Introduction

The project has a sponsor and the project leader takes the reigns. The next step is confronting the whole matter of project planning. A very big part of project planning is establishing factors and decision points to enable effective risk management (Chapter 8). The key elements of project planning are summarized below.

Project Planning Steps and Their Sequence

• Initial project-related questions to answer

• Determining scope: Establishing project scope, elements, project priorities

• Establishing project plan elements

• Work breakdown structure (WBS) development

• Expansion of the WBS into work packages, action plans, and responsibilitycharts

• Creating budgets: Cost concepts, cost estimation

• Make vs. buy decisions

• Value engineering

• Estimating project cash flows

• Networks: Work package to network, types and characteristics of networks

• Activity time calculation methods

• Improving time estimations

• Developing schedules: Schedule representations of networks

• Resource planning

• Addressing and planning for project constraints: Types of constraints

• Assigning project work: Responsibility matrix

• Multiproject scheduling and resource allocation

• Optimizing and leveling resource allocation

• Assessing potential risks

• Determining risk factors

• Contingency planning

• Establishing management reserves

• Sharing risk with customers

Project Planning Initial Questions

Important planning decisions ^[1] are made when answering the following project-related questions:

• How will the project plan be developed?

• Who will develop the project plan, and how involved will the customer be?

• What project management software package will be used, if needed?

• Who on the project team will be responsible for entering the planning information?

• Who will have input on the plan?

• What specifically are the roles and responsibilities of each team...