Project Planning
What is meant by project planning?
Project planning is an action plan taken by Project managers for stating how to complete a project within a certain timeframe and with the designated resources. Project planning is a crucial part of project management. In the project planning process, the project plans are documented, the project deliverables and their requirements are defined, and the project schedule is created. Read a blog on The Savvy Project Manager Series: 5 Steps To Successful Project Planning and Don’t Plan Project Kickoff Without Doing These 5 Things to learn more about project planning.
What are the basic steps in project planning?
- Make sure you identify all stakeholders and keep their interests in mind when creating your project plan.
- Write down your goals and scope in your project plan, so it's clearly communicated and easily shareable.
- Identify the team and project deliverables required to meet the project's goals.
- Create a project schedule by looking at each deliverable and defining the series of tasks that must be completed to accomplish each one. For each task, determine the amount of time to be taken, the resources required, and who will be responsible for execution.
- Ensure you know how to manage risk in a project and consider the steps you should take to prevent certain risks from happening or limit their negative impact.
- Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
What are the five phases of project planning?
The five phases of project planning in project management are:
- Conception and initiation: This is the first phase of a project lifecycle. In this phase, you need to make sure your project goals and project scope are defined along with the identification of key stakeholders to be involved in the project.
- Project Planning: This phase focuses on developing a roadmap for the project and it is the key to a successful project management plan. This phase typically begins with setting project goals.
- Execution: This is the phase where project deliverables are developed and completed. Project managers need to make sure everyone stays up to date and that the project runs smoothly.
- Performance and monitoring: This phase measures the project performance and ensures that everything is happening according to the timeline of the project. Project managers will use key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine if the project is on track
- Project closure: This phase represents the completed project. It involves handing over the deliverables to the clients and informing all stakeholders about the closure of the project. The project manager checks for the completion of all the project work and its objectives within its scope. Including the ones that were added along the way. Project managers give a project closure presentation to all the stakeholders to showcase the overall status of the project.