Project Plan

The Project Plan Part 2 – The Operations Plan #projectmanagement

Professor of Project Management Project Planning
Planning

The Operations Plan describes how day-to-day operations will occur when the solution is in place and the project is over. The planning principle is to “begin with the end in mind”. This definition of the end state will help you complete the identification of the Stakeholders and verify that you have the complete list of Project Objectives in the Project Charter. It provides guidance to the organization on how to successfully maintain the solution over time.

Here is a list of some things to consider (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

• Operations Infrastructure – a comprehensive description of the environment into which the solution will be deployed and supported (including incident management).

• Service Level Agreement (SLA) – addresses up-time, performance, redundancy and disaster recovery

• Reporting Model – describes generally who will receive reports, the technology to be used for report delivery, what information they will get and on what schedule, and what source data will be used to generate the reports.

• Organization Skill and Time Requirements – identifies the job roles, associated skill requirements and work time necessary to operate the solution. This information could be placed in a matrix that identifies 1) types of operational functions, 2) the job roles that work within each function, 3) the skill requirements for each job role, and 4) the frequency and time required (i.e. “3 hours per month”). This information can be used to identify organizational impact for your Organizational Change Management Plan (more on that in future posts). Make sure you identify the Administrators and their functions.

• Software and Data Updates and Refreshes from External Sources –  how often and how it will be tested and verified.

• Backup/Recovery – how often backups will occur and the process to order a restore.

• Scheduled Maintenance Times – when and how often will the system be unavailable for maintenance

• Monitoring – who is responsible for monitoring system performance; what tools will be used.

• Security – requests to add access, remove access or change roles

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The Project Plan Part 1 – The Development Plan #projectmanagement

Professor of Project Management Project Planning
Planning

The Development Plan describes the solution development process used for the project in order to achieve the Project Objectives as defined in the Project Charter. This plan complements the Requirements specifications that details what will be built and provides consistent guidelines and processes to the teams creating the solution.

Here is a list of some things to consider when creating the Development Plan (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Intermediate deliverables needed to achieve the Project Objectives. For software, this list includes documents for Requirements, Design, Configuration, Build, Test and Deploy.
  • Delivery Strategy (e.g. phased implementations, high-priority/high-risk items first, “depth-first”, “breadth first”, “features, then performance tuning”)
  • Design Goals (e.g. create reusable components, use existing components, ease of maintenance vs. speed of delivery, security, etc)
  • Development and Build Environment – this has the potential to be a high-work, high-risk area. Include source code control, software and tools needed, test data, connectivity to other environments, security, tool and run-time licensing etc
  • Naming Conventions
  • The Build Process (how will versions be created for system, user and quality testing)
  • List Components and who will build them –  Also state if you have to buy components and how you will acquire them.
  • Development tools – also identify licensing needed.
  • Team Training and Support – identify training for the development team and what support they will need

You need to break down the activities listed above into pieces of work small enough to assign to one or more resources and estimate the effort and duration of the activity. The level in which you break this down is usually at the Project Manager’s discretion and will vary by project.

In addition to assigning resources and effort, you should describe how the activity will be accomplished. For example, if your major activity was ” Create System Design Document”, you could break this down into lower level activities such as “Data Design”, “Interface Design”, “Transaction Process Design”, etc. For “Interface Design” you could refer to company standards (if they exist), what languages and technologies will be used and what reviews and approvals are needed.

As we go thru each part of the Project Plan in subsequent posts, you will be collecting a list of activities that will ultimately be used to build the Project Schedule.

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The Project Plan – Overview #projectmanagement

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)

You will not necessarily need all of these plans for a given project. It is good practice to review each one for every project to see if they apply. Some of these topics will require multiple posts to give them the depth they deserve.

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle format at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The Project Plan Part 9 – The In-Project Support Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

The In-project Support Plan is needed if all or part of the solution is to be supported by a vendor or 3rd party. It addresses support needed during the project which includes the post-implementation stabilization period.

Here is a list of some things to consider (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Scope – describe the conditions in which this support is triggered.
  • Contact information – phone #’s, email, website, customer access id
  • Service Level Agreements (listed in order of severity, commits to how fast you can expect a response to a reported issue)
  • Problem and Status Reporting – what tools will be used, roles, responsibilities
  • Escalation Procedure if issues are not addressed in a timely or effective manner
  • Change Requests – for changes that are not bugs, define the request procedure & labor rate

This topic concludes the series on “The Project Plan”. In the next series of blog posts, I will address development of the Project Schedule.

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

#projectmanagement

The Project Plan Part 8 – The Post-Live Support Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

The Support Plan describes how the solution will be supported once operational. This includes a description of the support personnel and their roles as well as the processes to resolve problems arising within the solution boundaries.

Implementing a Support Plan is an important piece of Project close-out. The operational Stakeholders must be self-sufficient once the solution is live and no longer dependent on the Project Manager. Lack of a Support Plan is the primary cause of Project Managers being attached to projects for a long period of time after go-live.

Here is a list of some things to consider when building your Support Plan (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Support Resources, Roles, Responsibilities
  • Support model – define who will function as level 1, 2 & 3 support, how they will be contacted, and their staffing needs
  • Service Level Agreements (e.g. system availability, up-time, response time, etc)
  • Help Desk support
  • Vendor Support (support that will be purchased from the vendor) including naming the Stakeholders that will be the vendor support point of contact
  • Specialists (describe circumstances in which in-depth knowledge of the solution requires engaging specialists)
  • Product Updates – Who is responsible? Software vendors typically release updates multiple times a year. How often do we plan to apply them? How will it be tested? What is the roll-back plan? Who will monitor changes in platform support?
  • Include both one-time and ongoing costs for the items listed above

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

#projectmanagement

The Project Plan Part 7 – The Deployment Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

The Deployment Plan describes the factors necessary for a smooth deployment and transition to ongoing operations. It encompasses the processes of preparing, installing, training, stabilizing, and transferring the solution to operations. For some projects, deployment can be very complex. For these types of projects it pays to start deployment planning as early as possible to manage the risk of delays due to deployment difficulties.

Here is a list of some things to consider for your deployment plan (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Scope
    • Stakeholders (those affected by the solution)
    • New and changed Business Processes
    • Licensing considerations
    • Approx. # components per platform
  • Deployment strategy & schedule (e.g. phased, site-by-site, push vs. pull, dept. by dept, etc)
  • Organizational Change Management
  • Implications of new and old system and processes in production at the same time
  • Deployment Resources
  • Help Desk Preparation
  • Desktops/Servers Affected
  • End User Training (High level business process and detail usage)
  • Installation Process
  • Installation Validation
  • Support during Stabilization
  • Hand-off to Support and Operations
  • Activation of Monitoring (for computer systems and business processes)

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

#projectmanagement

The Project Plan Part 6 – The Pilot Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

Some organizations define a solution “pilot” as a “limited deployment” for the purpose of managing risk. That can be covered in a Risk Management Plan in lieu of a Pilot Plan. The definition we will use in this post is to use a Pilot to gather information about the solution that can only be discovered by “going live”. The intent of the Pilot is to obtain the information and then pull the solution out of the live environment for additional work.

The Pilot Plan describes what aspect of the solution will be delivered as a pilot and provides the details necessary to conduct the pilot successfully. This includes details on how to evaluate the pilot, the results of which will facilitate a decision whether or not to move the solution to production. Projects often create one or more “pilot” solutions for the purpose of proving the feasibility of solution approaches, experimenting with different solutions, and obtaining user feedback and acceptance on proposed solutions. Pilot solutions usually implement only those subsets or segments of requirements or functional specifications necessary to validate a solution.

The Pilot Plan provides the means to validate business requirements and technical specifications prior to deploying the solution into production. Planning the details of the pilot ensures that the participating project teams identify their roles and responsibilities and resource requirements specific to pilot development, testing, and deployment activities.

A pilot can provide key information on development processes, end-user validation, and production environment usage. It also provides feedback to stakeholders regarding the success of the solution once it is formally released.

Note that Pilot Plans are not just for IT projects. For example, fast food chains will often test new menu items for a limited time in a small number of locations to gauge consumer interest and test the store’s ability to deliver the product successfully.

Here is a list of some things to consider documenting as part of the Pilot Plan (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Overview – Scope (what part of the solution will be demonstrated as part of the pilot, and the target user profile used to select which users will participate)
  • Success Criteria and Metrics – The success criteria may fall into the following categories:
    • System performance
    • Operations cost
    • Stability –down time
    • User performance
    • User satisfaction
    • Business goals
  • User Preparation and training
  • Marketing Plan – how users will become aware of the pilot and the value to them
  • Conditions for adding additional users
  • Rollback – conditions for rolling back the pilot to pre-deployment state
  • Pilot Evaluation – describes how the pilot results will be evaluated

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

#projectmanagement

The Project Plan Part 5 – The Migration Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

The Migration Plan describes the migration from existing systems or applications to the new solution. This plan is needed whenever you have to salvage anything (data, artifacts, physical objects, etc) from the old environment to the new one. In some projects this can be very challenging and the source of a lot of effort so plan early and carefully.

It is important to have an understanding from your sponsor of the Business Objectives driving the migration. Keep in mind each objective will have associated costs and risks. Examples of these are:

  • Minimize Business Disruption
  • Stay in full compliance with laws and regulations
  • Keep migration costs as low as possible
  • Choose acceptable alternatives that avoid risk to the target implementation date

Here is a list of some things to consider (this is not necessarily the complete list of considerations; your project may have more):

  • Migration Strategies (alternatives, including tools and implications for each)
  • Migration process (how, when and by whom the migration will be performed)
  • Test Environment (Setup, timing, hardware, people)
  • Preparation (Everything needed to be ready to execute the Migration Plan)
  • Decommissioning of replaced resources (timing, disposal)
  • Back-out plan (what to do if something goes wrong with the migration)

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The Project Plan Part 4 – The Test Plan

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

The Test Plan applies primarily to projects that include new and changed software and/or business processes. Doing this planning in advance is key to meeting the target schedule as testing is typically the most time consuming portion of a project. Unfortunately, when many projects are in schedule trouble, testing is usually the first target for cutting the planned effort. Having a solid Test Plan will help mitigate that risk.

There are multiple aspects to the test plan:

Determine the Test Plan Objectives by Identifying…

  • …the activities required to prepare for and conduct testing
  • …the test scope, strategy and methodology to be used for the test
  • …the financial control tests (if applicable)
  • … the configuration controls and metrics
  • … the metrics and status reporting
  • … responsibilities for the tasks included in the plan
  • … test tools and the environment needed to conduct the test
  • … test interactions with other organizations
  • … test customers and deliverables
  • … the major testing milestones
  • … the sources of information used to prepare the plan

Define the Test Approach:

Give a high-level description of the approach and activities to be followed in testing the solution. If you are using Agile methods, this is where you will plan the release/test cycles.

Identify the Major Test Responsibilities:

Identify teams and individuals who will be managing and executing the tests. It should also specify their responsibilities.

The Features and Functionality to Test:

This is a high-level description (not the detailed test cases). You should consider the following:

  • Specific features to be tested
  • The types of error testing to be performed
  • The types of stress/load testing to be performed
  • The type of usability testing to be performed
  • The type of reliability testing to be performed
  • The type of recovery testing to be performed
  • The type of compatibility/migration testing to be performed
  • The type of security testing to be performed
  • The types of software and hardware to be employed if testing is to be performed over multiple software and hardware configurations (configuration testing)

Document your thoughts on the test process:

You should consider the following:

  • How you will define the acceptance criteria
  • Deliverables – materials that must be made available or created in order to conduct the tests and that will be developed from the tests to describe the test results.
  • Test Documentation – itemize the documentation you will require in regards to recording the test procedures and results.
  • Test Data – Where will it come from? How will it be created? Are regular refreshes needed?
  • Support Organizations – identify all interfacing organizations (Technology Services, Vendors, etc) that are needed to support the testing. Describe what will be needed.
  • Test Setup, Procedures and Walk-thru – general description of the steps the test will go thru to ensure quality tests.
  • Tracking and Reporting Status – Define the information test team members will communicate during the testing process. This should include the bug reporting tools and methods as well as a bug classification strategy

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn

The Project Plan Part 3d – The Organizational Change Management Plan: Reinforcing Change

Professor of Project Management Project Planning ,
Planning

Change reinforcement is, in my experience, the most neglected aspect of Change Management. Usually after a project is successfully implemented, the project team “high fives”, celebrates success and then moves on to the next project. A year later, when it is discovered people are not following processes and policies or not using a system as it was intended, management will scratch their heads and wonder “where did we go wrong?”.

The answer to is that no one was monitoring the change and reinforcing it as a part of a continuing activity both during and after the project. It is the Project Manager’s responsibility to ensure that a Change Reinforcement Plan is in place with defined roles, responsibilities and processes.

Reinforcing change includes assessing the results of change management activities, conducting compliance audits and implementing corrective action. Plan to actively seek out and celebrate early successes. Transfer ownership from the change management team to the Sponsoring Organization. The Organization assumes the role of reinforcing change and rewarding ongoing performance.

Understanding how the people are embracing the change and the effect on the results of the project will be addressed during project close and audit phases of the project. During the project you may want to build in activities to assess the effectiveness of your change management, communication and training plans. This can include:

  • Surveys or employee feedback on their understanding of the change, desire to change, knowledge acquisition, skills assessment, and the employees perception
  • Testing to ensure employees understand the new systems and processes
  • Use of metrics. Several metrics can be put in place post implementation to measure if the people change efforts were successful. These may include: System usage, performance reports, how often is the “old way of doing things” still used.

Based on these forms of evaluation of the effectiveness of the change strategies, modifications can be made to the plans. This may include: re-training, additional communication, one on one coaching, etc.

My book, “Project Management For The Real World”, is available in paperback and Kindle formats at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/b089krddvn