum number of taks and milestones you need to reach your project goal.

WBS compliments Critical path creation.

  • Identify which tasks can happen in parallel vs which can happen sequentially.

  • Determine which project tasks have a fixed start date.

  • Determine which project tasks have an earliest start date.

  • Identify if a task has float (also called slack).

Float: Amount of time you can wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule and threatens the project outcome.

Tasks on the critical path should have zero float.

Soft skills: Personal characteristics that help people work effectively with others.

  • Asking the right Questions

  • Negotiating effectively

  • Practicing empathy

Developing a Project Schedule​

An anchor of a good project plan is a clear schedule, containing all the tasks of a project, their owners, and when they need to be completed.

Gantt Chart: Horizontal char that maps out the project schedule.

Project Plan 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.

Budgeting​

Project budget: The estimated monetary resources needed to achieve the project's goals and objectives.

Forecast: A cost estimate, or prediction over a period of time.

Budgets should be prepared alongside schedule planning.

When creating a budget, the following must be accounted for:

  • Understanding stakeholder needs.

  • Budgeting for surprise expenses.

  • Maintaining adaptibility.

  • Reviewing and reforecasting throughout the project.

Factors to consider when creating a budget:

  • Resource cost rates: Cost of a resource

  • Reserve analysis: A method to check for remaining project resources

  • Contingency budget: Money that is included to cover potentially unforeseen events that aren't accounted for in a cost estimate.

  • Cost of quality: Costs that are incurred to prevent issues with products, processes, or tasks. It includes:

    • Prevention Costs

    • Appraisal Costs

    • Internal failure Costs

    • External failure costs

Best practices for budgeting:

  • Reference historical data.

  • Utilize your team, mentors and managers.

  • Time-phase your budget.

  • Check as many times as you can.

  • Create a baseline first.

  • Bottom-up budgeting.

Maintaining a project budget​

Monitoring the budget is crucial for a PM to enforce accountability in terms of spending.

Milestones are a great opportunity to re-review the budget, to identify if anything needs to be reset or revisited throughout the project.

Fixed Contracts: Paid for when certain milestones are reached.

Time & Materials contracts: Paid monthly based on hours worked and other fees associated with the work, like travel and meals.

Cost control: Practice where a PM identifies factors that might impact their budget and then creates effective actions to minimize variances.

Budgeting terms​

Cash Flow: The inflow and outflow of cash on your project. It is important to understand as you need funding (inflow) to keep your project running.

CAPEX: Capital Expenses are an organization's major, long-term, upfront expenses, such as buildings, equipment, and vehicles.

OPEX: Opertating Expenses are short-term expenses that are required for the day-to-day tasks involved in running the company, such as wages, rent and utilities. Often recurring in nature.

Contingency Reserves: To cover for identified risks. Ex: Higher than expected monthly subscription for a software license.

Management Reserves: To cover for unidentified risks.

Procurement​

Obtaining all of the materials, services, and supplies required to complete the project.

Vendors: Individuals or businesses who provide essential goods and services.

Vendor Management:

  • Sourcing vendors

  • Getting quotes for vendors' work

  • Determining which vendors will fulfill your needs

  • Negotiating vendor contracts

  • Setting deadlines for vendors

  • Evaluating performance

  • Ensuring vendors are paid

Procurement process​

  • Initiating

  • Selecting

  • Contract writing

  • Control

  • Completing

Agile Procurement management:

  • Collaborative with both the project team and end supplier.

  • Emphasis on the relationship between these parties

  • Project team plays a larger role in identifying what needs to be procured.

  • Living contract

Traditional Procurement management:

  • Focus on standard contracts with clear terms and deliverables.

  • Project manager may be responsible for end-to-end procurement.

  • Contracts may feature lengthy and extensive documentation.

Procurement documentation​

  • Initiating Phase -> NDAs

  • Selection Phase -> Request for Proposal (RFP)

  • Contracting Phase -> Statement of Work (SoW)

NDA: A document that keeps confidential information within the organization.

RFP: A document that outlines the details of the project. Used to get bids from vendors.

SoW: A document that clearly lays out the products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for the organization.

Risk Management​

Risk: Potential event which can occur and can impact your project.

Issue: Known or real problem that can affect the ability to complete a task.

Risk Management: The process of identifying and evaluating potential risks and issues that could impact a project. It provides an understanding of:

  • What could go wrong

  • Who you'll need to consult

  • How it could be mitigated

Phases of risk management​

  • Identify the risk

  • Analyze the risk

  • Evaluate the risk

  • Treat the risk

  • Monitor and control the risk

Identifying risks​

Cause-and-effect diagram / Fishbone diagram: A diagram that shows the possible causes of an event and risk.

Steps to create a fishbone diagram:

  • Define the problem

  • Identify the categories

  • Brainstorm the causes

  • Analyze the causes

Risk register: A table or chart that contains a list of risks.

Risk assessment: The stage of risk management where qualities of a risk are estimated or measured.

Probability and impact matrix: A tool used to prioritize project risk.

Impact: The damage a risk could cause, if it occurs. Impact is determined on a scale of high to low.

Inherent risk: The measure of a risk, calculated by its probability and impact.

Risk appetite: The willingness of an org to accept the possible outcomes of a risk.

Types of Risks​

  • Time risks

  • Budget risks

  • Scope risks

  • External risks

  • Single point of failure

Dependency: A relationship between 2 project tasks, where the start or completion of one depends on the start or completion of the other.

Risk mitigation strategies​

  • Avoid

  • Minimize

  • Transfer; to someone else

  • Accept

Decision tree: A flowchart that helps visualize the wider impact of a decision on the rest of a project.

Risk management plan​

A living document that contains information regarding high level risks and the mitgiation plans for those risks.

Communicate identified risks early on with stakeholders.

Effective Communication​

  • Clear

  • Honest

  • Relevant

  • Frequent

  • Recognize and understand individual differences

  • Brainstorm and craft the appropriate message

  • Deliver your message

  • Obtain feedback and incorporate that going forward

Communication Plan​

Organizes and documents the process, types and expectations of communication for the project.

  • What needs to be communicated

  • Who needs to communicate

  • When communication needs to happen

  • Why and how to communicate

  • Where the information being communicated is stored

Project Documentation​

Documenting and organizing plans provides visibility and accountability. Having up-to-date plans will help ensure there's no room for miscommunication.

Summarize relevant info for those who need to stay informed on key points but don't need all the info.

Knowledge Management: A way of ensuring that project data can be accessed in future by others who need it for informing decisions or planning similar projects.