Project Planning

• Prior works in initiation phase
  • Project Manager gets assigned
  • Project goals, scope, and deliverables have to be approved
  • Team members get assigned
  • Sign off on your project charter

What to Plan?

• Schedule
• Budget
• Risk management plan

• Start with a project kick-off meeting
• Components of a plan: tasks, milestones, people. documentation, time

Schedule

Tasks and Milestones

• Top-down vs bottom-up scheduling
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)
  1. Start with the high-level, overarching project picture. Brainstorm with your team to list the major deliverables and milestones.
  2. Identify the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet those milestones.
  3. Examine those tasks and break them down further into sub-tasks.

How to create a work breakdown structure and why you should | Lucidchart

Timeline

• Effort Estimation (active time only) and Time Estimation (inactive time included), see estimation
• Task buffers and project buffers
• Planning Fallacy: we tend to underestimate the time needed and the risks and costs, due to optimism bias (bad things won’t happen to me.)
• Capacity Planning: allocating people and resources to people, determine whether the task can be done on time and within resources
• Critical Path
  • The longest path of dependent tasks
  • Identify sequential and parallel tasks
  • Identify fixed/earliest start date.
  • Critical path should have zero float/slack (no room for delay)
• Steps to create a critical path
  1. Capture all tasks
  2. Set dependencies
  3. Create a network diagram
  4. Make time estimates
  5. Find the critical path (forward pass and backward pass)
• Critical path resources
  • How to Use Critical Path Method for Complete Beginners (with Examples) | workamajig
  • Critical Path Method for Project Management | wrike

Building Plan

• Tools
  • Gantt chart
  • Linked documents
  • Kanban board (for agile projects)

Project Plan Best Practices

• Review deliverables, milestones, and tasks
• Give yourself time
• Recognize and plan for the inevitable: things will go wrong
• Stay curious
• Champion your plan

• Spreadsheet templates
  • Top Project plan Templates for Excel | Smartsheet
  • Free Google timeline Templates | Smartsheet
  • Project Plan Timeline Template | Google
  • Simple Gantt chart | Microsoft

Budget

Also see budget.

Creating Budget

• Framework of a budget
  • Understanding stakeholder’s needs
  • Budget for surprise expenses
  • Review and re-forecast
• Factors of a budget
  • Resource cost rates
  • Reserve analysis
  • Contingency budget = to cover unforeseen expenses
  • Cost of quality
    • Prevention costs
    • Appraisal costs
    • Internal failure costs
    • External failure costs
• Baseline budget and re-baseline
• Indirect and direct costs
• Estimated vs. final cost
• Budget templates
  • Design templates for budgets | Microsoft Create
  • Website budget | Microsoft Create
  • Budget Template | Google Sheets

Managing Budget

• Proactive management of budget
  • Establish a sign off plan and inform the appropriate stakeholders of any changes that occur
  • Manage changes as they’re made
  • Accept that budget misses will happen
  • Adequately account for, adapt, and manage your budget with that risk in mind
• Challenges
  • Budget pre-allocation
  • Inaccurately calculating TCO (total cost of ownership)
  • Scope creep
• CAPEX (capital expenses) vs OPEX (operating expenses)

Procurement

• Vendor management
  • Sourcing vendors
  • Getting quotes
  • Deciphering which vendor will fulfill the needs
  • Negotiating contracts
  • Setting deadlines
  • Evaluating performance
  • Payment
• Procurement process
  1. Initiating: planning what you need to meet your project goals
  2. Selecting: deciding which suppliers and vendors to use
  3. Contract writing: developing, reviewing, and signing contracts
  4. Controlling: making payments and maintaining and ensuring quality
  5. Completing: measuring your success
• Documents
  • Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
  • Request for Proposal (RFP)
  • Statement of Work (SoW)

Communication

• Communication plan
  • Project stakeholders
  • Communication frequency and method
  • Key dates
  • Goals
  • Barriers
• Best practices
  • Keep all documents at one place to ensure visibility, continuity, and accountability. e.g. Google Drive, Notion.
  • Avoid leaking sensitive info (e.g. PII)