Project planning model

Project planning begins within the strategic planning framework in the organization. For example, the strategic planning phase of a steel corporation led to the approval of a feasibility study, of ease, comprehensive for the situation and configuration of the steel company. As a result of this feasibility study that evaluated seven alternative sites, the plant situation was fixed in Cleveland, Ohio. During the planning for this facility, several options were considered, going the form to return the major contract addressed to a construction management consultant, the owner acting as his own general contractor with subcontractors and / or internal staff.These options were considered in detail before final project planning took place with the approval estimates and milestone schedules.

The strategic context of organic planning can be transposed into a project-related model as portrayed in Figure 11.3. Taking the elements of Figure 11.3 together, we understand the important considerations involved in developing a project planning process.

2. The Project Planning Process

Projects are often spread over many years into the future. Thus a project plan, for such projects, becomes both operational (short term) and strategic (long term). It follows that the project planning process requires operational and strategic thinking. Creativity, innovation, and the ability to "think what you probably think" form, the basis for the project planning process. The real value of such a process is a framework of things to consider during the life cycle of a project. The philosophy of a project designer encompasses characteristics such as:

• The need to investigate outside of the objective data that maintains the basis and the planning project and manufacturing decision.

• The value of questioning assumptions, data banks, and exiting project strategies to test their validity and relevance.

• An ongoing obsession with where the project should go and how it is going to get there.

• A demonstrated ability to see project opportunities in the largest possible context and constantly seek an understanding of how everything fits together during the project life cycle.

• A faith that, the ample opportunity given, a dissociation will occur: the assembling of events together and separate forces in the project.

Individuals who make project planning decisions today will have a long term, strategic impact on the organization. Generally, the strategic roles of important individuals involved in project planning are as follows:

• Directors' review board and approves (or forwards for further study) major project plans and maintains vigilance over implementation of this planning.

• Senior management directs the planning, development, and implementation of a strategic planning system and project planning philosophy and processes it for the corporation.

• Functional managers are responsible for integrating innovative functional technology into project plans.

• The project manager is responsible for integrating and coordinating the project planning activity.

• The work package manager is responsible for providing input to the project plans.

• Professionals participate as a contribution to the project planning processes.

Thus project planning is "the business" of many individuals in the organization.

By involving these individuals in the roles as described above, important people are afforded the opportunity to participate in the planning of the project. Of course, such participation will require pertinent knowledge, skill, and insight into the theory and practice of project planning. By maximizing the involvement of important individuals in project planning, the overall value of the project plan should be enhanced. A large organization recognized the value of a project planning like this:

During the early 1960s, after hundreds of projects had been completed, it became clear so many projects achieving their basic project objectives successfully, while some did not achieve the originally established budget, schedule, and performance targets.

The history of many of these projects was carefully reviewed to identify conditions and events common to successful projects, those conditions and events that frequently occurred in less successful projects. A common identifiable element in most successful projects was the quality and depth of early planning by the project steering group. Execution of the plan, held up by the project management leadership strongly above the identifiable phases of the project, was another major reason why the project was successful.

Project planning can be considered a form of information and communication development. When the project team develops the project plan, the project team must learn more about the project goals, strategies, and the roles of the team members. The project objectives can then be decided in terms of cost, schedule, and technical performance. The satisfaction of project goals is accomplished through the completion of the project work packages. The project strategy is an action plan accompanied by monitoring, procedures, and resource allocation in the form of plans, providing general direction of how the organic effort will be used to achieve project goals and project objectives.

Simultaneous project planning is the process of having the project team considering all aspects, issues, and resources required for the project plan on a coexisting basis. Coexisting planning means where everything they can in the project is reviewed during the planning phase to ensure that an explicit decision is a fact about the role of all resources, in a modest way, could lead to a good position the project. Project start-up workshops (PSWs) can be useful in the planning phase of a project to help identify and get people committed to the notion of thinking through all probable and possible aspects. of the project to be reflected in the project plan.

3. Project Planning Considerations.

We all often think that when people think of a project to be planned, they perceive the use of only techniques and concepts such as (PERT), (CPM), or connecting a computer network. These techniques will not be discussed in any detail in this book. Instead, the footnote references can serve as useful guidelines using PERT, CPM, and connecting a computer network. These techniques are important to use in developing a project schedule; however, project planning includes a broader scope of activity. Things like that involve the goal, estimating cost and budget, setting, the resource and estimated use, and the specification of removing those important concerns.Project planning also involves a delineation of the organic plan to support the project as well as the information system and command system that is used to plan, evaluate, and reallocate resources as required during the execution of the project plan.

Project planning is about determining what activities and what resources have to be used to ensure that the project is being executed properly. Authority and responsibility have to be planned so that project team members know what their specific roles are and how they relate to other project team members who are involved in executing the work package activities. When is the activity debt? And what is the duration of time of each activity? are the most important questions. What human does not need the resources of another human to execute each activity in the project? What are the estimated costs, and what is the budget and funding that is planned to be established to support budget cost considerations?

One of the changes is the march in contemporary organizations where there are more people involved in it and outside they do the management functions.

Participation has been planned and used affectively by AT&T. Participation is gained through the use of workshops that include the entire project team and even joint clients planning sessions. A planning process facilitator helps guide activities and save project planning moving forward. The purpose of the workshops is to get participants and agree on high-level project plans, schedules, and project monitoring and evaluation strategies. By holding at the beginning of a project, the workshops achieve the benefits of early planning and continue to overcome the problems of planning and getting team members involved early in the planning that leads to more commitment and dedication to their role in the project. Also,Team members are given early exposure to their individual and collective roles in the project and an opportunity to identify any interpersonal anxieties that could impede team development and functioning at a later date. These crash workshops that have been successful in giving producer planning, developing planning skill, and building team interaction and coherence.developing planning skill, and building team interaction and coherence.developing planning skill, and building team interaction and coherence.

Project planning and command techniques are many and varied. For example, in one study, project planning techniques included.

1. The working breakdown structure

2. The network

to. The arrow scheme

b. The node schema

c. The previous diagrams

3. Block the map

a) Before

b) Without prior

4. The critical path method (CPM)

5. PERT - the statistics

6. The GERT simulation

7. Time-cost analysis

8. The leveling of the resource

9. The help of the computer

10. The linear responsibility map (LRC)

The project manager is responsible for starting action and prompting the development of a plan. By discharging the project management role, the project leader has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that "things get done right" on the project plan. The complexities of doing project details, rests with the specialists who are members of the project plan. Planning becomes a method of coordinating and synchronizing upcoming project activities. Project planning should be undertaken after the project has been positioned in the overall strategy for the company; then detailed planning can be carried out.

Since planning is involved in thinking through the probabilities and possibilities of the future of the project, a detailed cookbook recipe for planning cannot be provided. However, certain important work packages and planned tools have to be addressed in developing the action project plan. These planned considerations are described in the next section.

4. The Work Breakdown Structure

The most basic consideration in project planning is the work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS divides the overall project into work items that represent singular work units, or assigned with the organization or an external agency as vendor.

The WBS process is carried out as follows: Each project should be subdivided into tasks that can be assigned and can be accomplished by some organizational unit or individual. These tasks are then performed by specialized functional organic components. The project map represents the collection of these units and shows the project manager many organisms and the subsystem that ties them together to manage.

The underlying philosophy of the work breakdown structure is to break the project down into work packages that are assignable and so that accountability can be expected. Each work package is an act-command element; negotiated and assigned to a specific organic manager, typically a work package manager is called. The work package manager is responsible for a specific objective (which must be measurable), detailed task descriptions, specifications, set task milestones, and a time-staggered budget in dollars and workforce. Each work package manager is held accountably by the project and functional managers for the completion of the work package in terms of objectives, schedules, and costs.

The work breakdown structure is a means of dividing a project into easily managed increments that help ensure the integrity, compatibility, and continuity of all work that is required for the successful completion of the project. The WBS maintains the fundamental understanding of the scope of the project and helps to ensure that the project supports organizational objectives and goals.

The process of developing the WBS is to establish an outline by dividing the project into major groups, and then dividing the major groups into tasks, subdividing tasks into sub-tasks, and so on. Projects are planned, organized, and controlled around the lower level of the WBS. The WBS organization must follow some orderly identification scheme; Each item in WBS is given a different identifier. With an airplane, for example, the WBS might look like:

The plane

Last Assembly

The fuselage

The tail

The wing

Artifacts

A graphical representation of the WBS can make it easier to understand. The numerical inscription used with the deepest indentation so consecutively the lowest level can help in communications and understanding in the development paths of the total project and its entire subsystems, sub-subsystems, etc., For example:

1.0 ………………………..

1.1 …………………………..

1.1.1 ………………………

1.1.1.1 …………………

1.1.1.2 …………………

1.1.1.3 …………………

1.2.2 ………………………

Etc.

The work packages follow a WBS analysis on the project. When the WBS analysis is complete and the work packages are identified, a WBS comes into existence. A WBS can be represented by a pyramid similar to this, using to describe the traditional organic structure.

In the context of a project, the WBS and the resulting work packages provide a model of the products (the hardware, software, services, and other elements) that completely define the project. Such a model allows project engineers, project managers, functional managers, and general managers to think of the totality of all the products and services that comprise the project as well as its component subsystems. The model is the focus around which the project is managed. More particularly, the development of a WBS provides the means to:

Summarizing all the products and services that comprise the project, including support and other tasks.

Deploying mutual relationships from work packages to us, the overall project, and other engineering activities in the organization.

Establishing the organization of the authority-responsibility matrix.

The cost of the project estimating

The risk analysis performing

Fixing work packages

The developing information for managing the project

Maintaining a base controlling the application of resources in the project

Providing the reference that aims to get people committed to support the project.

The work packages are the goals to be achieved in the project. There are certain criteria that must he applied to the goals of the project:

• Are the goals clear?

• Are they specific?

• Are they time-based?

• Are they measurable?

• Can they easily communicate to the project team?

• Can they be clearly assigned to the professional manager of the work package?

The WBS maintains a natural framework or skeleton identifying the work elements of the project: the hardware, software, documentation, and miscellaneous work to be accomplished and bring the project to completion. The WBS provides an identifier and a steering thread to handle the project aspects. In some projects the only work packages are found. For example, in some global projects a cultural planning work package is included in the work breakdown structure. From the work package successful cultural training and orientation can be carried out.

5. Project Schedules

An important project performance is planning the project schedule, along with support schedules that are a graphical time representation of all necessary related activities. The project schedule establishes the parameters of project time and assists managers to effectively coordinate and facilitate the efforts of the entire project team during the life of the project. A schedule becomes an effective part of the project control system. Be effective, it should be a good project schedule

• Understandable by the project team

• Able to identify and highlight critical work packages and tasks

• Updated, modifications as necessary, and flexible in its application

• Substantially detailed to maintain a base engaging, monitoring, and evaluating the use of project resources

• Based on the credible time you estimate, that according to available resources

• Compatible with other organic plans that share common resources

Several steps are required to develop a project schedule. These must be found in the appropriate sequence:

1. Define project objectives, goals, and overall strategies.

2. Develop the project, and define the time for the work together with the associated work packages.

3. Succession, work packages, project and tasks

4. Estimate the time and cost elements.

5. Review the project schedule with the project time.

6. Reconcile the schedule with the constraint of the organic resource.

7. Review the schedule for consistency with project costs and technical performance objectives.

8. Senior managers approve the schedule.

Setting the Techniques

Several planning techniques are useful in dealing with the timing aspect of the project resource.

Planning projects with map bar

A simple project planning technique is to pin it based on the bar map. This map consists of a scale divided into time units (for example: day, week, month) and an inscription of the project work packages or elements. Bars or lines are used to indicate the time and status of each work package with respect to the time scale.

Figure 11.4 is an example of a project with a planning bar map for the development of an electronic device. The job packages the project, is listed on the left side, and the time units are displayed on the working days at the top. Light horizontal lines indicate the schedule for project elements, with specific tasks or performances written above the schedule line. Work accomplished is indicated by a heavy line below the time line. The large V on the time scale at the top of the map marks the time of the progress that has been announced. Progress is announced at regular intervals. The system line in Figure 11.4 indicates that the project is overall 6 days behind schedule. When announcing last, the receiver,the video amplifier was the farthest back schedule. The deployment and antenna units were ahead of schedule.

Block graphics, they are easy to develop and understand, and showing the posted output and complete packaging work; they provide a simple picture of where the project stands. A variation of the bar map is the milestone map which replaces the bar with lines and triangles that indicate the status of the project. A bar map does not show interdependence of work package and time-resource. Network techniques effectively used larger projects help to plan, tack, and lead complex projects.

6. The techniques of the network.

The techniques of the network had their greatest peak PERT and CPM occurred in the 1950s. The PERT / CPM technology network diagram provides a more powerful measure of time and work package relationships than either the bar trace or the milestone trace. The network diagram, basic to PERT / CPM techniques, provides a more dynamic interrelated picture of events and activities and interrelation to the relative to the project. The main value of the network technique is its ability to track time and project cost considerations. While PERT and CPM are excellent systems for keeping track of all activities in a large project, the value of planning network techniques was considered to be as important as the control of project work packages during project execution..

Project Life Cycle Planning.

The life cycle of a project is an important consideration in project planning. Once the appropriate work packages for each phase of the project life cycle have been painted, a substantial departure has been the deed towards the development of the project plan. Figure 11.5 shows an example of how the work packages will be achieved by the project phase. This model is also shown in Figure 2.3 in a different context.

The Elements of Project Planning.

There are a few key components to the project planning process. These elements include the performances that make up the techniques and processes previously discussed, as well as the elements that were discussed in the material that follows.

The statement of work.

A statement of work describes the actual work that is to be performed on the project when normally combined with the specifications that form the basis for a contractual agreement on the project. As a derivative of the WBS, the statement of work (sometimes called the scope of work) describes what is to be accomplished, a description of the tasks, the end products to be produced, such as hardware, software, testing, documentation, training, etc., as well as references to specifications, directives, or standards. The statement of work also includes that the input required other tasks involving the project and an important element of customer demand for a proposal to form.

Project specification.

The technical characteristics are the descriptions of the technical volume of the project. These technical characteristics must be compatible with the WBS and must describe various characteristics of the various subsystems in the project product or service which could include an overall system specification, hardware, software, technical test characteristics, and logistics support.

The cost estimate.

The cost estimate that is used to keep it real and project the cost of the project, usually has several levels, coordinated with the work breakdown system. One purpose of cost estimation is to produce timely reports on the actual project cost against the estimated cost for the project and project work packages. The cost estimate can also be used to produce a detailed monthly cost breakdown for each item in the project. An element of the cost system is a report that provides the estimated cost at weakly real cost as well as comparing it with the actual labor hours with the designated worker-hours with the manufactured or construction.

The cost account is normally considered the basic level at which project performance is moderate and informed. This account represents a specific work package identified by the WBS, normally tracked by information on a newspaper or the weekly time card tied with the organic cost accounting system.

The financial plan.

Assuming the project budget, work package budget, and budgets for the appropriate cost accounts have been developed, financial planning involving the development of action plans for obtaining and managing organic funds to support the project through use of the work authorization process.

The project manager normally authorizes the expenditure of resources on the project for work to be accomplished within the organization as well as work outsourced to vendors. The work authorization process is an orderly way to delegate authority to expend resources for the project. The work authorization document usually includes

1. The responsible individual and / or organization

2. A WBS work package

3. A schedule

4. The cost estimate and the consolidation appointment

5. A statement of work

Normally the work authorization document is in sheet one format which is considered a written contract between the project manager and the representation organization and / or person.

The functional plan.

Each functional manager must prepare a functional operational plan that establishes the nature and timing of functional resources necessary to support the project plan. For example, the financier's organization that supports the project manager must establish a plan how the project budget can be monitored. Such a plan would be an information system for monitoring the actual project costs and comparing them with the ideal costs.

The Formal plan.

The organization and arrangement of the project plan depend on the nature of the project. Points of a project plan include

• A project summary of what will be done briefly, methods and techniques to be used. It lists the deliverable end products in such a way that when they are produced, they can be easily identified and compared to the plan.

• A list of tangible and discrete goals, similarly identified that there can be no ambiguity if a goal has been achieved.

• A WBS that is detailed enough to provide meaningful identification of all tasks associated with job numbers, plus all higher-level groupings such as work units or work packages.

• A strategy that outlines how organic resources will be used to achieve project objectives and goals.

• An activity network showing the succession of project elements and how they are related (what can be done in parallel that can only start when another is finished, etc.)

• Separate budgets and schedules for all elements of the project so that some individual is responsible.

• An interface plan that shows how the project relates to the rest of the world, more particularly the client.

• An indication of the review process who reviews the project, when, and for what purpose.

• A list of important project personnel and their assignments regarding the WBS.