Project Management Essentials For Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition. Portny Stanley E.

carefully. A major cause of project failure is poor plans or a complete lack of plans. However, the answer to that problem isn’t to go to the other extreme of developing excessively detailed plans for everything. Over-planning just wastes time now, and then again as the plans are maintained throughout the project. Remember to provide sufficient information to define and control the project, but not more than that.

      

Developing a high-level plan first, then a more detailed Stage Plan as you approach each delivery stage, gives you good control over a project. Start simple and only get complicated where really necessary in order to provide sufficient checks and direction over the project.

       Knowing what’s ahead

      For the detailed planning work, you investigate a number of areas, and usually that means consulting other people. Some areas can be expanded from the Project Outline.

      ✓ Scope: When a project gets the green light, it’s time to hone the scope. The scope says exactly what the project will cover and deliver, and also what it won’t cover. Chapter 2 has more on writing the scope.

      ✓ Business Case: The Business Case sets out the full justification of the project, including its costs, and also defines the business benefits that the project will deliver and the way in which those benefits will be measured. See Chapter 2 for much more on the Business Case.

      ✓ Project Plan: The Project Plan is a high-level plan of the delivery stages and closure stage, although the closure stage can be tentative at this point. The Project Plan sets down what the project will deliver, the activities, and the staff resource and finance involved. Chapters 4 to 7 give lots of practical advice on planning and some really powerful techniques to help.

      ✓ Risk: You should look at the risk involved in the project and also the means of controlling it. Chapter 8 helps with some useful techniques. Some people question whether you really need risk management in every project, even the very small ones. Yes, you do.

      ✓ Quality: In the Project Outline you already indicated the quality level needed for this project. Now is the time to establish exactly how you’ll carry the quality through into the deliverables, what degree of control you need to exercise, and how you’ll audit to make sure that the required quality has been delivered. Chapter 4 has more.

      ✓ Roles and responsibilities: Who needs to do what in the project? You may have decided on this earlier in the Starting the Project stage, but it’s worth setting down formal roles and responsibilities now, with any adjustments. In that way, everyone involved knows what they should be doing on the project and, importantly, what everyone else should be doing. That helps avoid communications problems where things fall down the gaps. You can read much more on roles and project organisation in Chapters 9 and 10.

      ✓ Communications: You need to think through communications carefully, because this area can cause major headaches. Chapter 11 provides guidelines.

      ✓ Controls: For a very small project, don’t get carried away, because you probably won’t need many controls at all. In a larger project, though, you need to think through controls carefully, as we explain in Chapter 11.

       Thinking about management documents