Project Planning - Part 2

Friends, let’s focus on project planning activities. Keeping the project methodology aside, let us look at the core minimum things that are to be put in place before the project starts.

The first thing is estimates – effort, schedule and cost. Even if the estimation was done before it got handed over to you, it would be a wise decision to estimate again with the clarity on your current situation. The estimates should be based on the project objectives that are set. The effort estimate has to realize the available resources. The schedule and timelines for deliverables have to have a consensus from the team to avoid unforeseen delays. This might require negotiations – either with your marketing personnel or with the customer directly as the case may be. In case of disparities, the best approach is to have a compromise on the functionality – get into consensus with the core features that need to be delivered first and prioritizing the rest.

There are several estimation methods in use, and you can choose the one that best suits your project. We will discuss the estimation methods in a future blog.

Once you have the approved estimates at hand, your job is half done. The next important activity is assigning the tasks to the team members. It is a bit of an art – you need to get to know which team member can give the most to a particular activity. This helps you to maintain the team momentum.

At this juncture, you need to plan how the team members collaborate, communicate and contribute to the progress of the project. These can encompass informal meetings to formal project review meetings.

Identify a team member who has good hands-on experience on the configuration management tool such as Microsoft VSS, SVN, etc. that you choose to use (or your customer preference). Along with the identified team member, come up with that part of the plan to handle configuration management in the project. We will discuss configuration management in a future blog.

Obtain the risks identified by the customer facing personnel, add the risks that you have identified, have a meeting with the team to discuss on the risks that are identified and how you are planning to manage those risks. This is very crucial to the project as the team members are the ones who get to know the symptoms of any risk before it actually surfaces. Keep this as an agenda item in all your team meetings. We will discuss risk management in a future blog.

Planning and establishing the communication channels among all the people who are involved with the project is another significant step. This includes technical discussions, status reports, customer status calls, and reviews with the top management and so on.

The frequency and duration of these activities might differ from project to project and from one methodology to another. But, either explicitly or implicitly, these need to be taken care of.