Project Planning

This phase of the project management life cycle details where you’re going and how you intend on getting there.

The main purposes of the project planning phase:

- Establishing business requirements

- Establish the costs, schedule, list of deliverables and delivery dates

- Establish resource plans

- Obtain the approval of management and proceed to the next stage

(Barron & Barron, 2021)

It involves documenting the projects plans, defining the deliverables and any requirements and creating a schedule for the project. In this phase you create a set of plans that will help your team through the implementation and closure phases (Barron & Barron, 2021).

The plans made during this phase are going to help when it comes to managing time, costs, quality, changes, risk, and other issues that are related, such as: staff, external suppliers and ensuring that the project is delivered on time and within budget and schedule.

Processes that are involved in the planning of a project are typically as follows:

1. Initiation – this is where you would put together a business case document, explaining the project needs, along with a feasibility study with the aim of determining the projects viability in terms of costs and projected benefits.

2. Stakeholder involvement – this involves identifying project sponsors and key stakeholders and meeting with them to discuss their needs and expectations.

3. Prioritizing goals – there is only so much a team can do, therefore it is important to identify and prioritize goals in order to make them clearer and easier.

4. Identifying deliverables – this is the point at which you define what the specific deliverables you and your team are going to produce. It would also be a good idea to define a standard that these deliverables should adhere to and develop a metric to track and rank each one.

5. Scheduling – the information that you have acquired from the previous steps will be used now to map out a timeline for the projects.

6. Developing a project plan – this is where you begin to collate all the gathered information from the previous steps into a working plan. It should include all activities and tasks that are required in the appropriate order and workflow.

7. Contingency – account for any issues or problems that may occur down the line. This is done by assessing the risks that are associated with your project and formulating plans that will address them, should the need ever arrive.

(Wrike, 2021)

References

Barron , M. & Barron, A., 2021. Open Text BCcampus. [Online] Available at: https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/chapter/chapter-8-overview-of-project-planning-project-management/ [Accessed 17 October 2021].

Wrike, 2021. Project Management Guide. [Online] Available at: https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-planning-in-project-management/ [Accessed 17 October 2021].