Project Plan

Why? For ex., the traveler who plans the route before beginning a journey ultimately reaches the intended destination more quickly and more easily than the disorganized traveler, who often gets lost along the way.

6 steps approach >

Project plan - set of documents
1. Baselines: starting point for scope, schedule & cost
2. Define roles & responsibilities
3. Develop scope statement; most imp doc used to get common agreement among the stakeholders about the project definition. should include:

• Business need and business problem
• Project objectives, stating what will occur within the project to solve the business problem 
• Benefits of completing the project, as well as the project justification 
• Project scope, stated as which deliverable will be included or excluded from the project
• Key milestones, the approach and other components as dictated by the size and nature of the project 

4: Develop the project baselines

• Schedule
• Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the deliverable identified in the scope baseline. Task list can depends
• Estimate how many hours it will take to complete each task
• Consider resource constraints
• Determine which tasks are dependent on other tasks, and develop critical path
• Develop schedule, which puts all tasks and estimates in a calendar;when each task is scheduled to begin and end
• Identify resources for each task, if known

5: Review
Note that, usually include a review and approval process for modifying the baselines. Different approval levels are usually needed for different types of changes.

6: Communicate; imp aspect

• Who wants which reports, how often, in what format and using what media
• How issues will be escalated and when 
• Where project information will be stored and who can access it 
• What new risks have surfaced and what the risk response will include 
• What metrics will be used to ensure a quality product is built 
• What reserves have been used for which uncertainties