Project management

Topic 2Planning

Overview of processes

Choosing the planning tools and techniques

• Make decisions about:– Presentation and layout

• Who is the audience?– Planning tools

• What company standards does the business have?– Estimating

• Using computer tools? Previous experience? Historical Data? Top down, bottom up, consulting those who will do the work

– Allowances• Is a change budget needed?• Is a contingency plan needed?

• Create the plan design

Identify the products

• Identify the specialist products and the management products to be produced

• Describe the quality requirements of each product and ensure that they are fully understood and agreed by everyone involved

• Sequence the products in the order that they will be created

• Create the Product Breakdown Structure• Create the Product Descriptions (Configuration Items)• Create the Product Checklist• Create the Product Flow Diagram

Identify product activities and dependencies

• Identify all the activities necessary to deliver the products• Establish the interdependencies between activities• Ensure that dependencies both internal and external to the

project are identified• All the activities required to create or change the planned

products have to be identified, includes management activities

External constraints:• The delivery of a product required by this project from

another project• Waiting for a decision from corporate management

Estimating• Techniques:

– Estimates based on actual experience from similar projects– Each component of each product is estimated individually,

estimates are added for stages and project – Estimating on providing functionality similar to other projects– Top down – divide a good project estimate into % of project work

• Identify the products– Identify the activities (planning, developing, quality testing) to

produce the product– Identify the resources needed to do the activities– Estimate the effort required for each activity, how long will it

take?• How realistic are the estimates? Previous experience

helps make estimates more accurate

Scheduling• Draw a planning network

– Produce the network diagram from the activities list based on activity sequence and dependencies

• Assess resource availability– Will the people who will to do the work be available? Who are

they?– What is the cost of buying resources? Are there procurement

issues?• Produce the schedule (Gantt Chart)• Assign responsibilities• Consider the critical path and completion dates• Level resource usage (spread allocations to avoid

overloading)• Confirm control points (milestones)• Calculate costs

Analysing risks• Each resource is examined for its potential risk

– Is the resource a known quantity? – Is the quality of work required and the ability to meet deadlines

known? – Is the level of commitment known? – Will the resource be totally under the control of the Project Manager?

• Where the answer is ‘No’, there is a risk involved – Countermeasures would include tighter and more frequent monitoring

until confidence in the resource is achieved.• Each activity should be checked for risk

– Is there any spare time or does the entire schedule depend on no slippage for the activity?

• Everything on the critical path therefore represents a risk – At the very least the countermeasures should include more frequent

monitoring to give early warning of any problem.• All identified risks should be entered into the Risk Log

Write the narrative

• A narrative explains the plan– explains constraints, external dependencies, assumptions

made, the risks identified and their required countermeasures

• Create the summary– The format of plans presented for approval should be a

summary and should show the major products and activities that will occur throughout the plan and describe the resource and cost requirements.

– Project Board approval will ‘freeze’ the plan as a baseline.

• The graphical presentation of the plan is normally a Gantt or bar chart

Fundamentals• Choose the tools and techniques• Create the plan design• Identify products and describe products• Create the product work breakdown• Identify product activities and dependencies• Estimate the effort required to do activities• Create the schedule (Gantt Chart)

– Assign responsibilities– Consider the critical path and completion dates– Level resource usage (spread allocations to avoid overloading)– Confirm control points (milestones)– Calculate costs

• Analyse the risks and take action to lessen impact• Write the narrative and produce the plan