An Exercise in Project Planning

INTRODUCTION

When you’re rooted in a profession that requires a lot of thought and concentration, planning and preparation go a long way. As of late, I’ve focused my efforts on several IT planning documents with the intent of using them to guide and manage productivity of a future project. It’s been a rich experience, and it has helped me reiterate the importance of managing my work by first planning it out.

I am by no means a full-scale “Project Manager”. I’m not Six Sigma or PMP certified, and I’m not actively working towards a certification in project management. Over the years, my personal project management experience was acquired by reading a few books, practicing on-the-job self-management, having interactions with mentors and colleagues, and utilizing popular task management tools. Combined, those items have helped me succeed at managing projects.  I’ve used a lot of approaches to managing my work, including Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, text files, hand-written/scribbled checklists, Trello/Kanban boards, Team Foundation Service, JIRA, and Microsoft Project. They all have their own scenarios in which they should be used, and I’d feel comfortable using any combination of those tools when managing my work today. Conversely, there have been times when I’ve just started to work and write code without first having a plan. It’s so easy to get going and just start coding, and it’s really possible to scaffold out a basic application in the same time that it takes to write just a portion of your project plan. If you’ve been there, then you’d understand just how easy it is to get started without planning ahead.  

PLANNING WHAT YOU NEED TO GET DONE

The importance of planning your work is integral to your team’s success. If it is not written down, it cannot and will not be managed effectively through to completion. What are some reasons for maintaining a project plan? I’ve listed a few of my own personal answers just below:

• It defines responsibilities with boundaries
• It holds you and your teammates accountable
• It brings visibility to the work that has been completed and it shows what work is on deck
• It helps you identify risk and allocate/shift resource when necessary
• It drives productivity and keeps your team aligned with their goals
• It facilitates communication between you and your colleagues
• It helps keep you organized

When you plan what you need to get done, you bring clarity to your overall objectives.

OBJECTIFY WHAT YOU NEED TO GET DONE

There are plenty of resources that can help you learn how to write a good project plan. My favorite approach is to start by breaking down a large process into smaller, manageable units of work. A simple acronym that I’ve applied when writing project plan objectives is S.M.A.R.T.. This is an acronym that you can refer to when remembering to keep your objectives simple, manageable, attainable, realistic, and timely. For example, if I’m writing a plan to roll-out a new web-based order entry process, I would start by identifying the high-level objectives that are of importance. This is a loosely defined sample, but those objectives could include:

• Ensure that all provisions for a new account setup have been included in the initial registration process. All new account setup features should be implemented one month prior to the first quarter of 2017.
• Ensure that all provisions for the user’s shopping experience have been implemented prior to the 2nd quarter.
• Ensure that all inventory is uploaded and available for users to browse and purchase prior to go-live at the beginning of the 3rd quarter.
• Ensure that all steps for the client shopping process have been implemented and that a client is able to make payment/check-out in less than 2 minutes.

Each objective contains at least one SMART attribute. The objective is the major step that you intend to measure. Each objective may then be associated with one or more action items. In “ensuring that all provisions for a new account setup have been included in the initial registration process”, the action items may include:

• Develop a landing page with a button to begin the account registration process
• Develop the layout of a new user registration page
• Add a “Name and Address” section to the registration page
• Add a “Credit Card Setup” section to the registration page
• Write the logic to persist the new client profile settings to the database
• …the rest of your action items follow…

Once defined, your objectives and action items should be rolled up into a plan by using an appropriate project management tool.

USING AN APPROPRIATE PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL

One of my favorite project management tools is Microsoft Project, and it’s very easy to get started when writing a new project plan. With regards to our sample scenario, my objectives and action items can be translated into the following plan:

The plan defines a top-level objective, sub-objectives, and action items. Action items are linked to their individual sub-objective, and all sub-objectives and their action items are linked to the top-level objective. Milestones are noted with a day allocation of zero (0) as the last action item under each sub-objective. By linking the sub-objectives and action items, I’ve been able to take advantage of Project’s task "Predecessor" column, which was populated automatically for me. I’ve manually provided date ranges for action items, then I set each sub-objective’s start and end date range to be automatically scheduled. This automatically populated the "Duration" column with a “number of days” value. I’ve also utilized the “% Complete" column to indicate the percentage of work completed on the individual task. I’ve also utilized the "Resource Names" column to assign a physical resource to the action item. 

It’s a sample, so let’s not dispute tasks or date ranges. Let’s acknowledge the fact that we now have a plan that will allow us to manage our work!

Finally, I want to bring attention to the timeline representation that MS Project provides. It provides a visual overview of your action items and it illustrates how concurrent items can be executed in tandem.

REPORT YOUR PROGRESS

There are many reasons to use a project plan. In the end, your plan is a tangible resource that you can (and should) refer to when tracking and reporting your progress. The plan I’ve illustrated above isn’t just a plan that I can use to manage my work, but it’s also a plan that I can compress when providing a cursory progress update to an executive team. When using a plan like this to report progress to an executive team, you may want to remove or hide all of the action items, thus reporting only completion percentages on each of your objectives. 

CONCLUSION

Project plans can be as detailed or as simple as you want them to be. They can also serve many purposes at once. We mentioned that it is very easy to begin working without a plan, and this can lead to unpredictable and immeasurable results. I encourage you to learn more about project planning by executing a similar approach, as demonstrated here, on your next project. It’ll demonstrate your ability to plan and drive forward success in your organization.

I'm interested in knowing what techniques you use to manage your projects, so your comments, feedback, and shares are encouraged!