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The Project Plan - Cornerstone of a Successful Project

This tutorial series is taken from Prosci's Project Planning Toolkit which includes a complete project plan template.

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Establishing a context for the project plan

In a recent study with 327 teams, project planning was the second most critical activity to the project's success.

The project plan (sometimes called the project prospectus at the early stages of a project) is the definition document for your project. You use it to organize the project and communicate project information to others.

When a project begins, the project plan may be only 5 to 10 pages, and targets the project sponsors and newly formed team. At this early stage, it serves as a document of understanding, and is key to ensuring that all sponsors and team members are working together with the same objectives and scope.

As the project plan moves forward, detailed work plans are added, resulting in project plans ranging from 10 to over 100 pages. The project plan then guides the project, and is a critical tool for project management.

The project plan:

1. serves as a document of understanding and negotiation with stakeholders

2. is key to ensuring that all sponsors and team members are working together with the same objectives and scope

3. guides the project

4. is a critical tool for project management

Customers of the Project Plan 

• the users of the processes and systems

• those people who can approve the budget

• your project team

Suppliers to the Document

• the team leader or facilitator (typically the author)

• the project stakeholders

• senior managers or business leaders

Components of the project plan

When writing the project plan, you need to do the following:

1. Describe the project and define the project scope (what is the project about; what is included and not included)

2. Establish project objectives and conditions of satisfaction (why is the project being done; how will you measure success)

3. Develop the project approach (how will the project be accomplished - this section starts small with an outline of the methodology, and grows as detailed work plans are added)

4. Describe the required team structure (who will do the work)

5. Establish a project budget for the design phase (how much will it cost)

Getting started

Answer the following questions about your project:

• The customers of our project plan include: _____

• The contributors to our project plan include: _____

• The author of our project plan will be: _____

• The completion date for our project plan is: _____

• Before we circulate the plan widely, it should be reviewed by: _____

Reviewing the project plan

Adjust the tone of the plan for your audience. Most importantly, involve your stakeholders by having them review drafts of the plan.

Share draft copies of the project plan with team members and stakeholders, and gather their input. Don’t wait until every section is complete before sharing the content, and your thinking, with others on your team and with stakeholders. The project plan will be a critical negotiation and communication tool for the project.

Most important startup activities (to consider in your project approach)

This information for this section comes from the Best Practices in Business Process Reengineering and Process Design benchmarking report.  The study includes the findings of 327 participants from 53 countries.

The most common theme from 327 benchmarking study participants when asked about the most important startup activity was creating awareness for the "need for change." This acknowledgment of the need for change had to exist within the team, executive leadership, affected employees and pertinent stakeholders in the change.

Creating and illustrating the need for change was the number one startup activity. This change management task involved analyzing current data and processes within the organization, researching what others were doing and effectively communicating the business issues and need for change to the critical parties.

The top-five activities that teams carried out were:

1. Communicating the need to change and securing support from top management, including: forming a steering committee, selecting an executive sponsor, gaining buy-in from regional and divisional managers, securing project budget.

2. Establishing the scope and boundaries of the project to limit commitments and prevent scope creep in the future.

3. Clearly stating the objectives and outcomes of the project and ensuring that they were communicated to and shared by all critical parties.

4. Understanding and documenting the current process at a high level and assessing the needs and requirements of a solution.

5. Assembling a competent team by conducting team building activities, selecting knowledgeable and skilled members, defining team roles and expectations, and recruiting cross-functional members.

For additional details and templates for project planning, see the books and resources links below.

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