An old adage which is completely true for project management: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Characteristics for planning a project:
- dilligence
- investement of time
- gathering sufficient information in order to have a detailed plan that helps avoid as many mishaps as possible
Scop, schedule and cost – 3 key areas
- Scop (what needs to be done to deliver the project)
- first establish the project objectives
- the tasks that need to be performed
- the resource that will be required
- determine the limitations of the project
- work breakdown structure = one of the most important project management deliverables.
- Scheduling (how you plan to manage your time)
- Defining the activities
- Scheduling these activities
- Estimating the activity resources required (materials, people, equipement)
- Estimating the activity duration to complete (amount of work needed to complete individual activities using the estimated resources)
- Developing the schedule
- Costing the project (control the project costs using a budget). A constraint.
- estimate the resources required
- estimate the duration of these activities
- prepare a cost estimation
- seek additional budget or trade-off by reducing scope