Begin Planning Phase

- Begin planning phase
	- Benefit of project planning
	- Launching the planning phase
		- Schedule
		- Budget
		- Risk management plan
	- Project kick-off meeting
		- Attendees
		- Agenda
		- Best practice
	- Defining tasks and milestones
		- How to set milestones
		- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Understanding the Planning Phase Components

Benefits of project planning

Planning

• helps you map out the full project

• helps you understand the work needed to achieve your goals

• helps coordinate efforts and timelines with other teams, contractors, and vendors

• gives you time to identify and prepare for risks that could impact your project

• gives you the chance to brainstorm ways to mitigate or address those risks

• helps you get “buy-in” from key members of the project team

• demonstrates to stakeholders that the team is taking care to start the project with a detailed plan

• teamwork

Launching the planning phase

Project plans don’t have to be perfect the very first time. Even if you do a great job with your plans the first time around, it’s likely that the plan will change as the project evolves.

Big things are worked out during this stage

Facilitating a project kick-off meeting

Project kick-off meeting: The first meeting in which a project team comes together to ground everyone in a shared vision, gain a shared understanding of the project’s goals and scope, and to understand each person’s individual roles within the team.

Who should be invited?

• The team members identified in a RACI chart chart, created during the initiation phase
  • During the kickoff meeting, team members will learn more about how they’ll contribute to the project and how they’ll gain a deeper understanding of how the team will work together to reach the project’s goals.
• Project stakeholders and sponsor (so that they have a chance to understand the high-level plan for the project, can share their perspective, and you can ensure that everyone is on the same page. )

Why is a kick-off meeting important?

• When you’re kicking off a project, especially larger projects with multiple people involved, it’s important to get together to establish a shared vision, align on the scope, and build team rapport
• An opportunity for teammates to ask questions and offer insights
• A great time for you to set expectations with the team about how each person will individually contribute to the project

How to plan a kick-off meeting? (Agenda)

1. Brief introductions (~ 10 mins)
   • Everyone in the group introduce themselves and their roles
   • If time allows, share a fun fact to help build team rapport
2. Project background (~ 5 mins)
   • How the project came to be
   • Why the project matters
   • Set a shared vision
3. Goals and scope (~ 5 mins)
   • In-scope
   • Out-of-scope
   • Target launch date
   • Milestones
4. Roles (~ 5 mins)
   • Make sure that everyone is clear on what work they’ll be responsible for throughout the duration of the project.
5. Collaboration (~ 10 mins)
   • Shared project tools and documents
   • Communication expectations
6. What comes next (~ 10 mins)
   • Set expectations with your teammates for what’s coming up
7. Question round (~ 15 mins)
   • Gain clarity on meeting topics
   • Hear from the team and ensure that the project is benefiting from diversity of thoughts, experiences, and ideass

Once you’ve finalized the meeting agenda, document this information into a meeting agenda template, and send it to attendees a day or two ahead of the meeting.

Best practice

• Set the right time.

  Choose a meeting time that works for everyone. Be mindful of time zone differences.

• Set the right length.

  Choose an appropriate meeting length—no more than one hour. You don’t want to waste people’s time, but you also don’t want to run out of time. Kick-off meetings work best when you first share key information and then spend any additional time on questions and team building.

• Invite the right people.

  Be strategic about including the appropriate people. The goal is to invite attendees who play a role in the development and execution of the project, such as all team members, stakeholders, and the project sponsor. You don’t want to leave anyone out, but you also don’t want to invite people who shouldn’t be there.

• Designate a notetaker.

  The discussion that takes place during the meeting is important. It is critical that you document any feedback, changes, or questions asked by attendees. If you are leading the meeting, designate someone else to take notes before the meeting starts. You can also use tools like Chorus Notetaker, Google Keep, Google Docs, or Microsoft OneNote.

• Set the agenda.

  To recap what we discussed in the video, a kick-off meeting agenda should generally include: introductions, the project background and purpose, project goals and scope, roles and responsibilities, the collaboration process and project tools, what comes next (expectations and action items), and time for questions and discussion.

• Share the agenda.

  Prior to the meeting, share the agenda with attendees via email and identify speakers for each topic. By sending the agenda in advance, everyone will have an idea of what to expect, time to prepare for anything they may need to present or discuss, and time to generate questions or ideas.

• Stick to the agenda.

  During meetings, discussions can sometimes go off topic or take longer than expected. As a project manager, it is your job to keep the meeting on track by redirecting discussions to the items on the agenda.

• Follow up after the meeting.

  After the meeting, make sure to send out a meeting summary featuring the meeting notes and any action items. In the follow-up email, also invite attendees to reach out if they have any additional questions.

Defining Tasks and Milestones

Understanding tasks andmilestones

Milestone: An important point within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project.

• Significant checkpoints in the project
• Keeping track of them helps ensure that your project is on schedule to meet its goals

Task: An activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time

The work of a project is broken down into many different tasks. In order to reach a milestone, you and your team must complete multiple tasks.

Example: If a milestone is completing the first draft of a report, the tasks required to get to that milestone might include hiring a writer, conducting research, and drafting different sections of the report.

The importance of setting milestones

Setting milestones gives you a clear understanding of the amount of work your project will require.

• The act of setting milestones forces you to break your project down into more manageable chunks.
• The further you go, the better you’ll be able to see how much work will be needed to meet the project goals.

Milestones can help keep your project on track.

• When you set a milestone, you assign clear deadlines for when certain project deliverables need to be completed.
• As you work through the execution phase, you can look back at these deadlines to make sure that the project is progressing at the right pace

Milestones help you uncover areas where you might need to adjust scope, timelines, or resources to meet your goals.

Reaching milestones can seriously motivate your team and illustrate real progress to your stakeholders

• Milestones serve as a great check-in point to highlight your progress to stakeholders. It gives them the opportunity to see the work that’s been completed so far and lets them see everything is on track and up to their standards.

Milestones must be completed on time and in sequential order.

How to set milestones?

1. Evaluate the project as a whole -> It helps to refer back to your project charter to remind yourself of the project goal.

2. Make a list of what the team needs to do to achieve the goal

   • The big items that indicate progress are your milestones, which are the key points within the project schedule that signify the completion of a project deliverable or a phase in the project.
   • Smaller items, like any item that a stakeholder wouldn’t need to review, for example, are tasks. You’ll plan for these once you’ve separated them out from the milestones.

3. Once you’ve determined your milestones, assign each one a deadline.

   • To make sure you give your team a fair amount of time to complete each of those tasks, you’ll need to space your milestones out accordingly.

   • To get a good sense of timing, you can connect with teammates to discuss the tasks required to reach each milestone and get their estimates for how long these tasks will take.

   • When determining deadlines for milestones, also consider the needs of the stakeholders.

Best practices

• Set tasks to identify milestones

  • Top-down scheduling The project manager lays out the higher-level milestones, then works to break down the effort into project tasks. The project manager works with their team to ensure that all tasks are captured.
  • Bottom-up scheduling The project manager looks at all of the individual tasks that need to be completed and then rolls those tasks into manageable chunks that lead to a milestone.

• Integrate milestones into your project schedule Try to set milestones for the most important events in your project. Review your project schedule and identify important moments or checkpoints.

Creating a work breakdown structure

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): A tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project in a hierarchy, in the order they need to be completed.

• It helps break down the sometimes intimidating challenges of a project into more manageable chunks.

One common way to create a WBS is to create a tree diagram of project tasks.

Example

while creating a work breakdown structure is a helpful exercise for visualizing the tasks of the project, you would NOT typically include this type of diagram in your official project plan. Instead, you’d input the tasks identified through this exercise into a spreadsheet or your chosen work management software, where you can more easily assign owners to each task.

After completing a work breakdown structure, you should have

• A set of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each of your milestones You and your teammates will know exactly what needs to happen to reach your first milestone and the milestones after that.
• Team members assigned to each task
  • Each person should have a clear understanding of the tasks they own and the order in which they need to complete them.
  • Tasks are typically assigned according to a person’s role in the project.
  • To assign tasks between two or more team members with the same roles, you might take into consideration each person’s familiarity with the tasks at hand.
  • When assigning tasks, you should also consider each teammate’s workload and keep everyone’s workloads balanced. Make sure that a single teammate isn’t assigned more work than others.

Steps to build a WBS

1. Start with the high-level, overarching project picture. Brainstorm with your team to list the major deliverables and milestones.
2. Identify the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet those milestones.
3. Examine those tasks and break them down further into sub-tasks.