PLAN THE PROJECT

This step transforms the project definition into a plan that can be con­trolled by the project manager. The first activity in this step is to identify the work that must be done to accomplish each of the objectives and who is responsible for getting it done. Don't forget the activities of pre­senting information and making decisions. They typically take longer than planned because few organizations make decisions on the spot. The level of detail in the definition of the work to be done will vary by project and by the timing of the work. There should be a minimum of three to five activities leading to each deliverable. The near-term activities cov­ering the first 25 to 30 percent of the schedule should be defined as precisely as is practical. The later activities can be refined as the project progresses and more information becomes available.

Once the work to be done has been identified, the duration of each activity must be estimated and the relationships among the activities must be defined. There has been a great deal of debate about whether duration, effort, or both should be estimated. The duration seems to be most critical in projects producing "soft" results and depending on part-time resources. It may be necessary to include estimates of effort for a few critical resources. It is important to include explicit management reserves in the plan so that the project manager can decide when to use that time. If the individual estimates are inflated to include a reserve, the activities will consume the time.

This rough project plan provides the first opportunity for testing the feasibility of the target dates and deliverables. The testing is simi­lar to rough-cut capacity planning in that only critical resources and blocks of time are considered. If the project is not feasible, a combina­tion of three types of project modification must be agreed upon:

• Resources can be added.
• The scope of work can be reduced.
• The target date can be changed.

This is why the objectives that were not necessary and the deliver­ables that were not critical were identified in the define-the-project step. They can be dropped from the plan or rescheduled beyond the original target date. This is recovery planning in the earliest stages of the project.

Once that it is determined that the work to be done is feasible in the time allotted with the available resources, a real project plan must be developed. The project network is the basis for all project controls. Gantt charts are fine for reporting upward and outward and for repre­senting the project schedule. However, a project cannot be controlled unless the relationships among the activities are understood. The project network must realistically represent these relationships.

It is tempting to combine the project network and schedule into a single diagram. This may have been necessary for manual project planning and con­trol, but should be avoided to keep the level of effort for maintaining the project network reasonable. At this point, pure finish-to-start and start-to-start relationships should be used unless there is solid informa­tion on the degree of overlap. This somewhat overstates the duration, but this time can be used to recover from deviations from the plan. The completed project plan provides the second test of feasibility of the project. If the network indicates that targets can't be met, the previ­ously defined alternatives must be evaluated.

There are many microcomputer-based project management systems that can assist in developing the network and maintaining the plan. They are also powerful enough to allow the project team to make pro­fessional-looking presentations on projects that are not understood or being controlled. Use these tools wisely to reduce the amount of rou­tine work, but don't expect them to control the effort.

To Be Continued

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