Project Management- series 2

ii) Planning: Planning is more comprehensive and more detailed than the initiation phase. It describes how the project is going to be executed, tracked, and closed. It can be summarized into three questions: What are we going to do? How are we going to do? When the project is going to be completed? This phase includes requirements, cost, quality, scope by defining work breakdown structure (WBS), and timeline with milestones.

Collecting requirements: Understanding what stakeholders want. Set up a meeting with all the stakeholders, discuss and gather the requirements.

Scope: Scope includes deliverables, project justification, and success criteria.

WBS: Breaking the project into manageable pieces known as work packages also called deliverables. For deliverables, cost and time are estimated. If we can’t measure time and cost for deliverables then they break down further. List out all the deliverables which can be assigned to specific teams.

Identify risks: Think of the possible solutions if something takes longer than expected or costing more than what has been estimated.

Create Budget: With regards to the list of deliverables, calculate the cost and budget.

Progress reporting guidelines: This should be done keeping in mind the deliverables. It could be daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly. Document how often the stakeholders will be updated regarding the progress.