5 steps to successful project planning
Project planning is a vital phase in the project lifecycle; enabling project teams to forecast for risk, agree upon realistic budgets and timelines, and allocate roles, responsibilities & individual tasks among other things. So, here we’ll explore 5 steps to successful project planning.
5 steps to successful project planning
- Gather your team & brainstorm: the first step to successful project planning should involve gathering your team – establishing all individuals required to complete the project in question and calling them together – gaining their feedback, comments and ideas; ensuring all team members feel involved, valued and therefore invested in the project from these crucial beginnings.
- Establish goals & key deliverables: breaking down a project into specific goals and key deliverables will help PMO leaders and project managers to adequately and realistically assign tasks, track project progress and identify & mitigate risks, as well as report to key stakeholders when the project is up and running.
- Create a budget & timeline: these may be entwined in project goals and key deliverables, but ensuring you set a realistic budget and timeline, including an estimated or expected completion date will help all members of the project team track progress and set boundaries, as well as providing common goals for everyone to work towards.
- Identify risks & risk probability: every project comes with certain risks that can affect completion, budget, timeline and expected completion/delivery date and identifying those risks – and how probable they are – early on will inevitably help project teams to avoid and/or mitigate those risks to ensure your project(s) runs as expected.
- Establish processes & reporting guidelines: establishing and setting standard project processes as well as reporting guidelines and expectations will ensure project teams know exactly what is expected of them, and how to administrate the tasks allocated to them. Establishing reporting guidelines will also help teams set and therefore track key project metrics.
Spending time meticulously planning projects will aid project success – ensuring all team members & stakeholders understand what’s expected of them, key deliverables and overall goals of the project(s) they’re involved in and what risks they need to monitor in order to see the project(s) through to completion.
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