Just learn it ep3 | Project planning

This is my note from the course: Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

TL; DR — Steps to plan a project

• Set milestones.
• Set deadline.
• Map project schedule and tasks using a Gantt chart.
• Estimate costs and create a budget.
• Create a statement of work.
• Create a risk management plan.
• Create a communication plan.
• Organize the major artifacts.

Prerequisites

• Project goals, scope, and deliverables have be approved.
• Team members get assigned.
• Stakeholders sign off the project charter.

Why planning?

Benefits of planning

• Understand the work needed to achieve the project goals.
• Coordinate efforts and timelines with other teams, contractors, and vendors.
• Identify and prepare for risks.
• Get buy-in from key members of the project team.
• Demonstrate to stakeholders that the team is taking care to start the project with a detailed plan.

Things should be considered in the planning phase

• Schedule: the project timeline, which includes important dates in the project, such as delivery date and lunch date.
• Budget: total cost to complete the project.
• Risk: possible problems related to the project.
• Key output from planning: tasks, milestones, people, documentation (RACI, project charter, and budget plan), and time.

Kick-off meeting

The first meeting in which a project team 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 (create RACI chart).

Who to invite to a kick-off meeting

• Project team
• Project stakeholders
• Project sponsor

Goals of the kick-off meeting

• Establish a shared vision.
• Align on scope,
• Build team rapport.
• Ask questions and offer insights.
• Set expectations.

Possible agenda

• Introduction of each team member.
• Project background: how the project came to be? and why the project matters?).
• Goals and scope: in-scope, out-of-scope, target launch date, and milestones.
• Roles: what work everyone is responsible for throughout the duration of the project.
• Collaboration: shared project tools and documents, and communicate expectations.
• Next step: ensure everyone knows what to do next.
• Question: Gain clarity on meeting topics and ensure the project benefits from diversity of thoughts, expectations, and ideas.
• Send a follow-up email: summarize the key points and outcomes from the meeting and any action items to the attendees.

Terminology

Milestones

• An important point within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project, such as completing the first draft of report and receiving sign-off.
• Must be completed in a sequential order.
• Constructed from project goals and project deliverables.
• Provide a clear understanding of the amount of work the project will require.
• Help the project stay on track.
• Uncover areas where we might need additional resources.

Project task

• An activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time.

Example of project tasks and milestones. Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

Work breakdown structure (WBS)

• A tool that sorts the milestones and tasks of a project in a hierarchy.
• Start with the high-level by brainstorming with the team to list 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.

Example of work breakdown structure (WBS). Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

Estimation

• Time estimation: a prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task.
• Cost estimation: a prediction of the total amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task
• Buffer: extra time added to the end of a task or project to account for unexpected slowdowns or delays in work progress.

Always consider situations that could affect whether or not the project is complete on time.

Capacity

• Capacity: amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a a set period of time.
• Capacity planning: the act of allocating people and resources to project tasks, and determining whether necessary resources are prepared to complete the work on time.

Critical path

• A list of project milestones that mush be reached in order to meet the project goal on schedule, as well as the mandatory tasks for particular milestones.
• It includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones needed to reach the project goal.
• It is used to determine dependency of each task which is a situation when a task cannot start if som other tasks are not completed.

Steps to create a critical path

• Capture all tasks: focus on essential tasks (need-to-do tasks) from the work breakdown structure.
• Set dependencies: figure out which tasks must be completed before other tasks can start.
• Create a network diagram: visualize relationship of each task.

Example of network diagram. Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

• Make time estimates: calculate time and effort estimation, and buffer for each task. Note that tasks on a critical path should have zero float.
• Find the critical path: add up durations for all essentials tasks and calculate the longest possible path.

Approaches to define a project duration

• Forward pass: start at the beginning of the project task and add up the duration of the tasks on the critical path to the end of the project.
• Backward pass: start with the final task of milestone and move backwards through the schedule to determine the shortest path to completion.

Tips

Asking open-ended question to the team can help quantify better estimate for each task. For example,

• How long does it typically take you to do this task?
• How complex is this task?
• What are the risks associated with this task?
• When do you think you could have this ready?

Gantt chart

• A horizontal bar chart that maps out a project schedule.
• A highly visual representation of project’s tasks with clear breakdowns of who is responsible for the work and when those tasks are due.

Example of Gantt chart. Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

Understand the expectations, priorities, risk assessments, and communication styles of your stakeholders and vendors.

Project budgets

• The estimated monetary resources needed to achieve the project’s goals and objectives.
• Break budget down by milestones.

Terms in budgeting

• Resource cost rates: the cost of a resource, such as labour, tool, equipment, and software.
• Reserve analysis: a method to check for remaining project resources.
• Contingency budget: money that is included to cover potentially unforeseen events that are not accounted for in a cost estimation.
• Cost of quality: cost that are incurred to prevent issues with products, processes, or tasks, which are prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs.
• Cash flow: inflow and outflow of cast on the project.
• CAPEX (Capital expenses): organizations major, long-term, upfront expenses (assets that the company will own or keep, ex. building).
• OPEX (Operating expenses): short-term expenses that are required for day-to-day tasks involving in running the company, such as wages, rent, and utilities.
• Contingency reserve (buffer): fund added to the estimated project cost to cover identified risks.
• Management reserve: similar to contingency reserve, but used to cover the cost of unidentified risks.

Steps to create a project budget

• Review the past projects.
• Utilize colleagues’ experience.
• Break down all the tasks and combine the associated cost together.
• Verify if it makes sense.
• Set the baseline to find out if the project is still on track.

Tips

• Understand stakeholder needs.
• Break project into tasks.
• Estimate cost of each item including fixed cost, reserve, and buffer.
• Add contingency and tax.
• Budget for surprise expenses.
• Maintain adaptability.
• Review and re-forecast throughout the project.
• Seek approval from key stakeholders.

Example of budget plan. Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

Monitor a project budget

• Check if the plans set into action are actually being implemented on both financial and operational level.
• Use milestones to re-review the budget as a checkpoint to identify if anything needs to be reset or revisited throughout the project.
• Identify factors that might impact the project budget and create effective actions to minimize variance.

Contract types

• Fixed contracts: paid for when certain milestones are reached.
• Time-and-material contracts: paid monthly based on the hours worked and other fees associated with the work.

Budgeting challenges

• Budget pre-allocation: budget is already set before the project even starts.
• Inaccurately calculating TCO: TCO stands for total cost of ownership which refer to multiple elements that contribute to the cost of an item. For example, buying a phone requires a camera film, case, and phone package. These are TCO for a phone.
• Scope creep: it usually arises from vague statement of work, unofficially documented agreements about the project, unattainable timeframes and deadline, and last-minute tasks from priority stakeholders.

Procurement

Obtain all of the materials, services, and supplies required to complete the project.

• Sourcing vendors, which are individuals or businesses who provide essential goals and services.
• Getting quotes for vendors’ work.
• Deciphering which vendors will fulfill the needs.
• Negotiating vendor contracts.
• Setting deadlines for vendors.
• Evaluating performance.
• Ensuring venders are paid.

Procurement process

• Initiate: define what help we need.
• Select: decide what supplies we need.
• Write a contract: develop, review, and sign a contract.
• Control: setup logistics and requirements to maintain quality and ensure the service agreement is being met.
• Complete: measure the success of the procurement.

Agile procurement management

• Collaborative with both the project team and the end supplier.
• Emphasis on the relationship between these parties.
• Project team plays a larger role in identify what needs to be procured.
• It is a living contract.

Traditional procurement management

• Focus on standard contracts which clear terms and deliverables.
• Project manager may be responsible for end-to-end procurement.
• Contracts may feature lengthy and extensive documentation.

Common procurement document

• Non-disclosure agreement (NDA): a document that keeps confidential information within the organization.
• Request for proposal (RFP): a document that outlines the details of the project, containing project overview, goals, scope of work, milestones, and submission requirements. These are to send to vendors.
• Statement of work (SoW): a document that clearly lays out the products and services a vendor or contractor will provide for the organization, containing project manager name, sponsor name, revision history, product target audiences, scope and major project activities, out-of-scope items, deliverables, schedule overview, estimated hours of completion, estimated date for completion, remark, and payment terms.

Risk management

The process of identifying and evaluating potential risks and issues that could impact a project. For example, what could go wrong? Who we will need to consult? How the risk could be mitigated.

• Risk: a potential event which can occur and impact the project (what-if scenario).
• Issue: a known or real problem that can affect the ability to complete a task.

Risk management process

• Identify: define potential project risks.
• Analyze: determine their likelihood and potential impact to the project.
• Evaluate: determine which risks to prioritize.
• Treat: make a plan for how to treat and manage each risk.
• Monitor and control: track and mitigate risks if the need arises.

Tools for identifying risks

• Cause-and-effect diagram: show the possible causes of an event or risk by defining the problem (green box), identifying the categories (blue boxes), brainstorming the causes, and analyzing the causes.

Example of cause-and-effect diagram or fish bone diagram. Reprinted from Project Planning: Putting It All Together.

• Probability and impact matrix: used in prioritization. Note that the impact is the damage a risk could cause if it occurs.

Risk appetite is the willingness of an organization to accept the possible outcomes of a risk.

Common risk types

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

Risk mitigation techniques

• Avoid: eliminate the possibility of risk.
• Accept: accept that a particular risk can happen.
• Reduce or control: determine potential options to address it (may use a decision tree to see how it is going).
• Transfer: shift the risk from one party to another.

Risk management plan

A living document that contains information regarding high level risks and the mitigation plans for those risks. It should be updated regularly by adding newly-identified risks, removing irrelevant ones, and including any changes in the mitigation plan.

Effective communication plan

Organize and document the progress types and expectations of communication for the project.

• What we need to communicate (the goal of the communication).
• Who needs to communicate.
• When information-sharing needs to happen.
• Why and how to communicate with everyone involved.
• Where the information being communicated is stored.