Planning

At the planning stage, the project solution is developed in much greater detail. This can be viewed as the process of taking the deliverables from the conception stage and adding the detail of how those deliverables are going to be realised.

This involves identifying:

• The steps and tasks that must be completed
• Task requirements for the team
• Resource requirements

At this stage, the project manager also needs to:

• Schedule the tasks – provide timeframes
• Identify dependencies between tasks
• Create a budget showing estimates for labour, material and resource costs

The project manager has now completed the first three tasks of the planning process: the required work has been identified, scheduling is complete and a budget has been drawn up.

It is now time to perform a risk analysis, or risk management. As described here, this involves looking for any areas of the project where an unexpected event could delay completion – potentially having a knock-on effect to other areas of the project – or cause the budget to be exceeded.

Finally, the project manager will need to identify all stakeholders – that is, people with an interest in the development, including the client, the sponsor, team leaders and so on – and document everything thoroughly in the Project Initiation Document. (More on that later).