Done right, project management planning leads to an approved process to build, implement, monitor and control projects so you achieve your intended goals. It helps you tackle every task in a project, create efficient workflows and achieve your project milestones.
If you're looking for new project management planning strategies, stick with this guide to develop a new project planning process.
Why is project planning necessary?
Projects are large undertakings with imposing deadlines, limited resources and looming stakeholder expectations. That's why project planning is so essential to successful projects.
The purpose of project planning is to ensure all projects are completed on time, on budget and that they meet standards of quality. An effective project plan aligns all workers and allows for effective communication throughout the project lifecycle. You'll be better positioned to achieve your vision with minimal risks or roadblocks along the way.
Many project managers use the PERT project planning model to help structure their project workflows.
Step 1: use a project planning template
Make the project planning process a little easier on yourself. With a project planning template, you have a visual blueprint for how to structure the entire project lifecycle. The template is built like a Kanban project board, and it's designed to simplify your planning process as you:
Align all stakeholders around shared priorities
Set clear project goals and objectives
Determine project milestones and deliverables
Create the project work schedule to manage your time, budget and working resources
Outline the project plan so you keep workers focused and prevent scope creep
Step 2: align your project stakeholders
After securing and building your project planning template, you'll want to identify the stakeholders of your project. Project stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations who may affect or be affected by a project. They include:
The project sponsor
The project leader
Project team members
Project testers
Contractors
Consultants
Customers and clients
Users of the project output
Groups impacted by the project
And others
The task of stakeholder management starts with the identification of all stakeholders but doesn’t end until the project itself is completed. Throughout the life cycle of the project, stakeholders need to be managed, that is, updated about project progress and their feedback taken into consideration. Good communication is key, and it is the job of the project manager to maintain a productive dialog with everybody involved in and affected by the project, not only the core project members.
On the other hand, some projects may be so large and complex that you aren’t able to give all stakeholders an equal amount of attention. In this case, it’s important to identify the key stakeholders, i.e. those who can make or break the success of your project. Key stakeholders can include the project sponsor (the individual with overall accountability for the project) and senior management. Prioritizing the needs and objectives of key stakeholders will help increase the chances of your project’s success.
Teamwork really does make the dream work. Aligning stakeholders and all team members simplifies planning schedules and simplifies workflows. Learn more about the value of team alignment here.
Step 3: identify project goals and objectives
A project’s goals and objectives depend on the needs of the project stakeholders. Therefore, knowing who your stakeholders are and what their needs are is the first step in determining your project’s goals. A good way to determine stakeholders’ needs are stakeholder interviews, which you should conduct at the very beginning of the project planning process.
You can take notes during these interviews and save them directly in a project stakeholder mind map, similar to the one pictured above.
Once you have a clear overview of your (key) stakeholders’ needs, you can turn them into a set of measurable goals, following the SMART principle:
Specific
Measurable
Agreed
Realistic
Time-bound
Goals vs objectives
Project goals are the desired outcomes of a project, which can be formulated into broad statements such as “Increase the number of website visitors by 30% by the end of the year” or “Collect 500 sales qualified leads within the next three months”. A project can have multiple goals.
Goals are about what the project needs to achieve. Objectives, on the other hand, are about HOW these goals can be achieved. Each goal can thus have several objectives.
Example:
Goal:
Collect 500 sales qualified leads within the next three months
Objectives:
Create a white paper about the benefits of agile task management to collect marketing qualified leads
Set up a campaign on LinkedIn to send potential leads to the white paper landing page
Follow the white paper up with a webinar to turn readers into sales qualified leads
Step 4: identify project deliverables
Project deliverables are the tangible products that are produced or provided as a result of the project. We can generally distinguish between two types of deliverables:
Project deliverables, such as the project plan, minutes, or reports.
Product deliverables, such as intellectual material, consumer goods, contracts, and so on.
Deliverables have the following attributes:
They can be intended for both internal and external stakeholders: Minutes, for instance, may be intended for the core project team, while official reports may be created to keep the client or other external stakeholders informed.
They usually have a due date: Due dates are an important part of any project planning process — this is true for goals, objectives, deliverables, and individual tasks.
They may represent stages of a project: Phases or stages of a project may be represented by major deliverables. In case of a new mobile app, for instance, deliverables/phases could include: 1. App concept, 2. Mockup, 3. Design, and 4. Functioning prototype.
They may represent individual tasks within a project: Individual tasks can produce deliverables, but oftentimes multiple (dependent) tasks have to be completed in order to create a deliverable.
Deliverables vs objectives
Project deliverables and project objectives are closely related, but they are not the same thing. You may need one or multiple deliverables to fulfill an objective, or you may be able to fulfill multiple objectives with just one deliverable.
Example:
Objective:
Set up a campaign on LinkedIn to send potential leads to the white paper landing page
Deliverables:
White paper landing page
LinkedIn ad
Campaign report
In this example, there is a logical order in which the deliverables will be due: first, the landing page needs to be created, then the ad campaign, and lastly, after the campaign is finished, a report about the success of the campaign can be written up.
Note that in this example, each deliverable can be broken down further into individual tasks, which themselves may be assigned to different project members. The creation of a landing page, for instance, may require content from the copywriter, a design from the UI designer, and implementation from a developer.
You can also use a goal setting template to align all tasks with desired outcomes.
Step 5: create the project schedule
In traditional project management, the project schedule lists all activities and deliverables with their intended start and end dates, and thus provides a timeline for the entire project.
To work out the schedule for your project, you will need to:
Define activities based on your objectives and deliverables
Break activities down into tasks
Estimate the time each task will take
Locate task dependencies and accommodate them in the schedule
Assign (human) resources to the tasks
Once you know exactly what needs to be done, who will do it, and how long everything takes, you can work out the entire project schedule. While simple in theory, this is probably one of the most difficult areas within the whole project planning process.
If you can’t rely on experiences gathered from previous projects, accurately estimating how long tasks will take is the first difficulty. And even if you work out the perfect schedule on a task level, this plan is of little worth unless you’ve also created a viable resource schedule.
Human resources especially are difficult to manage, as their needs and availabilities often can’t be predicted with a 100% accuracy. Project members may get sick, go on vacation, or simply work slower than anticipated. If not scheduled properly, one resource may also be needed for two different activities at the same time, sometimes resulting in disputes between stakeholders about which task needs to be prioritized.
Best practices for project scheduling
Some of the most common project scheduling issues boil down to an unclear project vision. Without a clear project scope, it's very difficult to schedule the workflow and set realistic milestones.
A detailed project schedule lists out all the deadlines, dependencies, resources and tasks that will be integral parts of the master project. If there are any questions or concerns about the proposed work schedule, you can discuss those matters with your other stakeholders.
It's best not to have those discussions based on anecdotal feelings. That's why a project schedule template is your secret weapon as a project manager. Using a project schedule template, you have a Kanban-style project board that anyone on the team can review. It's visual, understandable and easy to update if any changes need to be made.
Step 6: outline the project plan
Now that you know the contents of a project plan, it’s time to look at how the project plan document is structured. By default, a project plan starts with an executive summary that provides an overview of the entire project management approach, followed by the project scope, goals and objectives, schedule, budget, and other supporting plans.
Your project plan should also include a work breakdown schedule (WBS), which helps your project team plan, define and organize the scope of the work. It outlines what works need to be completed, in what order and how all your work tasks will help you achieve your project goals.
The project plan should also include details about the project scope. Once you've defined your goals, set the deliverables, proposed a work schedule and received stakeholder buy-in, you can build the project scope.
The purpose of your project scope is to clearly define goals, deadlines, deliverables and responsibilities so that your team fully understands the expectations. You can use a project roadmap template to create clear, visual guidelines on how your team will complete the project and achieve the desired outcome.
Before you open a blank text document and start to write, it can be helpful to create a simple project plan outline. You can use a mind map tool or similar diagramming software for this purpose. Outlining your project plan in a mind map will help you collect all important information on a single page, visualize dependencies, and highlight open questions and issues that still need to be addressed.
Such a mind map can also be saved as a template and reused in future projects.
Once you’re satisfied with the outline, you can export it into a text document and start fleshing it out with more details.
The importance of project planning software
In addition to proper project planning and useful templates, one other resource goes a long way towards simplifying the project planning process. That resource is project planning software.
Fundamentally, project planning software provides a centralized hub for all project status updates. You can use project planning software to quickly audit finished projects, check on existing projects or plan future projects.
By centralizing all project status updates, you can identify or correct any bottlenecks that impede project progress. You can also project how many workers you need for each project and make prudent staffing decisions to suit those needs.
Ultimately, project planning software makes your job as a project manager faster, easier and more effective.
