A project schedule and set of milestones is only as realistic as the depth of project planning that has taken place to determine all of the project tasks. Projects may have been approved based on high level plans but it is only after the detailed project planning that it will be clear whether it is achievable. Consequently, plan project tasks with key stakeholders to ensure that all significant project tasks are captured in the project plan.
Project Management Planning
Project management planning starts with determining the approach to the project -- either waterfall or iterative -- and then developing from there the normal set of project tasks that are needed to achieve the project objectives. This project plan should have captured the scope, time and cost and encapsulated them into a set of scheduled tasks and resources. This could be developed by the project manager in one of two general ways:
- Interacting with all key subject matter experts to determine and create the detailed project tasks
- Delegating detailed planning with key subject matter experts and then assembling the final plan from those input plans
Planning a Project
Planning a project may have stopped with the project management planning and indeed that may have been sufficient if the subject matter experts have given the right level of detail and the project manager has accurately captured that into the plan. However, it is important to ensure that the detailed project planning has included all of the key stakeholders to ensure that all of the project tasks have been captured. Those other key stakeholders may include one or more of:
- Quality Management - people dedicated to ensuring that projects follow the appropriate quality management system and produce the appropriate project deliverables according to predefined standards. Project managers may underestimate the number of documents needed or the work involved to produce deliverables to the right standard
- Compliance - people dedicated to ensuring that projects follow the appropriate compliance guidelines and ensuring compliance with external regulations. This may also include ensuring that vendors meet corporate standards and the consequent project need for current vendor audits
- Infrastructure - people managing the IT infrastructure and ensuring that machine room space, power, cabling and cooling are available as well as integration into network and miscellaneous services such as backup and restore
- Third party suppliers - whether for project resource or expertise, it is important to understand their contribution and ability to meet obligations according to schedule. These external dependencies are a source of significant schedule and cost risk
- IT Service Management - transitioning a project to operational service often requires a number of unscheduled tasks involving creation of knowledgebase materials and knowledge transfer
- Account Management - larger projects may involve a significant amount of work to both provide access to and access within a new solution
- Training - creation and delivery of training needs to consider all of the stakeholder groups and the time they need training: early adopters, testers, administrators, power users, regular users...
- Business change management - should be delegated into a separate project plan with a business manager with accountability for its success
- Related projects being executed in parallel with key cross dependencies
Detailed Project Planning
Detailed project planning is essential to a successful project and requires the project manager to engage with all key stakeholders at a level of detail that captures any and all significant project tasks. Capturing these tasks is an essential component to ensuring an achievable project schedule and avoiding future surprises of unscheduled tasks that must be done by the project. More planning cycle information can be found here.
Roger Lever - Early career was in Treasury Banking and this led to my interest in financial investment, especially the stockmarket. Enjoy reading widely ...
