Let me clarify:
Planning a project is a complex and challenging activity.
Project management requires you to have knowledge and skills in all areas. You work with a lot of information.
Let’s be honest:
You’ll race against time
Project planning is, however, a structured and logical process.
This article will show you how to use a proven workflow. This is a step-by-step guide to project planning.
Planning is for me one of the most exciting aspects of project management. Although it was the most difficult part of project management at the beginning, it was also the most confusing.
You will need information at every stage of the process. You don’t know where you should start because most of the processes are interrelated.
I tried many different approaches. I finally settled on a workflow with a sequential structure.
In the next step of the process, you use the outputs from previous steps. You don’t have to jump from one area of the process to another.
The motto of a Project Manager is “How to create a simple project plan.”
You might need to adjust some steps to suit your environment. A simple project plan may suffice.
Don’t skip steps if it seems complicated or you have never done that before.
Every step is crucial.
Each step must be evaluated. It is important to understand it.
You may then decide to skip it.
Here’s the trick:
Most likely, you don’t have to skip any step. It is necessary to simplify or scale it down.
It’s not about the Project Management Plan
This section is devoted to the project planning process.
You can learn more about Simple Project Management Plans from me.
I have added a link to Project Management Plan at the end.
Why?
It is more important to understand the process.
Pin it to your Project Management BoardProject Planning Process Steps
There are many steps involved in project planning.
Some of them require hours of work. Some take days, or even weeks to complete.
You can work for one company or one client on different projects.
In such cases, you can reuse the project planning results.
Your project planning skills will improve as you gain more experience.
Okay, let’s now dive into the project planning guide step by step.
Important: Planning is an Iterative process
Here’s a tip:
It’s a step-by-step guide for project planning. Right?
But!
Planning is an iterative process.
This means that you will learn more about the project after you have completed each step.
These details could prompt you to reexamine the results of previous steps.
This means that you will need to repeat the process multiple times. Each iteration will take less. It shouldn’t have any impact on the overall project plan.
1. Plan the project in the following ways
How do you do it?
(Especially in the beginning of the project, when you have very little information)
Yes! But…
Without a signed Project Charter, you should not begin project planning.
It is the foundation for all your future endeavors.
Every action you take on a project must be in line with the Project Charter.
To achieve project objectives, you must plan. It’s more than delivering on time and within budget. Here are two key points to remember from the charter.
First, determine the nature of your project. Next, identify the main requirements and assumptions.
It is important to determine the best project life cycle. It can be adaptive (Scrum Kanban, RUP, RUP) and predictive (waterfall) at the highest level.
Your decision should be aligned with:
Culture of the company
Organizational assets
Existing policies
Existing procedures
Your organization might work in a waterfall environment. It is a bad idea to try to start a Scrum team.
You need to determine the best and most appropriate policies and processes for your environment.
You will be performing this step at a high level.
It is possible that you will need to start every process from scratch. This happens when your company takes on a completely new project.
The second imp
