Planning Phase of Project Management

Project Management Guide

Practical Project Management: From First Idea to Final Hand-Over

Ethics, stakeholders, scope, schedule, cost, risk, quality, procurement and communication, in one plain-English walkthrough.

Most project management advice drowns you in jargon. This guide does the opposite. It walks through the full planning framework, from the ethics a project manager is held to, to the critical path through a network diagram, using a single principle throughout: keep it super simple. Every project has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the beginning is where most are won or lost.

In this guide

1. Start with ethics
2. What a project is
3. Stakeholders
4. The organization around the project
5. Life cycles and phases
6. A usable methodology
7. Initiation
8. The project plan
9. Scope and the WBS
10. Resource planning
11. Scheduling and critical path
12. Cost
13. Risk
14. Quality
15. Procurement and contracts
16. Communication
17. Putting it together

Part 1Start With Ethics, Not Gantt Charts

The most useful lesson in the whole deck arrives before any tool or template: every project has a beginning, a middle and an end, and the person running it is held to a standard of behavior. Ethics is defined simply as knowing what is right, and choosing to do it whatever the consequences. When a project manager hits a dilemma, the options are to make a stand, play politics or blow the whistle.

Every project has a beginning, a middle and an end. The rest of the framework hangs on that idea.

Three behaviors are expected in business: fairness, truthfulness and honesty. In practice that means telling the truth in reports and conversations, respecting copyright, keeping confidential information confidential, refusing bribes and inappropriate gifts, and avoiding conflicts of interest or even the appearance of them. It also means sharing lessons learned with other project managers, balancing stakeholders’ interests fairly, and respecting cultural differences.

In short: be responsible, be respectful, be fair, be honest. The deck treats this as the foundation, not a footnote.

Part 2What a Project Actually Is

A project is a temporary endeavor with a predefined beginning and end that achieves a set of objectives, creates a unique product and adds value to the organization. “Temporary” does not mean short. It means the work stops when goals are reached, the deliverables are delivered, or the business need changes and the goalposts move. Because each outcome is unique, it is also uncertain, and therefore risky.

Projects roll up into programs, and programs into portfolios.

Projects work under constraints of resources, money and time. Project management is the knowledge, skills and tools used to define and achieve objectives while satisfying stakeholders’ needs and expectations: planning, organizing and controlling time, money and people. One caution is repeated throughout: nothing ever goes according to plan, so effective monitoring, problem resolution, proactive re-alignment and risk management are the real job.

Operations are not projects. Operations are performed by stable teams through ongoing, repetitive processes; projects are performed by temporary teams doing non-repetitive work that produces unique deliverables.

Part 3Stakeholders: Ignore Them at Your Peril

Who decides whether a project was a success? The key stakeholders. The deck frames the core relationship as three musketeers: the project manager, the sponsor and the customer. The sponsor approves key project documents, chairs the steering team and change control board, oversees governance and controls the money.

The advice is to seek stakeholders out. Ask what they expect, what they stand to lose, what they can contribute and whether they have a hidden agenda. Failure to engage them can be fatal. Two simple tools help.

The power map places each person by influence and marks them as antagonist, supporter, recommender, coach, neutral or unknown.

The stakeholder influence matrix records each person’s role, reporting line and whether they decide, influence, observe or own.

The project manager sits in the middle of all this. The deck calls project management an “accidental profession” and lists what it takes: process skills, general management skills, interpersonal skills, a leadership style, and technology management skills. Good candidates are generalists who tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty and have integrity: they do what they say they will do.

Part 4The Organization Around the Project

Just as projects are unique, so are the organizations that surround them. A risk-taking entrepreneur in a risk-averse company, or a democratic team player in a hierarchy, is the classic square peg in a round hole, and the result is stress, frustration and demotivation. The structure of the organization decides how and when project resources become available.

FunctionalStaff report to functional managers. Project coordination happens at the manager level, and project resources are borrowed from departments.

ProjectizedThe project manager is the main man and the team reports to them. Coordination sits inside the project.

MatrixStaff keep a functional home while being assigned to projects. Coordination cuts across the functions.

Projectized organization: resources report directly to the project manager.

Matrix organization: project coordination cuts across functional lines.

The PMO debate

A Project Management Office is a functional group that oversees projects and programs. Its benefits include pulling together skilled practitioners without territorial bias, holding organization-wide methods and giving a view of the big picture. Its reasons to exist include managing shared resources, owning methodology and standards, monitoring compliance and developing templates. The deck is honest about the downside: is it nothing more than an archive for project documents? The question “To PMO or not to PMO?” is left open, and the author admits to still not being fully convinced.

Information systems, kept simple

A project information management system is an integrated set of tools and processes for managing project information. The guiding rule is KISS: keep it super simple. A small project needs a small, even paper-based system with folders, binders and an index; a mega-project may need a sophisticated centralized one. Either way, systematize before you automate, and put it in place on day one, explained to the whole team at the kickoff meeting.

Part 5Life Cycles and Phases

The project life cycle is the whole story: a logical sequence of phases from beginning to end, usually initiation, intermediate phases and an end phase. Phases can relate sequentially, overlap (fast tracking) or repeat iteratively. At the end of each phase comes a review: is the quality and completeness acceptable, how is performance, and shall we continue? These checkpoints go by many names: phase exits, stage gates, toll gates, milestones and kill points.

A phase hand-off: the deliverable must be completed, tested, inspected and accepted before the next phase begins.

Four characteristics change over time as a project proceeds.

Stakeholder influence is highest at the beginning and falls as the project progresses.

Periodic cost starts low, peaks in the middle and drops quickly toward the end.

Risk of an event happening decreases with time, while probability of success increases. The practical message: early decisions are cheap to change and heavily influenced by stakeholders, so spend your energy there.

Do not confuse phases with other structures. Sub-projects, process groups and the work breakdown structure are not project phases.

Part 6A Methodology You Can Actually Use

A methodology is a set of tools and document templates that gives standard, repeatable application of a group of interrelated processes. The benefits are a common language and framework, saved time, consistent results, and success that depends less on any one project manager. Documents such as the PMI’s PMBOK Guide, the APM Body of Knowledge and ISO 21500 are guidance, not methodologies. PRINCE2, ITIL, Scrum, Kanban and XP are examples of methodologies and frameworks. Off-the-shelf options are often universally complex and too slow to learn, so the deck favors a pragmatic approach built on ISO 21500 guidance.

Three layers of management and control: governance (steering team), project management (project team) and production (production team).

The method is a loop. Freeze the scope, build the plan, execute, compare actual against plan, apply corrective action when something is off, continue until everything is done, then hand over and close. In the execution phase you monitor resources, communication, status, cost, scope, schedule, quality and progress, find root causes, and revise the plan. Closing includes administrative work: pay suppliers, get paid, write the final report and take care of your team.

The complete methodology loop, with KISS as the reminder.

The Five Critical Documents

1. Project Assignment, which authorizes the project and the project manager.
2. Project Plan, which defines how the work will be executed, monitored, controlled and closed.
3. Risk List, the identified and assessed risks.
4. Change Register (change control), because scope, schedule and budget are frozen and every change goes through the steering team via the sponsor.
5. Status Report, communication that is accurate whether the news is good, bad or ugly.

Part 7Initiation: Selection, Assignment and Team

Why do we do projects at all? Market need, customer request, strategic opportunity, technological advance, legal requirement or ecological impact. Selection uses categorizing and financial analysis: net present value, internal rate of return, payback period and benefit-cost ratio. A weighted scoring model works too: identify criteria, assign weights, score each project, multiply and pick the highest total.

The Project Assignment is a formal document created by the sponsor and approved by the sponsor’s manager. It authorizes the project or phase, names the project manager, documents the business case and the assumptions, constraints and risks, and authorizes the manager to spend money. With it in hand, the project manager identifies stakeholders and then establishes the team: a small core team of team leaders who recruit their own subject matter experts, with a team directory (a directory, not a resource plan) and a thought-out induction.

Part 8The Project Plan and Frozen Baselines

The project plan, the second critical document, answers why, what, who, how and how much. Its important elements are the baselines, a milestone list, the risk list and subsidiary plans for scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communication, risk and procurement. The deck advises two versions: a customer plan aligned with the contract and based on price, and an internal plan based on cost. Keep confidential information confidential.

Baselines for scope, schedule and cost are approved by the sponsor, frozen by the project manager and changed only through formal change control. They are also how both the project and the project manager will be measured.

Part 9Scope: Requirements, WBS and Activities

Scope comes in two flavors: project scope (the work to deliver the product, measured against the scope baseline) and product scope (features and functions, measured against product requirements). Requirements are collected by asking questions, interviewing stakeholders, running workshops, surveys and prototyping. Under a traditional waterfall framework they are fixed in the contract; under agile frameworks they start high-level and are elaborated progressively. They are tracked in a requirements traceability matrix so that success is not debatable.

The scope statement is short and sweet, an agreement between buyer and seller on deliverables and the work required. Then comes decomposition into the work breakdown structure.

Decomposition: project, phases, deliverables, work packages.

The three golden rules of a good WBS: elements are mutually exclusive, the whole scope is included (the 100% rule), and each work package is self-contained. A WBS can be extended into a WBS dictionary with names, descriptions, schedules, budgets and resources.

The simplest way to remember it: the WBS is nouns (what we are making); the activity list is verbs (what we are doing). The project manager owns the WBS with the sponsor, customer and designers, who know what to deliver. The activity list is best produced by the production teams, who know how.

The deck’s scope mantra is blunt: freeze the project scope on day one.

Part 10Resource Planning

Resources are people, materials and everything else. Estimating resources starts from the WBS, activity list, resource pool and standard procedures, and produces a resource requirement, bill of materials, list of suppliers, organization chart and project directory. Expert input from production teams, bottom-up estimating, historical data, industry rates and a little lateral thinking are the main techniques; question the “extras and contingencies”.

The responsibility assignment matrix prevents the classic ambiguity of “I thought you were going to do that” and “that’s your job, not mine”: no overlapping and no redundant work, signed off by both parties. The project organization chart is called the most important chart: it must be updated and freely distributed. Assigning a role to a group rather than a person is flagged as a red flag.

The “how” differs by structure: in a functional organization, find the resource owners; in a projectized one, rely on your key team members and delegate; in a matrix, talk to competence group managers and the PMO. In every case: “Can I have your best people, please?”

Part 11Scheduling and the Critical Path

Scheduling starts with activity sequencing: arranging activities by dependency (mandatory, discretionary or external) into a project network diagram. The deck deliberately sticks with activity-on-node (the precedence diagramming method), because arrow and conditional methods are just too complicated. There are four relationships; Finish-to-Start is by far the most common, and Start-to-Finish is rare, used mostly in just-in-time construction.

Activity on node: boxes are activities, arrows are the relationships.

Four golden rules: include only the work in scope; Finish-to-Start is the most common relationship; sequencing is not the same as a schedule; scheduling can only happen after sequencing.

Estimating durations

AnalogousTop-down, using historical information. Cheaper and quicker, but less accurate.

ParametricUnit rate times number of units. If one person needs 20 hours per module, 50 modules need 1,000 hours.

QuantitativeSeparate duration from effort. Four people on a wall for 4 days at 8 hours is a 32-hour duration but 128 man-hours of effort.

Remember Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the time allotted. Watch for hidden time padded “just in case”, procrastination and multitasking. Ask whether estimates are realistic using historical information, expert judgment and a controlled project-manager contingency.

The critical path

The critical path is the longest-duration path through the network and sets the earliest possible finish date. Activities on it cannot slip without delaying the project. A forward pass finds each activity’s earliest start and finish; a backward pass finds the latest ones; the difference is float.

Worked example: the critical path is Start, E, F, C, D, Finish, at 20 days. Activity A and B each have 3 days of float, and G has 5.

Three kinds of float are defined: free float (delay without affecting the next activity), total float (delay without affecting the project end date) and project float (delay without passing the customer-expected completion date). The output is an approved, frozen baseline schedule with the network diagram, a Gantt chart, milestones and decision gates.

Part 12Estimating and Budgeting Cost

Costs fall into four categories: direct, variable, fixed and indirect. The three estimating methods mirror those for time. Analogous estimates are cheap and quick but rough. Parametric estimates use industry parameters, such as a cost per square meter, and have variable accuracy. Bottom-up estimates roll individual work items up to the work package and WBS: not cheap or quick, but the most accurate. A good cost estimate includes the whole scope but only the scope, plus assumptions and the logic used for uncertain costs.

Price = Cost + Profit

Whatever we do, keep costs down, get paid for everything we do and make a fair profit. The baseline budget (also called the cost baseline or time-phased budget) is built by summing periodic costs, which gives the familiar S-curve. Compare cash flow, periodic costs and cumulative costs to monitor the spend.

Cash flow, periodic costs and the cumulative S-curve, all built in a simple spreadsheet.

Part 13Risk: Uncertainty You Can Plan For

Risk is uncertainty: an event or condition that, if it happens, impacts the project, positively or negatively. Positive events are opportunities and negative events are threats. The objective is to raise the probability and impact of opportunities and lower them for threats. The process is to identify potential events, assess their scale and probability, prioritize them and make plans to eliminate the worst (the Pareto principle applies).

The vocabulary is useful: risk tolerance is willingness to accept risk, a risk threshold is the point at which a risk becomes unacceptable, and expected value combines probability with impact. Identification cannot be done alone. Run a facilitated workshop: warm up, describe the project, collect individual risks, present them, discuss, sort and categorize, and write a clear and concise statement for each. No pre-judgments.

The impact and probability matrix turns qualitative judgments into a priority rank, where 1 means act first.

Keep the risk list in a spreadsheet for ease of analysis. A simple scoring option multiplies probability (1 to 5) by effect (1 to 5) for a relative consequence score. Initial risks are listed before the project starts and reviewed monthly, and the budget needs money set aside for “killing risks”, because even mitigation plans consume time and resources.

Part 14Quality: Planned In, Not Inspected In

Quality management covers both the quality of the product of the project and the quality of the management of the project. The customer decides whether it is acceptable. Quality and grade are different: quality is the degree to which inherent characteristics meet requirements, so failing to meet them is always a problem, while a low grade is not necessarily one.

Quality management shares traits with project management: customer satisfaction (conformance to requirements and fitness for purpose), prevention over cure, management responsibility and Plan-Do-Check-Act. The cost of non-conformance, with rework, lost customers, time and morale, far exceeds the cost of conformance, which is training, safety and prevention. Start from the organization’s quality policy (ISO 9000, Six Sigma, TQM or bespoke), get stakeholder buy-in, and write a quality plan covering quality control (inspections) and quality assurance (audits of processes).

Part 15Procurement and Contracts

Procurement is acquiring goods, services or works from an external source. Four questions drive the plan: do we need to buy, what, how much and when? You are not a procurement specialist, so consult expert buyers and contract negotiators or put them on the team. Make-or-buy is a strategic decision made during scope definition: making has start-up costs, buying means relying on third parties for ongoing support.

All contracts are in writing and signed: no contract, no work. The three basic types differ mainly in who carries the risk.

Who takes the risk: cost-based contracts push risk onto the buyer, fixed price onto the seller.

A super simple rule for contract management: let everybody make a fair profit.

Part 16Communication Planning

Effective communication is the soft skill every project manager needs. The plan answers what, when and how, and is ready on day one of the execution phase or earlier. It covers schedule (daily, weekly, monthly), recipients (who wants what), modality (email, hardcopy, meetings, even business lunches; make it effective and efficient), technology (manual distribution or a central repository), resources, project duration and contract requirements. Two reminders bookend it: different stakeholders have different needs, and provide information when it can contribute to success or when its absence can contribute to failure.

A communication plan template: report, method, owner, frequency, recipients and where the file lives.

Part 17Putting It All Together

The planning knowledge areas map onto the three parts of any project. This grid shows the processes in each subject group across initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing; the first part of the program covers the Beginning.

Subject groups across the beginning, middle and end of a project.

Five decision gates keep the whole thing honest: DG1 when the project manager is assigned and the Project Assignment issued; DG2 when planning is complete enough to start the work; DG3 when deliverables are complete enough to start the handover; DG4 when the handover is complete and closing can begin; and DG5 for the final report and the decision to close. Between them sit milestone reviews of progress and quality.

Mandatory check points: five decision gates with milestone reviews in between.

The ultimate mantra is the one the deck keeps returning to:

“On time, in budget and to the delight of the end user.”

Keep it super simple. Plan the beginning well, and the middle and end become far easier to manage.