PROJECT PLANNING: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Конспект третьего курса сертификации. Планирование проекта.

WEEK 1

The planning phase generally include three big things: the schedule, the budget, and the risk management plan.

The schedule is a timeline of the project. Start date, the end date, and the dates for things that will happen in between.

The budget will account for the total cost to complete the project. The total cost needs to be broken down to determine how much has to be spent on different elements of the project.

Risk management is a searching for possible problems and planning ahead to mitigate these risks.

A project kickoff meeting is the first meeting in which a project team, stakeholders and sponsors comes together to ground everyone in a shared vision, gain a shared understanding of the project’s goals and scope, and to understand each person’s individual roles within the team.

Kickoff agenda:

1. Introductions (10 minutes). Team members names, roles. Fun facts to build rapport.
2. Background (5 minutes). How the project came to be and why the project matters. Shared vision.
3. Goals and Scope (5 minutes). Making it clear what work is considered in-scope and out-of-scope. Share the target launch date and milestones.
4. Roles (5 minutes). What work they’ll be responsible for throughout the duration of the project.
5. Collaboration (10 minutes). Shared projects tools and documents. Determine how the team will communicate with one another.
6. What comes next (10 minutes). Set expectations and actions items. Make clear to each teammate what actions they will need to take next
7. Questions (15 minutes).

Once you’ve finalized the meeting agenda, document this information into a meeting agenda template, and send it to attendees a day or two ahead of the meeting.

A project task is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time.

A project milestone is an important point within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project. It gives you a clear understanding of the amount of work your project will require, helps you uncover areas where you might need to adjust scope, timelines, or resources to meet your goals. Milestones must be completed on time and in sequential order.

Setting a milestone:

1. Evaluate your project as a whole.
2. Make a list of what your team needs to do to achieve that goal. The big items that indicate progress are your milestones. Smaller items, like any item that a stakeholder wouldn’t need to review, for example, are tasks.
3. Assign each one a deadline. Connect with teammates to discuss the tasks required to reach each milestone and get their estimates for how long these tasks will take and also consider stakeholders needs.

Remember:

• Avoid setting too many milestones. 
• Don’t use milestones as tasks. 
• Make sure that tasks and milestones can be visualized together in your project management tool.

Work breakdown structure (WBS) is a tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project in a hierarchy, in the order they need to be completed. It helps break down challenges of a project into more manageable chunks.

• Start with the high-level, overarching project picture. Brainstorm with your team to list the major deliverables and milestones.
• Identify the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet those milestones.
• Examine those tasks and break them down further into sub-tasks. 

In the end you’l have:

• A set of discrete project tasks that ladder up to each of your milestones.
• Team members assigned to each task. Tasks are typically assigned according to a person’s role in the project. To assign tasks between two or more team members with the same roles, you might take into consideration each person’s familiarity with the tasks at hand. Also consider each teammate’s workload. It’s good to start each task with a verb. Add an assignee and a due date to each task.

Components of a project plan:

• Tasks
• Milestones
• People
• Documentation
• Time

Project scope and goals, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), the budget, and management plans are all important components of your project plan

Time estimation is a prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task. Overall duration of the task from start to finish. That includes inactive time.

Effort estimation is a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task. Quantifies the amount of time it will take a person to complete work on a task.

Your teammates will have the most realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task and should be able to provide you with the best estimate.

Task buffer - time for tasks that are difficult to complete or have an element of unpredictability.

Planning fallacy - tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task, as well as the costs and risks associated with that task, due to optimism bias.

Capacity refers to the amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time.

Capacity planning is the act of allocating people, and resources to project tasks. And determining whether or not you have the necessary resources required to complete the work on time.

The critical path is a list of project milestones that you must reach in order to meet the project goal on schedule. As well as the mandatory tasks that contribute to the completion of each milestone. You can prioritize team members time by plotting the critical path of your project timeline. It includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to reach your project goal.

• List all tasks.
• Set dependencies. Identify which tasks can happen in parallel vs. which tasks can happen sequentially
• Determine which project tasks have a fixed start date - date on which you must start work on your task in order to achieve your goal.
• Determine which project tasks have an earliest start date - the earliest date in which you can begin working on a task
• Identifying if a task has float. Tasks on the critical path should have zero float
• Find critical path. Calculate the tasks that, if they go unfinished, will impact the project’s finish date

Anchor of a good project plan is a clear schedule containing all the tasks of a project, their owners, and when they need to be completed.

Project plan best practices:

• Careful review of project deliverables, milestones, and tasks
• giving yourself time to plan
• recognizing and planning for the inevitable (things will go wrong)
• staying curious
• championing your plan.

WEEK 3

A project budget is the estimated monetary resources needed to achieve the project’s goals and objectives. You break the budget down by milestones. A budget is considered a deliverable. It is a success metric. It takes place in the initiation phase of your project and usually happens in conjunction with the scheduling process.

When creating a budget, PM must account for:

• understanding stakeholder needs
• budgeting for surplus expenses
• maintaining adaptability
• reviewing and reforecasting throughout the entire project.
• resource cost rates, reserve analysis, contingency budget, and cost of quality

How to create a budget:

1. Researching historical data – find out what past project managers did right and wrong
2. leveraging experts – gathering their insights to do something more effectively
3. setting your baseline - the dollar amount that you’ll use to measure against
4. confirming accuracy
5. the bottom-up approach

Monitoring the budget is crucial for a project manager to enforce accountability in terms of spending. Milestones are a great opportunity to re-review the budget to identify if anything needs to be reset or revisited throughout the project.

Cost control is a practice where a project manager identifies factors that might impact their budget and then creates effective actions to minimize variances. Proactive budget management. In order to control costs, you should:

• Establish a sign-off plan and inform the appropriate stakeholders of any changes that occur
• Manage changes as they’re made
• Accept that budget misses will happen
• adequately account for, adapt, and manage your budget with a risk of under-budgeting in mind

CAPEX (capital expenses) – organization’s major, long-term, upfront expenses (buildings, equipment, and vehicles). They are generally for assets that the company will own and keep. The company incurs these expenses because they believe they will create a benefit for the company in the future. 

OPEX (operating expenses) – short-term, often recurring, expenses for the day-to-day tasks involved in running the company (wages, rent, and utilities).

Contingency reserves are an estimated amount, for identified risks. Management reserves are generally a percentage of the total cost of the project (5-10%) for unidentified risks.

Procurement - obtaining all of the materials, services, and supplies required to complete the project. There are five steps in the process:

1. Initiating: planning what you need to meet your project goals
2. Selecting: deciding which supplies and vendors to use
3. Contract writing: developing, reviewing, and signing contracts
4. Controlling: making payments and maintaining and ensuring quality
5. Completing: measuring your success

A Statement of Work is a document that clearly lays out the products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for the organization. Also includes the contractor’s needs and requirements to successfully perform the services.

When you face an ethical dilemma, ask yourself questions in each of the following categories:

• Shame: Would you be ashamed if someone knew what you did?
• Community: Would you want your friends to know the decision you made? 
• Legal: Would you face legal action if you took this action? 
• Situation: Would your actions be justified in this situation?
• Consequence: Would a negative outcome be worth your actions? 

WEEK 4

A risk is a potential event which can occur and can impact your project.

An issue is a known or real problem that can affect the ability to complete a task.

Risk management is the ongoing process of identifying and evaluating potential risks and issues that could impact a project:

1. Identify and define the risk.
2. Analyze likelihood and potential impact of the risk.
3. Evaluate and prioritize the risk.
4. Treat and manage the risk. 
5. Monitor and control the risk.

An opportunity is a potential positive outcome that may bring additional value to a project

Fishbone diagrams (Ishikawa diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams) help the team to brainstorm potential causes of a problem or risk and sort them into useful categories. They show the areas that you should focus on to mitigate that risk. Diagrams are helpful in finding the root cause of a problem. A root cause is the initial cause of a situation that introduces a problem or risk. The purpose of using fishbone diagrams in risk management is to identify the root cause of a potential problem for a project or program.  

How to make Fishbone Diagram:

1. Define the problem
2. Identify the categories
3. Brainstorm the causes
4. Analyze the causes

A risk register is a table or chart that contains your list of risks.

Risk assessment is the stage of risk management where qualities (how likely the risk is to occur and its potential impact on a project) of a risk are estimated or measured.

A probability and impact matrix is a tool used to prioritize project risks

Inherent risk rating is the measure of a risk calculated by its probability (the likelihood that a risk will occur) and impact.

Types of risks:

• Time: possibility that project tasks will take longer than anticipated to complete.
• Budget: possibility that the cost of a project will increase due to poor planning or expanding the project scope
• Scope: possibility that a project won’t produce the results outlined in the project goals
• External: risks that result from factors outside of the company that you have little to no control over.
• Single point of failure: a risk that has the potential to be catastrophic and halt work across a project.
• Dependency: relationship between two project tasks, where the start or completion of one depends on the start or completion of the other.

Types of risk management:

• Avoid: sidestep—or avoid—the situation as a whole.
• Minimize the catastrophic effects that it could have on the project. The key to minimizing risk starts with realizing that the risk exists.
• Transfer: shifts the responsibility of handling the risk to someone else.
• Accept the risk as the normal cost of doing business. Active acceptance of risk means setting aside extra funds to pay your way out of trouble. Passive acceptance of risk is the “do nothing” approach.

Dependency graphs: visually represented flow of work during project. (Activity - Work - Relationships)

A risk management plan is a living document that contains information regarding high-level risks and the mitigation plan for each of those risks. It should be updated regularly to add newly-identified risks, remove risks that are no longer relevant, and include any changes in the mitigation plans.

Your stakeholders need to be aware of the risks facing a project, because if you don’t tell your stakeholders about important risks, they may be less equipped to help you if an issue does arise.

WEEK 5

Communication is the flow of information. It includes everything that’s shared, how it’s shared, and with whom. Good effective communication is always clear, honest, relevant, and frequent, but not too frequent.

1. Recognize and understand individual differences. You will need to understand each team member’s background, experiences, perspectives, and biases—as well as your own—to  communicate effectively. 
2. Brainstorm and craft the appropriate message. Communicate the right message by thinking about your intended audience. With whom are you communicating? In your communications, always be clear about your reasons for reaching out
3. Deliver your message. As you craft your message, think about which methods are available and appropriate for communicating with various members of your team.
4. Obtain feedback and incorporate that feedback going forward. Obtain feedback from your audience to ensure that your message was received as you intended.

A communication plan organizes and documents the process, types, and expectations of communication for the project:

• what needs to be communicated (status updates, issues, feedback from users, daily check-ins etc)
• who needs to communicate
• when communication needs to happen (including frequency and deadlines)
• why and how to communicate
• where the information communicated is stored.

Before you begin creating the plan, answer these questions to ensure that you have all of the relevant information:

• Project stakeholders
• Communication frequency and method
• Goals
• Barriers

Documentation storage and sharing is very important. Documenting provides visibility and accountability.

Have all of your project resources documented and linked so that you pr anyone on the project can access what they need quickly.