1. Project management
Topic 2
Planning

2. Overview of processes Choose Planning Tools & Techniques Plan Design
Identify the Products
Product Breakdown Structure
Product Descriptions
Product Checklist and Product Flow Diagram
Identify Product Activities & Dependencies
Activities List
Dependencies
Estimate Effort
Activity Estimates
Create a Schedule
Schedule
Estimate the Risks
Risk Log
Write the Narrative
Narrative, Summary, Gantt
Completed Plan

3. Choosing the planning tools and techniques
Make decisions about:
Presentation and layout
Who is the audience?
Planning tools
What company standards does the business have?
Estimating
Using computer tools? Previous experience? Historical Data? Top down, bottom up, consulting those who will do the work
Allowances
Is a change budget needed?
Is a contingency plan needed?
Create the plan design

4. Identify the products
Identify the specialist products and the management products to be produced
Describe the quality requirements of each product and ensure that they are fully understood and agreed by everyone involved
Sequence the products in the order that they will be created
Create the Product Breakdown Structure
Create the Product Descriptions (Configuration Items)
Create the Product Checklist
Create the Product Flow Diagram

5. Identify product activities and dependencies
Identify all the activities necessary to deliver the products
Establish the interdependencies between activities
Ensure that dependencies both internal and external to the project are identified
All the activities required to create or change the planned products have to be identified, includes management activities
External constraints:
The delivery of a product required by this project from another project
Waiting for a decision from corporate management

6. Estimating Techniques: Identify the products
Estimates based on actual experience from similar projects
Each component of each product is estimated individually, estimates are added for stages and project
Estimating on providing functionality similar to other projects
Top down – divide a good project estimate into % of project work
Identify the products
Identify the activities (planning, developing, quality testing) to produce the product
Identify the resources needed to do the activities
Estimate the effort required for each activity, how long will it take?
How realistic are the estimates? Previous experience helps make estimates more accurate

7. Scheduling Draw a planning network Assess resource availability
Produce the network diagram from the activities list based on activity sequence and dependencies
Assess resource availability
Will the people who will to do the work be available? Who are they?
What is the cost of buying resources? Are there procurement issues?
Produce the schedule (Gantt Chart)
Assign responsibilities
Consider the critical path and completion dates
Level resource usage (spread allocations to avoid overloading)
Confirm control points (milestones)
Calculate costs

8. Analysing risks Each resource is examined for its potential risk
Is the resource a known quantity?
Is the quality of work required and the ability to meet deadlines known?
Is the level of commitment known?
Will the resource be totally under the control of the Project Manager?
Where the answer is ‘No’, there is a risk involved
Countermeasures would include tighter and more frequent monitoring until confidence in the resource is achieved.
Each activity should be checked for risk
Is there any spare time or does the entire schedule depend on no slippage for the activity?
Everything on the critical path therefore represents a risk
At the very least the countermeasures should include more frequent monitoring to give early warning of any problem.
All identified risks should be entered into the Risk Log

9. Write the narrative A narrative explains the plan Create the summary
explains constraints, external dependencies, assumptions made, the risks identified and their required countermeasures
Create the summary
The format of plans presented for approval should be a summary and should show the major products and activities that will occur throughout the plan and describe the resource and cost requirements.
Project Board approval will ‘freeze’ the plan as a baseline.
The graphical presentation of the plan is normally a Gantt or bar chart

10. Fundamentals Choose the tools and techniques Create the plan design
Identify products and describe products
Create the product work breakdown
Identify product activities and dependencies
Estimate the effort required to do activities
Create the schedule (Gantt Chart)
Assign responsibilities
Consider the critical path and completion dates
Level resource usage (spread allocations to avoid overloading)
Confirm control points (milestones)
Calculate costs
Analyse the risks and take action to lessen impact
Write the narrative and produce the plan