It may seem strange to think that a formal project planning session doesn't take place before a project is undertaken, but it happens. My experience in the architectural/engineering (A/E) industry is that project design exist. They include the feasibility studies, assessments, the actual design and specifications. And there's communications between stakeholders and with the project manager.
However, a design doesn't equal a project plan.
This article is going to go over the 9 steps of building a project plan and the 9 benefits of using project plans in your engineering career.
What Is A Project Plan?
According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, a project plan is: "...a formal, approved document used to guide both project execution and project control. The primary uses of the project plan are to document planning assumptions and decisions, facilitate communication among stakeholders, and document approved scope, cost, and schedule baselines."
The keywords from this definition are "formal, approved document". Too often, the project plan (if you can call it that) which a project manager uses is an ad hoc collection of actions or repetitive tasks that are part of the organization's way of doing business.
What I'm suggesting is that you, as an aspiring professional project manager and engineer, not rely on ad hoc actions to put a project plan together. Be serious about it and help to form the habit of stepping through the following nine project planning development steps on your next project.
The 9 Steps to Project Plan Enlightenment
Here we go:
1. Explain the project plan and its key components to the key stakeholders. If your organization doesn't have a formal project planning process in place, you will need to explain what the project plan is, why it's being put together and what the key components are. Project plan is a misunderstood concept, typically confused with the project design. These are related in that the design is a component of the project plan, but not the project plan itself.
The project plan is a living document that the project manager uses to guide the project from concept through close-out. Contents can vary, but in general include these elements:
Baselines: to include cost, scope, schedule, and other resources
Baseline management plans: these include a risk management plan, a quality plan, a procurement plan, a staffing plan, and a communications plan.
2. Define roles and responsibilities. The project plan must clearly delineate who will hold what role (e.g. project manager, stakeholders, etcetera) and what their responsibilities will be. When you identify roles and responsibilities, you're also identifying who's accountable for implementing elements of the project plan. This is an important consideration to highlight at the front end of any project so that everyone knows who's doing what. I'll also suggest identifying the relationships between each role identified to aid in identifying lines of communications and hierarchy.
3. Hold a kick-off meeting. You may have too many meetings on the calendar already, but don't pass on a holding a project plan kick-off meeting. This is the meeting where you will introduce yourself and all of the key players; what others can expect from you as the project manager and your expectations of them; initial project scope; and most importantly, setting the overall attitude for how the project will be managed. Ensure you communicate the importance of all stakeholders attending this meeting in person if possible. If your team is distributed, then work to have the meeting as a video teleconference at a minimum.
4. Develop the project scope statement. By definition, the project scope is the “work performed to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions.” Think of the project scope statement as the vision for the project. A good vision imparts to the reader what future success looks like, therefore, a good project scope statement imparts to the reader what a successful end-state looks like for the project.
Ensure you put energy in developing this statement and enlist key decision making stakeholders on the project. You will want them involved so that their expectations for what a successful project is, are included. Doing so gives you one more opportunity to ensure that key expectations are articulated and captured.
5. Develop scope baseline. The scope is one of three legs of the project management triangle and a key one to keep in check. No project plan survives first contact with implementation in the real world, so project managers must have a project scope baseline. Having this allows the project manager to assess and track project change orders over the course of implementation. At completion, lessons learned can be drawn from the information to enact process changes or make improvements to the project plan or management overall.
Additionally, the scope baseline and tracking of change orders allows the project manager to articulate to decision making stakeholders potential schedule slips or cost overruns based on requests for change to scope.
6. Develop schedule and cost baselines. Peter Drucker told managers a long time ago: “what gets measured gets done.”
As already mentioned, a project plan includes baselines for several components. Baselines for elements such as schedule and cost are established for a project in order to let the project manager track progress, identify problems, and develop options for keeping the project on schedule and within cost. Beyond schedule and cost, a project manager may also establish baselines for materials, staffing, or any other component that is of interest to stakeholders or the organization.
7. Create baseline project management plans. Beyond baselining scope, schedule, and cost, key project management plans should be developed and appropriate baselines established for each. Organizations can adjust what project management plans nest within the overall project plan, but in general management plans include:
- Quality management plan
- Communications management plan
- Risk management plan
- Procurement management plan
- Stakeholder management plan
8. Develop a staffing plan. Whether you have authority to make human resource allocation decisions or not, your project plan must have a staffing plan. This plan details what skills are required for the project scope to be realized within the schedule and cost restraints and who will provide these skills. It’s very possible the “who” will require outside contractors or freelance support.
9. Analyze project quality and risks. Quality may be job #1 in your next project, but it certainly won’t be if some thought isn’t given to how the project will be analyzed for both quality and risk during implementation.
It’s important that any project plan include considerations for how quality will be assessed and documented during implementation. Equally important is analyzing the project for risks that will or might occur. Doing both ensures that neither is left to chance or forces you into a crisis response mode when something goes wrong.
9 Benefits Realized From Project Plans
To keep us in the nines, here are nine benefits you can realize when you use a formalized project plan:
1. Detailed Thinking and Planning. The act of stepping through the nine-step project planning process will force you to have to think about each of the important components that make up the project plan. This thought will pay dividends as the project progresses, since you’ll be able to rely on the material to answer questions from stakeholders, assess where you are and where you’re going, and be positioned to draw informed conclusions after project close-out to better your skills on the next project.
2. Improved Communications. It does this by forcing you to interact with project team members, key decision makers, end users, and other stakeholders in the act of building the project plan. Also, since you will have a communications management plan resulting from the planning process, you and your team have a plan for how, when, and what information will be published.
3. Written Project Goals and Objectives. The project planning process yields both a scope statement and the steps that will be taken to achieve the scope. In short, you end up with goals, objectives and from a scheduling perspective, milestones, for a project’s implementation. These are crucial in keeping a project on schedule, within budget, and within scope.
4. Reduced Costs and Time. No matter what you do in life, if there’s a plan you will most certainly save time and money. And for any project manager, saving time and money is a major win. The project plan provides you with procedures, processes, and details for how the project will unfold. Although it takes time (and therefore costs something) to develop, you will make it up on the back-end by knowing what to do and when to do it.
5. Problem Identification. The project planning process also forces you to address risk and quality, both elements that will yield problems for you if they are not properly addressed. When we identify problems before they occur, we have the opportunity to generate responses in advance or to adjust the plan to mitigate entirely a specific problem. Knowing how to respond to a problem in advance of it occurring will not only save time and money, but will greatly increase your standing in the eyes of decision makers and clients.
6. Puts You in Control of the Project Instead of The Project Being in Control of You. Not having a project plan is like setting out on a roadtrip from New York to Los Angeles without a map or GPS when you have to be there within a week. It’s inconceivable that we’d set out to go somewhere without a map when we’re working within a time constraint. It’s equally inconceivable that we would undertake any project, whether it’s engineering, manufacturing, or organizational structure, without a map, a.k.a. a project plan.
While the project plan won’t spell out every exact thing that might happen, it will provide enough detail to put you in control of your destiny.
7. Performance Evaluation. Because a lot of energy was invested in establishing baselines for scope, cost, time and various management plans, you will be able to assess the project’s performance at specific milestones in execution. As important, is your ability to draw lessons learned from the project after close-out by reviewing performance throughout project implementation.
8. Optimized Resource Allocation. No project is undertaken with unlimited budget, scope or schedule and in most organizations, all three are constrained by inadequate resources. When you operate with project plans, you are in better position to make intelligent resource allocation decisions across a program or portfolio.
9. Established Roles and Responsibilities. Whether it’s a result of my two decade long military career or simply that I like knowing who’s doing what, having a project plan spells out the roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder. Beyond spelling out just the roles and responsibilities, you can also identify relationships between each role (which aides in developing a coherent communications plan) and use the responsibilities to arrive at authorities that each role holds.
Understanding and gaining agreement on project objectives, deliverables, scope, risk, cost, approach, etcetera, helps to ensure that you, the project team and sponsor agree on the work that is required. More importantly, it will greatly increase the likelihood of delivering a project within scope, within budget and on time.
Reference:
Larson, Elizabeth, and Richard Larson. "10 Steps to Creating a Project Plan." Project Management Times. N.p., 17 May 2012. Web. 11 June 2015.
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: (PMBOK® Guide). Fifth ed. Newtown Square, PA: PMI, 2013. Print.
Christian Knutson, P.E., PMP is an engineer, infrastructure program manager, coach and author. He has extensive experience in leadership, management, and engineering earned from a career as a civil engineering officer in the U.S. Air Force. He now coaches engineers enabling them to create an engineering career and life of fulfillment at The Engineering Career Coach.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net