The Project Plan is one of the most important and useful documents in your toolkit, and should be referred to and updated throughout the project lifecycle. Its initial purpose is to kick-start the project by convincing the decision makers (usually the people who control the funds e.g. the Project Board or Steering Committee) that the project is viable and and will meet their needs and timeframes / budgets / expectations. If the Project Plan is poorly written or contains insufficient detail, the project may not even get past this first decision gate and may never actually get off the ground. Many viable projects have floundered at this stage due to poor planning and communication. On the flip side, if you can deliver a great Project Plan, it establishes your credibility as a Project Manager, starts the project on a sound footing, and provides the team with a mandate for action and a clear direction to follow.
Don’t confuse a Project Plan with a Project Schedule. A schedule is merely a component of a Project Plan, and usually takes the form of a timeline / GANTT chart depicting tasks vs. timeline. A project schedule is a vital tool and should complement the project plan. Larger Project Plans contain several schedules, normally as appendices, that are referred to throughout the document. Such schedules would include an overall timeline, a test schedule, an implementation schedule, the critical path analysis, a resource allocation schedule….etc
Part 1 – What should be in a Project Plan?
The Project Plan serves as a roadmap for the entire project team providing guidance on the priority of activities, the scope of work, the methodologies and governance to be used, who the stakeholders are, the broad strategy to take, how costs and people will be managed, the quality standards in the project, how the project will communicate with stakeholders, how performance and benefits will be measured…etc
The main areas you need to cover in your plan include:
• Project Background
• Objectives
• Scope
• Constraints
• Assumptions
• Dependencies & Impacts
• Issues & Risks
• Methodologies & Strategy
• Controls – Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Resources
• Communications
• Schedule of delivery
• Performance Measurement
• Benefits Realisation
As you can see there are many elements to a Project Plan, and some of the larger plans can stretch well over a hundred pages. This makes structuring your document all the more important. A consistent format with a logical order and clear headings will allow your readers to quickly navigate through the document and get to the details that are important to them.
Try not to omit any of the key areas outlined above, as doing so may come back to bite you, proving costly further down the line should a misunderstanding arise. For example, if you fail to adequately document what is in and out of scope of the project, you may get in to a dispute about who is delivering what. Or you may find that the project delivers a product which you believe is satisfactory, but fails to meet the expectations of the customer as they have different quality criteria to you. These are not situations which you want to find yourself in, and they can be easily avoided by writing a thorough Project Plan. The more relevant information and detail you can include in your plan at this stage, the better…..but there is an emphasis on relevant! Avoid the temptation to bulk out your document with unnecessary paragraphs and try not to repeat yourself.
