Month: July 2017

The Project Plan – Overview

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,

Planning

There are many Project Managers and Stakeholders who refer to the Project Schedule (usually built in Microsoft Project or equivalent) as “The Project Plan”. This is not true. The schedule shows “who, what and when” but does not address “how”. A plan must address “how” or it is not a plan. I will address the Project Schedule in a separate series of posts.

The prerequisite to building a schedule is to identify all of the activities, and in order to do that you need a Project Plan. Activities will also be drawn from the Project Management Plan (refer to prior series of posts for more on this). This overview will list the main topics of the Project Plan and subsequent posts will do a deeper dive into each topic.

Here are the elements of the Project Plan:

  • The Development Plan
  • The Operations Plan
  • The Organizational Change Management Plan
  • The Test Plan
  • The Migration Plan
  • The Pilot Plan
  • The Deployment Plan
  • The Support Plan (post-implementation)
  • The Support Plan (during the project and stabilization)

Some of these topics will require multiple posts to give them the depth they deserve.

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The Project Management Plan – Project Close

Professor of Project Management Project Planning

Planning

When you are managing a long-running project, your sponsoring business partners may start to feel you are a permanent part of their team. Since many projects have enhancements to make after the initial project is done, it is easy to get endlessly drawn into managing these enhancements as if they were part of the original project.

Your defense against this is to define the conditions of project close in your Project Management Plan. Here is a sample list of typical conditions:

  • The Project Objectives from the Project Charter have all been met
  • Contracts have been fulfilled and closed.
  • Lessons Learned have been documented and reviewed
  • Project Documents have all been stored in the project document repository
  • There are no critical open issues (there will always be some issues left over; as long as they are not critical, these can be handled by your post-implementation Support Model)

Be sure to include this section in your Project Management Plan and that your Project Sponsor is aware of and agrees to these conditions in advance.

The Project Management Plan – Procurement Management

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,

Planning

In many projects you will need to procure or purchase something. It might be software, hardware, professional services, office space, furniture, resources, licenses, permits, etc. It is up to the Project Manager to determine what needs to be procured, who is providing the funding, who will sign the purchase orders or contracts, and the timing of when it is needed for the project. These actions need to be tracked and managed in order to stay on schedule and budget.

Many organizations have policies and procedures on procurement to ensure they are getting the best deal. Be sure to understand the relevant policies and procedures for your organization

The Procurement Management Plan addresses the following:

• Lists what to purchase or acquire and when and how

• Documents all products, services, and results requirements

        . Identifies potential sellers

• Describes how sellers will be selected

• Describes how contracts will be negotiated, administered and closed. You can reference the Contract Management policies of your organization

The Project Management Plan – Risk Management

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,

Planning

Managing risk stands along with having a well-defined Project Charter as the two most important disciplines of Project Management. Having a documented plan for how you will manage risk will help enforce the practice.

In a future post I will describe the metrics that are used to measure the health of a project. One of these measures is Risk Management. The health of managing risk is “green” (which is good) if you have a sponsor-approved plan for managing risk and are adhering to it.

The Risk Management Plan addresses the following:

• Identify the template to be used as the Risk Register.  Include column definitions and an example. In a future post, when I elaborate on Risk Management, I will identify the key components of a Risk Register

• Include the procedures you will use to identify, monitor and escalate risks. This includes identifying who will participate in Risk Management sessions

• Identify standard checklists or historical risk information you can use for Risk identification