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  • Chapters
    • Introduction
    • The Stages of a Project
    • Chapter 1. Sponsorship and Leadership
    • Chapter 2. Defining the Objectives and Benefits
    • Chapter 3. Planning the Project
    • Chapter 4. Ensuring the Project is a Manageable Size
    • Chapter 5. Defining the Budget
    • Chapter 6. Managing the Risks
    • Chapter 7. Getting the Right Project Manager
    • Chapter 8. Getting Customer Representation
    • Chapter 9. Defining Roles & Responsibilities
    • Chapter 10. Getting the Right Resources
    • Chapter 11. Monitoring and Reporting Progress
    • Chapter 12. Communicating Progress
    • Chapter 13. Consultation and Leadership
    • Chapter 14. Getting Realistic User Requirements
    • Chapter 15. Defining Your Approach
    • Chapter 16. Conducting Structured Testing
    • Chapter 17. Creating an Implementation Plan
    • Chapter 18. Conducting a Post Implementation Review
    • Chapter 19. Realising the Benefits
    • Chapter 20. Learning the Lessons
    • Chapter 21. Celebrating Success
    • Checklist
  • About Us
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  • 21 Ways to Excel at Project Management

Planning the Project

Question 3: Have you developed a detailed project plan?

Good Practice: A detailed project plan should be developed and signed off by the steering committee. It provides the following benefits:
  • Translates the high-level business objectives into a detailed roadmap of concrete deliverables.
  • Provides a detailed list of resource requirements.
  • Provides a realistic assessment of project timescales.
  • Allows estimated project costs to be further validated.
  • Allows issues to be identified early on, such as tasks taking longer than expected, slippage in target dates, and team members not being productive.
Two business people placing yellow sticky notes on a glass partition

Base the plan on known metrics. How long did an earlier similar project take?

Involve all team members, not just senior management. Develop a plan in iterations over several weeks by consulting team members and drawing on their experience.

Common Mistakes

  • Having no project plan.
  • Having a wrong project plan. A wrong project plan is worse than having no project plan at all. Do not be swayed by a sexy-looking project plan that has been produced to give the steering committee a warm, comfortable feeling but which is not based on reality.
  • As with all methodologies, a healthy dose of common sense and pragmatism is required. Do not be too fastidious. For example, a 5-day project does not need a detailed project plan.
  • Do not lose sight of what the project is trying to achieve. Traditional project management techniques can encourage overplanning and an excessive focus on micro-level tasks at the cost of the overall objective.
  • Disbelieving evidence from past projects and insisting the current project be done faster with fewer people.
  • Committing to or baselining project plans too early.

Note: Trying to manage a large and complex project without a project plan is like crossing an unknown continent without a map. You are running blind. The critical thing to get right is the balance between planning and action. Take the example of driving from London to Paris: too much planning and other cars will be halfway there before you leave; too little, and you will turn up at the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone without passports.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

General George S. Patton, JR.

Warning Sign: When successive project milestones get missed, this is a sure sign that a project is failing.

Planning the Project

Question 3: Have you developed a detailed project plan?

4
Ensuring the Project is a Manageable Size

Question 4: Is your project a manageable size?

5
Defining the Budget

Question 5: Have you defined a detailed project budget?

6
Managing the Risks

Question 6: Are you managing the project risks?

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