Every project conveys a story about its goals, team, timeline, and deliverables, and telling a suitable story requires detailed project planning and management. As well as Project planning helps to prevent project risk. Here we will discuss some new ways to plan your project that are beneficial for the managers as well as the whole team.
Make sure to check: Traditional vs Agile Project Management: Which Comes on Top?
Why is Project Planning So Important?
Project planning isn’t just another stage of project management. It is one of the most important steps in the entire procedure. Let’s look at why project planning is so important – not just for the project, but also for the whole company and its employees.
1. Improves project efficiency and success rates.
2. It saves money
3. Promotes team communication
4. It guarantees that resources are used efficiently
5. This method makes tracking project goals and outcomes simple.
6. Project planning helps in keeping all participants on the same page.
7. Lastly, It boosts staff satisfaction
7 Ney Ways for Effective Project Planning
To build a clear project management strategy, you must be able to track all of your moving pieces. Every work plan, no matter what type of project you’re planning, should include:
- Establish your goals and objectives.
- Set success criteria
- Determine stakeholders and roles.
- Make a budget.
- Coordinate project milestones, deliverables, and dependencies
- Create a timeline and a timetable.
- Share your communication strategy.
Step 1: Establish Your Goals And Objectives
Every successful project plan should have a clear, desired outcome. Defining your goals offers insight into your project plan. It also keeps everyone on the same track and focused on the objectives they want to achieve. Your team’s efforts can connect in real time to the project objectives by defining your goals within your work plan.
Step 2: Set Success Criteria
After deciding on your goals, make sure they’re measurable by defining important success measures. While your goal acts as the desired result, you’ll need criteria for achievement to determine whether you’re on pace to meet that goal. Setting SMART goals is the best method to achieve this.
Step 3: Determine Stakeholders and Roles
List the team members who will be working on the project and describe their responsibilities in your project management planning. You can then determine who is in charge of each task and communicate your expectations to stakeholders. Ensure that you define the various roles and responsibilities that your stakeholders may have during this process such as:
- Who is directly responsible for the project’s success?
- How is your project team organized?
- Are there any approvers who should be involved before anything is finalized? What cross-functional stakeholders should be included in the project plan?
- Do you need to consider any risk management factors?
Step 4: Make a Budget
Establishing your project budget during the project planning phase allows you to gain permission, track progress easier, and make wise, cost-effective decisions during the project’s implementation phase. Knowing your budget ahead of time helps in resource management, ensuring that you stay within the project’s initial financial scope.
Step 5: Coordinate Project Milestones, Deliverables, and Dependencies
Setting milestones, or specific goals that signify success, is an important aspect of project planning. Milestones don’t require to have a start and finish date, but achieving one is a big accomplishment during your project.
On the other hand, a project deliverable is what is created once a milestone is reached. In our example of product development, we reached a milestone when we completed the deliverable, which was the prototype. You can also employ project dependencies, which are activities that cannot be started until others are completed. Dependencies ensure that work begins only when it is ready.
Step 6: Create a plan and schedule
To fulfill your project objectives, you and your stakeholders must clearly understand the entire project plan and schedule. Aligning on a time range might help you prioritize better during strategic planning discussions.
Not all projects will have a set timeline. If you’re working on a huge project with a few unknown dates, consider drafting a project roadmap rather than a full-fledged project timeline. In this manner, you may explain the order of operations for distinct tasks without having to set specific dates.
Step 7: Share Your Communication Strategy
A communication plan is essential for ensuring that everyone understands what’s going on, how the project is progressing, and what’s coming up next. And, if an issue arises, you’ll already have a clear communication transmission in place.
Consider the following questions as you build your communication strategy:
- How many project-related meetings do you need? What are their goals?
- How will you handle project status updates? Where will you put them?
- What tool will you use to manage the project and communicate progress and updates?
You may also check: Top 6 Project Roles and Responsibilities Know Here Now!
Frequently Asked Questions
The project planning phase is generally quite challenging for a project manager since you must make estimates regarding the employees, resources, and equipment required to finish your project.
Planning, in particular, helps in evaluating the goal to determine its viability. It aids decision-making and enables the establishment of a time frame by estimating when the organization will be able to reach its goal.
Popular goal-setting techniques, such as SMART and CLEAR, can assist a project manager in developing a set of effective goals from the start of a project. This can help overcome project management challenges.
