TOPIC 7: PROJECT PLANNING
Sub-Topics
Meaning of Project Planning
Importance of Project Planning
Tools used in Project Planning
MEANING OF PROJECT PLANNING
The project planning phase is where you’ll lay out every detail of the plan from beginning to end. The plan you create here will lead your team through the execution, performance, and closure phases of the project management process. The Project Planning involves:
Scope Management Project
Scope Management refers to the set of processes that ensure a project’s scope is accurately defined and mapped. Scope Management techniques enable project managers and supervisors to allocate the right amount of work necessary to successfully complete a project—concerned primarily with controlling what is and what is not partof the project’s scope.
Quality Management
According to the project quality management definition, it is a process which ensure that all the activities related to project are efficient and effective with respect to the project objectives and project performance. Quality Management in project management includes creating and following policies and procedures in order to ensure that a project meets the defined needs it was intended to meet from the customer’s perspective.
Procurement Management
Procurement management is the project process that includes the processes necessary to get things and services needed for the project to run smoothly and achieve its objectives.
Cost Management
Schedule Management
Stakeholder Management
Communications Management
Resource Management
Risk Management
IMPORTANCE OF PROJECT PLANNING
Planning identifies and reduces potential risks
Risk is always lurking in the background, whether at a micro or macro level. What may seem like a minor risk to a task could pose a larger threat later during project execution. Proper planning allows teams to ensure that risks can be mitigated against and that smaller tasks roll-up into milestones that meet with the larger goals of the project, reducing potential risks.
Reducing project failure rates
Planning is the second phase of project management. This is where you cross the T’s and dot the I’s. It’s where the scope of the project is laid out, where the timeline, costs, deliverables and the details are ironed out. This is where expectations are set and assumptions are identified. Without this vital step, it is almost certain things will fall through the cracks and a project team is bound to miss crucial details, deadlines and eventually deliverables.
Project planning plays an essential role in helping guide stakeholders, sponsors, teams, and the project manager through other project phases. t provides a shared vision for what the project will accomplish – this common understanding can bind the team together in completing actions that satisfy the project’s goals.
It gives clarity on the responsibilities of team members and other organizations in contributing to the goals of the project.
It organizes the work of the project and can be used to prevent extraneous work from crowding out legitimate project activities.
It can be a very powerful communication mechanism, supplementing verbal
interactions. This is an important written reference for the team, and can also be used with other stakeholders.
Planning is needed to identify desired goals
TOOLS USED IN PROJECT PLANNING
A Gantt chart, Logic Network, PERT chart, Product Breakdown Structure and Work Breakdown Structure are standard tools used in project planning. What follows is a short definition for each:
Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart is a popular project management bar chart that tracks tasks across time. When first developed in 1917, the Gantt chart did not show the relationships between the tasks. Since then, it has become common to track both time and interdependencies between tasks, which is now its everyday use. Since their first introduction, Gantt charts have become an industry standard. They are an important project management tool used for showing the phases, tasks, milestones and resources needed as part of a project.
Logic Network
A Logic Network indicates the sequence of activities in a project over time. It shows which activity logically precedes or follows another activity. It can be used to identify the milestones and critical path of a project. It will help you understand the dependencies in your project, timescale, and its workflow. Valuable information thatyou may otherwise overlook can be revealed using this technique.
PERT Chart
PERT is a method for analysing the tasks involved in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task and identifying the minimum time required to complete the total project.
Product Breakdown Structure (PBS)
In project management, a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) is an exhaustive, hierarchical tree structure of components that make up a project deliverable, arranged in whole-part relationship. A PBS can help clarify what is to be delivered by the project and can contribute to
building a work breakdown structure. A Work Breakdown Structure is a hierarchical decomposition of the deliverables needed to complete a project. It breaks the deliverables down into manageable work packages that can be scheduled, costed and have people assigned to them. A Work Breakdown Structure is a standard project management tool and the basis for much project planning.
