Project planning 101

www.publicsectorpm.com

Dec 22nd 2010

Overview Ice breaker What is a project? Why bother to plan? What is a project plan? When to create a plan How to plan Project planning techniques

Product based planning Planning poker GANNT charts with MS project Resource usage Bubble charts

Ice breaker

Interview person sat next to you. Find out: Their job title and department Why they signed up for the course Their proudest career moment to date What hobbies they’re into

What is a project?

Projects exist whenever people work to achieve a ‘one-off’ defined objective. A project:

has a start and an end is often completed by a multi-disciplinary team has constraints of cost, time and quality has a scope of work that is unique and involves

uncertainty

Examples include New website New building

Why bother to plan?

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

Without a plan, how do you know… what needs to be done? Who is taking responsibility for what? Whether the project is achievable on time?

What is a project plan?

At its simplest, it’s a to do list List of products which a project will produce, with

start and end dates, and the person responsible for their production

Plan tells you who is doing what, by when Additional complexity can be added to more

detailed stage plans: Dependencies between products (you cant put the roof

on before you’ve built the walls) Further breakdown of activities required to produce a

particular product

When should I create a plan?

Plans must be created during the start up phase of a project, and reviewed and updated throughout the project.

High level plan is created for the project initiation document (PID)

Important that as detailed a plan as possible is created with the PID, and that all resources confirm up front that they can complete the work in the required timescale… Otherwise you are setting the project up to fail!

How to plan

You must plan collaboratively!If you produce a project plan at your desk

without consulting anyone…. It will take longer It’s unlikely to be accurate You wont get the buy-in of your colleagues The plan wont be adhered to!

Product breakdown structureBreakdown of the things you need to produce to complete the project

Project product

External product

Productgroup

Source: Prince2 (http://www.ogc.gov.uk/methods_prince_2.asp)

Product flow diagram shows which order the products need to be produced in (dependencies)

Source: Prince2 (http://www.ogc.gov.uk/methods_prince_2.asp)

Exercise 1

Produce a product breakdown structure for a new website project

Use no more than 10 products

Planning poker

Get the project team together and consider each product in turn

Each team member estimates how long the product will take to produce without discussing it with other team members:

1d, 2d, 3d, 5d, 8d, 13d, 21d, 34d, or 55d Team members then reveal their estimates and

discuss. You then repeat the process until you can all agree on a figure for each product.

Exercise 2

Estimate the amount of effort required to produce the website using the planning poker technique (group exercise)

GANNT charts

You know what you need to produceYou know the order that things need to be

produced inIts time to load everything up into a

GANNT chartYou can use MS project for this

Producing plans in MS project

Tasks, milestones, dependencies, resources

Reviewing your resource usageQuality check list

Tasks, milestones, dependencies, resources

Exercise 3

Produce a GANNT chart in MS Project for two of the new website products

Planning in stages

For larger projects (longer than 3 months) its advisable to plan in stages

At the end of each stage, hold a stage review (sometimes called a gate review) to: Confirm previous stage was adequately completed Agree detailed plans for the next stage Key decision point – is the business case still valid, should we

continue with the project? Where possible, aim to deliver something usable to the

business at the end of each stage - don’t just save up all of the project output for one big ‘go live’ date. This enables the business to start realising project benefits early, motivates the project team and ensures that the right products are delivered at the right time.

Planning quality check list

Produced the plan collaboratively using the planning workshop approach?

Identified all project products using product based planning techniques?

Produced effort estimates for all products using the planning poker technique?

Broken your project down into stages enabling the early delivery of business benefits?

Produced a MS project GANNT chart? Ensured that the amount of work figure is correct

for all tasks?

Resource usage

Bubble charts – effective communication of plans

Work Streams

Finance

Skill Mix

Information Gathering

Communications

Design

Key: Current Month

Project name

Dec-09 Jan-10 Mar-10

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Green/Amber Amber (The project is on target to succeed. The timeline/cost/objectives are w ithin plan.) Green

(The project has a potential problem and no action is to be taken at this time, but it is being carefully monitored. The timeline/cost/objectives may be at risk.)

(The project has a problem but action is being taken to resolve this. The timeline/cost/objectives may be at risk.)

Red (The project requires remedial action to achieve objectives. The timeline/cost/objectives are at risk.)