Project planning is a discipline for stating how to complete a project within a certain timeframe, usually with defined stages, and with designated resources. One view of project planning divides the activity into:
Setting objectives (these should be measurable)
Identifying deliverables
Planning the schedule
Making supporting plans
IMPORTANCE OF PROJECT PLANING
Project planning is an essential part of project management. Successful completion of a project is heavily dependent on effective planning. A project plan allows you to complete a project within a specified timeline and a specified budget.
Before even starting a project, a period of planning is necessary if you want to successfully finish the work. Of course, it is often tempting to just plunge in, particularly if a number of people are involved and there is high motivation across the board for a rousing achievement. But beginning on a project with no firm blueprint of action is likely only to jeopardize the whole process. Project planning is fundamental in order to avoid failure and disappointment. In project management, effective planning is absolutely required if the individual or group wishes to deliver a finished project on time and on budget.
STEPS FOR PROJECT PLANING
Step 1: Create a Project Plan
The Project Plan identifies the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of the phases, activities
and tasks to be undertaken. Step 2: Create a Resource Plan
Following the creation of a Project Plan, a detailed assessment of the resources required to
undertake the project should be made. Step 3: Create a Financial Plan
The Financial Plan describes the total quantity of financial resources required during each stage of
the project. Step 4: Create a Quality Plan
To ensure that the project deliverables meet customer requirements, a Quality Plan is developed.
This plan explicitly lists the quality targets to be achieved. Step 5: Create a Risk Plan
Managing Project Risk is a critical process within the Project Lifecycle. The risks are prioritized and a set of actions identified to reduce the likelihood of each risk and its impact on the project should it occur.
Step 6: Create an Acceptance Plan
The key to customer satisfaction is in gaining approval from the customer that the deliverables meet the quality criteria stated in the Quality Plan. Step 7: Create a Communications Plan
A Communications Plan is a document which describes the information to be provided to project stakeholders to keep them informed of the progress of the project. Each stakeholder is listed and their requirements for information clearly identified. Step 8: Create a Procurement Plan
Projects often need to acquire procurement items (such as products, services and specific results) from external suppliers. Step 9: Contract the Suppliers
With a clear view of the procurement items to be acquired, the project team will set out to select and contract one or a small number of preferred suppliers to the project. Step 10: Perform Phase Review
With a detailed understanding of the activities, resources, finances and supplier relationships
required to undertake the project, the team is ready to enter the Execution phase. A Phase Review
PROJECT PLAN LIFECYCLE
Initiation involves starting up the project, by documenting a business case, feasibility study, terms of reference, appointing the team and setting up a Project Office.
Planning involves setting out the roadmap for the project by creating the following plans: project plan, resource plan, financial plan, quality plan, acceptance plan and communications plan.
Execution involves building the deliverables and controlling the project delivery, scope, costs, quality, risks and issues.
Closure involves winding-down the project by releasing staff, handing over deliverables to the customer and completing a post implementation review
PROJECT PLAN SOFTWARE
Planning a project using conventional project planning software tools is a major challenge for today's decentralized and globally dispersed project teams. Whether the projects you are planning and tracking are billable or internal, you are dealing with what we refer to as the project workforce. Tenrox project planning software provides you with a simple, effective cloud-based alternative to heavy, complex, hard to learn and hard to use project planning tools.
This Project Planning Software suits all project types and sizes. Whether you're building a house, managing an IT project or running a business, this project planning software helps you do it. You start out by entering all of the tasks you need, to implement your project. Then use the "Indent" feature to create a hierarchy of tasks, so that you can group related tasks together. Use the "link" feature to link multiple tasks together, so you can see the dependencies between tasks. In this way, you can schedule your tasks to occur as soon as it's practical to do so.
PROJECT PLANING SOFTWARE BENIFITS
Easy to use; a project planning tool that intentionally lacks any complex features
Quick implementation; light project planning software that takes a few minutes to setup
Browser deployed project planning tool with no client installation or maintenance required
Flexible delivery model; Choose between cloud-based project management and on-premise
Project plans are easily interchangeable with Microsoft Project files
