Planning the Project¶
❤ Documents created in this phase:
★ Reference Historical Project Data - Your project may be similar to a previous project your organization has worked on. It is important to review how past projects were handled including the budget, schedule, project team, roles & responsibilities, risks, & communication plans. Review any past project documents that may help you plan your project, you can even search the web for similar projects to seek extra help.
★ Identify Tasks & Milestones - sourcing materials, training employees, etc.
Milestone: An important point within the project schedule that indicates progress & usually signifies the completion of a deliverable in a phase of the project. To reach a milestone your team must complete multiple tasks.
Project Task: An activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time to keep the project schedule on track.
★ Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) - A visual tool that sorts milestones & tasks of a project in a hierarchy. The tasks should be visible in one place with clear descriptions, owners, & due dates. Should also contain detailed milestones & statuses related to the tasks. Helps understand all of the essential project tasks like, estimating costs, developing schedules, assigning roles & responsibilities, & tracking progress - Use tools like Asana or Tree Diagrams to create your WBS.
❤ Develop a WBS
Brainstorm with the team to list major deliverables & milestones
Identify tasks to meet milestones
Breakdown tasks into subtasks
How to create a work breakdown structure and why you should
★ Create a Schedule & Gantt Chart - Create a plan from start to finish - Use scheduling tools like MSProject or google docs to outline all your tasks, milestones, & deliverables into one project schedule - Properly manage resources, budget, materials, & Timeline.
★ Set Costs & Create Budget - Estimate costs of tasks & milestones
★ Procurement - Legal documents of what you need from the vendor & what they need from you - Documents include: non disclosure agreement (NDA), Request for proposal (RFP), & statement of work (SOW).
Request for Proposal (RFP) Includes: Overview, scope, goals, milestones, submission requirements, questions you’d like the vendor to answer.
Statement of Work (SOW) Includes: Products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for the organization - Ask for input from SMEs’ when writing the contract.
Initiating: Planning what you need to meet your project goals (NDA)
Selecting: Deciding which supplies & vendors to use (RFP)
Contract Writing: Developing, reviewing, & signing contracts (SOW)
Controlling: Making payments, maintaining & ensuring quality
Completing: Measuring your success - Document lessons learned
★ Create Risk Management Plan - Risks could include: Budget, schedule, staffing shortages, shipping delays, holidays, sick time, etc.
★ Create Communication Plan
★ Create Project Plan - A document that stores all project documents in one central location - Center of the project plan is the project schedule, which helps estimate the amount of time it will take to complete the project & provides the team with a way to track the projects progress against your goals.
❤ Project Plan Includes:
Project Charter - Scope & Goals
Statement of Work
Risk Management Plan
Schedule
Budget
Communication Plan
Management Plans - Change Management Documentation
Shared Folder (folder with all relevant documentation)
RACI Chart Phase1
RACI Chart Phase2
Any additional relevant project documents you want to include
Project Planning Best Practices¶
★ You aren’t responsible for completing every task, You’re responsible for identifying & helping assign these tasks, & estimating how long they will take to complete. These elements come together to determine the overall project schedule.
★ It may be necessary during a project to call a timeout: taking a moment to stop and step away from the project to take a breath & regroup/adjust the game plan. (You may need to take a timeout when the client wants to redefine the scope or if team members are reassigned to another project & you need to backfill them. Throughout this you will want to hold meeting in order to discuss successes, setbacks, & possible future improvements to the project.
★ Hold retrospective meetings: Focuses on identifying the contributing cause of an incident without blaming anyone. You should always assume that everyone has good intentions & did the right thing with the information they had whether or not it worked out well in the end. There’s always a chance to learn & do better. It’s important to identify effective techniques for communicating changes to the team or an individual.
Carefully review deliverables, milestones, & tasks
Give yourself time to plan
Recognize & plan for the inevitable: things will go wrong (Link to Risk Section)
Stay curious
Reference Historical Project Data
Utilize your team, mentors, or manager
Check, Check, and Double Check!
★ Create well defined quality standards at the beginning of the project
❤ Quality Planning - Determine the quality standard & processes to satisfy them
❤ Quality Assurance - Regularly check-in to make sure you & your team are meeting those agreed on standards
❤ Quality Control - Correct any areas that are not meeting the set standards
★ Implement ways to measure customer satisfaction - Try to imagine what they want, it puts you in a unique place where you need to put yourself in their shoes & imagine the world or imagine the product through their eyes. Being able to empathize & understand how different people in the world will interact with your product is really important & gives you an amazing perspective.
❤ Customer Feedback Surveys - Create Survey Questions
❤ User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Present the product
Mock-up of the product or go through demo
Collect feedback
Prioritize & fix any issues
Estimating Times for Tasks¶
★ How do you estimate the amount of time a given tasks will take, you do this will the help of your team. Ask team members assigned to the tasks what they think.
❤ How long does this take?
❤ How complex are the steps to complete this task?
❤ What are the risks associated with the task?
❤ When do you think you can have this ready?
❤ Negotiate
❤ Ask about their workload, vacations, holidays, etc.
★ Time Estimation - Prediction of the total amount of time that it will take to complete a task
★ Effort Estimation - Prediction of the amount & difficulty of active work to complete a task - ONCE you have this information you need to determine if you have the right amount of people. To do this use a technique called capacity planning.
★ Capacity - The amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time.
★ Critical Path (CP) - The list of project milestones that you must reach in order to meet the project goal on schedule. As well as the mandatory tasks that contribute to the completion of each milestone. Your critical path includes the bare minimum number of tasks & milestones you need to reach your project goal. When creating a critical path, focus on the essential, “need to do” tasks, rather than the “nice to do” tasks that aren’t essential for the completion of the project. Here is an example of critical tasks for building the structure of a house:
List tasks, list dependencies, create network diagram (On CP in red, not on CP in blue), make estimates
Tasks that happen in parallel
Tasks that happen sequentially
Tasks with fixed start dates
Critical Path Method for Beginners
Critical Path Method: Project Management Essential
★ Types of Dependencies:
❤ Finish to Start (FS) - Task A must be completed before task B
❤ Finish to Finish (FF) - Task B can’t finish until task A finishes
❤ Start to Start (SS) - Task A can’t begin until task B begins - Tasks start at the same time & run in parallel
❤ Start to Finish (SF) - Task A must start before task B can be completed.
Risk Management Plan¶
★ A Living document that contains information regarding high level risks & the mitigation plans for those risks. Risk Management is an ongoing practice that you will take part in throughout the planning & execution of a project.
❤ Risk management plan evolves throughout the project, the plan should be updated regularly to add newly identified risks, remove risks that are no longer relevant, & include any changes in the mitigation plans.
❤ In the risk management document include author, project title, status, created date, & updated date.
❤ Talk with SMEs & stakeholders they may have insight on how to handle these risks with strategies you haven’t thought of yet.
❤ Share risks & mitigation plan - discuss better mitigation tactics & new risks.
★ Types of Risk
Schedule Risks
Time Risks
Budget Risks
Scope Risks
Single point of failure risks - Projects use SMEs to advice you throughout the project. Use multiple SMEs
★ Risk Mitigation Strategies
Avoid - Sidestep or avoid the situation as a whole
Minimize - Reduce or control it. Mitigating a risk involves trying to minimize the catastrophic effects
Transfer - The strategy of transferring shifts the responsibility of handing the risk to someone else
Accept - Actively Accept - usually means setting aside extra funds to pay your way out of trouble. Passively Accept - is the “do nothing” approach. (Not recommended for most single point of failure risks). It’s important to mitigate risks ahead of time. (proactive) - This may save you from needing to accept risks.
★ Risk Management Life Cycle
Identify the Risk
Analyze the Risk - Likelihood, impact, prioritize
Evaluate the Risk
Treat the Risk - Response plan
Monitor & Control the risk - Assign team members to track & mitigate risks
★ Uncover opportunities using Risk Management
Completing a milestone ahead of time
Discounted materials
Availability of additional resources (people, equipment, investments)
★ Brainstorm - Build a decision tree when building mitigation plans: A flow chart that helps visualize the wider impact of a decision on the rest of your project.
Define the problem
Identify categories
Brainstorm causes
Analyze causes
Project Budgeting¶
★ Reference Historical Data - Your project may be similar to a precious project your organization has worked on. It is important to review how that projects budget was handled, find out what went well & learn from previous mistakes.
★ Utilize your Team, Mentors, & Managers - Get into the habit of asking your team to double check your work to give you additional sets of eyes on your documents.
★ Time-Phase your Budget - Time-phased budgeting allows you to allocate costs for project tasks over the projected timeline, in which those expenses are planned to take place. By looking at your tasks against a timeline, you can track & compare planned versus actual costs over time & manage changes to your budget as necessary.
★ Check, Check, & Double Check - Make sure that your budget is accurate & error-free. Your budget will likely require approval from another department, such as finance or senior management, so do your best to ensure that it is as straight forward to understand as possible & that all of your calculations are correct.
★ Categorize Different Types of Costs - Both direct & indirect Costs.
★ Develop a Baseline Budget - An estimate (dollar amount) of project costs that you start with at the beginning of your project. Once budget is approved, you should publish this baseline & use it to compare against actual performance progress. This will provide insight into how the project is doing & allow you to make informed adjustments. Continually monitor your project budget & make necessary changes. Update can require the same approval as the initial budget. Re-baseline if you make significant changes.
★ Perform a Reserve Analysis - A reserve analysis will help you account for any buffer fund you may need. 1st review all potential risks to your project & determine if you need to add buffer funds.
❤ Use milestones as checkpoints for budget.
Communication Plan¶
❤ Identify, Identify, Identify
★ Project Stakeholders - RACI Chart or stakeholder map. Who is your audience? Who will need to be informed at different points during the project life cycle?
★ Communication Frequency & Methods - When & how often? What method do they prefer? How much detail?
★ Goals - Do you need a response? Are you trying to encourage engagement or providing an update?
★ Barriers - Are there time zone differences? Language? Internet issues?
★ Core Team - Check in regularly & ask how everything is going. How are they doing on tasks? Do they need help with anything?
★ Daily Meetings (if necessary) - Designed to bring everyone up to date on key information. Here, each team member briefly describes any in progress work, completed work, & any barriers that stand in their way. You can also discuss next steps.
★ Key Stakeholders - Send project newsletters, a brief email that asks three questions:
What is working in how we communicate with you about the project?
What is not working or is not effective in our communications?
Where can I improve our communications with you?
❤ Include a link to all documents within a centralized location
Recognize & Understand Individual Differences
Brainstorm & Craft the Appropriate Message
Deliver your Message
Obtain Feedback & Incorporate that Feedback Going Forward
Negotiate
Set Communication Expectations
Empathetic Listening
Build Trust by Asking Open Ended Question
Don’t Overwhelm Sponsors with too Many Details
Communication Should be Clear, Honest, Frequent, & Relevant
❤ Writing Emails Best Practices
Always Include a Descriptive Subject Line
Be Clear & Concise
Be Respectful
Always Proofread your Emails
Alter the Subject Line to Reflect New Changes
Start with a Warm Greeting
Get to the Point Quickly
Use Numbered & Bulleted lists or Other Text Formatting
Summarize Long Emails
Assign Action Items Clearly
Close the Email
Make it Clear Who Should Respond & Why
★ It is a project managers responsibility to resolve problems & remove constraints that are a detriment to the project’s success. One way to do this is escalation: the process of enlisting the help of higher-level project leadership or management to remove an obstacle, clarify or reinforce priorities, and validate next steps. Detailing these problems, their potential impact, & the support you need can be an effective communication tool.
Maintain a friendly & blameless tone
State your connection to the project
Explain the problem succinctly
Explain the consequences – Describe how this issue is negatively impacting the project or has the potential. If it makes sense link the issue to the organizations larger OKRs.
Make a Request – propose a course of action, solution, or solutions
State what you need from the recipient
Request a meeting
R: Resolved - The issue has been eliminated & no longer poses a problem.
O: Owned - The issue has been assigned to a team member who will monitor it through completion.
A: Accepted - The issue is minor or cannot be resolved, so the team chooses to accept it & work around it.
M: Mitigated - The team has taken action to reduce the impact of the issue or reduce the likelihood of a risk that has not materialized.
Kickoff Meeting!¶
★ First meeting in which the project team comes together to ground everyone in a shared vision, gain a shared understanding of the project’s goals, scope, & to understand each person’s individual roles within the team. This should include team members identified in the RACI chart created during initiation phase. Invite stakeholders & project sponsor. This meeting team members will learn more about how the team will work together to reach the project goals.
Ask to record meeting if possible
Ask a teammate to take notes
Finalize agenda & send to group a day or two ahead
◆ Kickoff Meeting Agenda
❤ Introductions - Allow people to introduce themselves & their roles, maybe a fun fact about themselves. (10 min)
❤ Background of the Project - How the project came to be & why it matters. Set a shared vision. Maybe link to organizations larger OKRs. (5 min)
❤ Goals & Scope - What work is in-scope & out-of-scope? Also share target launch date & highlight important milestones. (5 min)
❤ Roles - Make sure everyone is clear on what work they will be responsible for throughout the duration of the project. (5 min)
❤ Collaboration - Address how the team will work together on the project. Go over tools that will serve as a communal source of information for the team – work management tools like Asana or Planner. Discuss how they will communicate – daily emails, teams chat, weekly meetings. (10 min)
❤ What Comes Next - Set expectations & action items (10 min)
❤ Questions - Allow the team to ask questions. Document questions & feedback in a shared document. This can also be a time for you to ask questions. (15 min)
Ask their level of confidence on the project plan?
What can you do to help them be successful or increase their confidence?
If there any information or tools I should gather to help the project be successful?
Ask their thoughts on if this is a good way to start the project?
Are there any areas that need to be addressed or done differently?
★ Once the Kickoff meeting has ended send a follow-up email to all attendees with key items that were discussed, summarize the meeting, & allow them to ask questions. Email Best Practices