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Project Plan Development, Project Plan Execution and Integrated Change Control
1. Milestones
You will hear a lot (and talk a lot as well) about these as the project progresses. They are simply the dates that you slot in for meeting certain checkpoints along the way to a successful conclusion. In a fairly simple project these will be easy to slot in but in a more complex piece of work there are likely to inter-dependencies which make it extremely difficult to put exact dates on these. If you can get these right at the outset then life will be a lot easier for you further along the way. Writing these down is also an excellent way of breaking down the project into manageable chunks. If you have been given the task of building a new system then this might seem like a daunting piece of work but once you see the individual tasks involved in it then it shouldn’t really look so bad after all.
2. Resources
It is all very well knowing what needs to be done but who is going to do it? Sorting out the project resources on the plan will let you see whether the timescales are do-able or not. After all, the milestone dates on their own don’t mean all that much until you work out whether they are feasible. This is also the time when you will find out whether you need to ask for extra resources. As with everything else in the project plan, you will be a lot more comfortable if you build in some contingency here to give you a bit of breathing space.
3. Aim of the Project
This is often simply a link to the original business case, although you might choose to re-word it to make it easier for the target audience to get a grip on it easily. The aim of the project should be relatively straightforward to put down in words, and if it isn’t then you probably need to do some more investigation on the subject. I actually find that writing and re-writing the aim is a good way of making sure that I know exactly what I am being asked to deliver. If you find that you need to pad it out with vague and fluffy words then this is probably due to you not having a firm enough grasp on it, and this is something which needs to be sorted out as quickly as possible, as it will almost certainly lead to problems later on.
4. Tolerances
When you tackle your first project then you (like me) may rather naively expect everything to go to plan. This is extremely unlikely to be the case and you should consider what kind of tolerance can be built into the plan right at the beginning. For example, you might be able to work with a5% tolerance on the timescales you are working to, or a set figure on the budget levels.
5. The Schedule
This is the document on a Gantt chart which plots all of those facts and figures you have worked out. The big issue with any project is that it is only likely to stay correct for a relatively short period of time. As the project progresses things will change and your dates and information will quickly become outdated. This isn’t something to be afraid of but it is simply a fact of life for any project manager. What this means is that you need to be aware of the information in the plan and how to change it when you need to. This is because you may need to react quickly and make some big changes in order to get the project back on track at some point. This is completely normal for all project managers so you should brace yourself for having to do this and get as much preparatory work done as you possibly can.