Build Project Plan

Building a Project Plan

Components of a project plan

At the center of the project plan: project schedule

Most project plans contain five basic elements

• Tasks
• Milestones
• People
  • Each team member should understand their role and the tasks they’re responsible for completing.
  • Make sure that everyone is clear on their assigned tasks frees you up to focus on managing the project and creates a sense of personal responsibility for members of the team
• Documentation
  • RACI chart
  • Charter, which clearly defines the project and outlines the details needed to reach your goals
  • Documents like your budget and risk management plan.
• Time

In addition, you should also include the following components in your project plan:

• Scope and goals (captured initially in your project charter)
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  • Breaks the work down into more manageable pieces
  • The tasks should be visible in one place with clear descriptions, owners, and due dates. -> This will allow you and your team to understand who is responsible for which tasks and when each task is supposed to be completed.
• Budget
• Management plans
  • E.g., change management plan, risk management plan, and communication plan

Using Estimation to Set Project Timelines

Making realistic time estimates

Time estimation: A prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task.

Effort estimation: A a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task.

Unrealistic effort estimates happen when you’ve underestimate the amount of time it’ll take to complete a task!

How to avoid making unrealistic or inaccurate effort estimates?

• Communicate with teammates assigned to each task

  • Your teammates will have the most realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task and should be able to provide you with the best estimate.

• Ask follow-up questions, or even gently push back on their estimate, as needed.

• Add buffer in your time schedule

  • Buffer: Extra time added to the end of a task or a project to account for unexpected slowdowns or delays in work progress.
    • Task buffer: Extra time tacked on to a specific task
      • Should be used primarily for tasks that are out of the project team’s control
      • Should be used more sparingly for tasks within the project team’s control
    • Project buffer: Extra time to the overall project schedule
      • You can add extra time as a buffer towards the end of your project schedule. Then you can use that extra time as needed throughout the project.

Overcoming the planning fallacy

The planning fallacy describes our tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task, as well as the costs and risks associated with that task, due to optimism bias. Optimism bias is when a person believes that they are less likely to experience a negative event.

The planning fallacy can happen to anyone, regardless of whether or not they have experience completing similar tasks. In project management, you may be brand new to this kind of project or you may have managed tons of similar projects before, you still need to be careful not to underestimate the time it will take to complete each task on this particular project.

As a project manager, you should aim to balance being aware of the planning fallacy with keeping an optimistic attitude about the project, even as things change. Be optimistically realistic: Push for the best outcomes while planning for the proper time it may take to accomplish each task.

Capacity planning and the critical path

Capacity: The amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time.

Capacity planning: The act of allocating people and resources to project tasks, and determining whether or not you have the necessary resources required to complete the work on time.

Critical path: 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.

• Includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to reach your project goal.

Example

Tasks on the critical path for launching Project Plant Pals might include hiring plant vendors, developing a new website, and fulfilling deliveries. A task like adding flowers to your product lineup is nice to have, but might not have much impact on the overall success of your project because this task isn’t crucial to your launch. These tasks aren’t part of the critical path.

To determine the critical path of a project

1. Start by listing all the tasks required to complete the project and the milestones they feed into, which is a perfect time to think back to your work breakdown structure (WBS)
2. Determine which tasks on the list absolutely can’t begin until another task is complete (“dependency”)
3. Work with your team to make time estimates for each task, and map each task from start to finish. The longest path is your critical path.

Factors that can impact capacity and capacity planning

• Identify which task can happen in parallel (happen at the same time as other tasks) and which can happen sequentially (must happen in a specific order)

Example

A sequential task for your Plant Pals project may include needing budget approval before hiring a vendor.

And two parallel tasks might include hiring delivery drivers and the development of a website. These tasks have no relationship to one another, as they focus on different portions of the project, and can be completed by different members of the team. That means that one task can begin even if the other task hasn’t been completed, and so the work to complete these tasks can happen at the same time.

• Determine which project tasks have a fixed start date
• Determine which project tasks have an earliest start date
• Identify if a task has float (a.k.a. slack)
  • Float: The amount of time you can wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule and threatens the project outcome
  • These are high priority tasks that have low to no wiggle room
  • Task on the critical path should have ZERO float

Why the critical path is critical?

The critical path

• Helps you determine the essential tasks that need to be completed on your project to meet your end goal and how long each task will take
• Provides a quick reference for critical tasks by revealing which tasks will impact your project completion date negatively if their scheduled finish dates are late or missed
• Helps you define the resources you need, your project baselines, and any flexibility you have in the schedule

Creating a critical path

You can think of the critical path as a framework that tells you, the project manager, where you are, where you are headed, and when you will get there.

General steps for creating a critical path that are applicable to most projects

1. Capture all tasks

   • Use the key planning documents you have created (such as WBS)
   • Main goal: make sure that you aren’t missing a key piece of work that is required to complete your project.
   • 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.

2. **Set dependencies **

   • Figure out which tasks must be completed before other tasks can start
   • Ask:
     • Which task needs to take place before this task?
     • Which task can be finished at the same time as this task?
     • Which task needs to happen right after this task?

3. Create a network diagram

   • The network diagram help visualize
     • The path of the work from the start of the project (excavation) to the end of the project (flooring)
     • Which tasks can be performed in parallel and in sequence
     • Which non-essential tasks are NOT on the critical path

   Example: building the structure of a house

   

4. Make time estimates

   • After determining tasks and dependencies, consult key stakeholders to get accurate time estimates for each task
   • Time estimates can be reviewed and updated throughout the project, as necessary.

5. Find the critical path

   • Add up the durations for all of your “essential” tasks and calculate the longest possible path, you can determine your critical path
   • Only include the tasks that, if they go unfinished, will impact the project’s finish date
   • Two common approaches
     • Forward pass
       • Start at the beginning of your project task list and add up the duration of the tasks on the critical path to the end of your project.
       • When using this approach, start with the first task you have identified that needs to be completed before anything else can start.
     • Backward pass
       • Start with the final task or milestone and move backwards through your schedule to determine the shortest path to completion.
       • When there is a hard deadline, working backwards can help you determine which tasks are actually critical.
       • You may be able to cut some tasks—or complete them later—in order to meet your deadline.

Getting accurate time estimates from your team

Use soft skills to gather accurate estimates from your teammates

Utilizing Tools to Build a Project Plan