An Effective Project Plan Explained in 6 Easy Steps
Project Planning
Projects mean a lot for your business. How you manage projects is the difference between profitability or… falling flat.
Project Plan Highlights:
Before anything else, scope out your project. What tasks and deliverables are involved in this project?
Identify the resources. Who needs to be involved in the project? What tools do you need to complete the project?
Once you receive feedback, update your plan accordingly. The scope, deliverables, and resources might have changed.
Projects mean a lot for your business. The way you manage projects is the difference between profitability or… falling flat.
A project has to be planned effectively; only then can you execute them well. Being the critical aspect of your business, it has to be managed effectively to drive business growth.
Let us see what makes up a perfect project plan.
Table of Contents Show
What is a Project Plan?
A project plan is the documentation outlining the processes involved in successfully executing the project.
It covers the whole scope of the project and defines the objectives, goals, and steps to arrive at a successful closure. This documentation acts as a centralized hub to organize, prioritize and monitor the activities that comprise your project.
6 Steps in the Project Plan
Following this simple 6-step project plan will enable you to manage the project efficiently.
Step 1: Define the Project Scope and Objectives
Before commencing a project, it’s essential to define the scope and objectives, so this task should be right at the top of your list. The project's overall purpose needs to be described in detail to have clarity in the entire project phase.
If you think that defining the scope for a project is a tedious and time-consuming task, you must
understand that scope is what makes your project meaningful. Taking some time to define the scope will ensure seamless and hassle-free project management. With the right project management tool, tracking the progress of your project becomes much more straightforward.
Step 2: Identify the stakeholders and assign the responsibilities.
It’s pretty standard that different stakeholders are responsible for the various activities that make up a project. Therefore, it is essential to define the critical metrics for each stakeholder so will be working towards fruitful project execution. Once you have the scope and metrics defined for the project, the next step is to start executing them one by one.
When finding the right keyholders, create segments based on responsibility level, decision-makers, employee levels, and more. It’s essential to identify who will do what and how each activity will be taken care of with utmost care. By doing so, each individual will be linked with the critical deliverables they’re responsible for.
Step 3: Get a clear idea of the Deliverables.
Now that you have each stakeholder, the next step is to define the deliverables. What factors or metrics are to be considered, and on what priority. Everything should be clearly defined during this stage to ensure transparency in the project phases.
Step 4: Start Managing the Tasks
There are a massive amount of tasks involved in a project. Managing the tasks efficiently and closing them on time is essential when you think of successful project completion. Task management software like Yoroflow can be an excellent choice. Your deliverables are the aspects of your tasks that need to be assigned to different stakeholders for practical completion.
While you work on the tasks, it’s also quite essential to define the dependencies.
Step 5: Effective Task Assignment
Once you have the tasks to work on, assigning them to the respective stakeholders is again essential to get them executed on time. As soon as a task is encountered in the system, it should be automatically assigned to the respective stakeholder based on the predefined workflow. By doing so, the execution gets much quicker and more effective.
The deadlines are to be kept in mind for every task execution because the ultimate focus is to hit the delivery before the deadlines. In a major role, the quick turnaround time is the expected deliverable.
Step 6: Get the Feedback and Update the Plan. If any changes are required
This is the final stage of your project plan. When reaching this stage, you have already defined the project's scope, have respective stakeholders to manage the deliverables, defined the deliverables, assigned the tasks, and shared the complete project plan with all concerned. Now you’re ready to make changes wherever necessary.
This step will help you make your project plan more effective, considering the corrective feedback from the stakeholders involved in the project.
Why are the Project Plans important for your business?
As the saying goes, first things first! Planning is the first stage of every process. The aim is always to visualize the project from the beginning. A project becomes successful only if it's planned strategically and effectively. It helps all involved to identify and analyze the points where the project could be delayed and manage the efforts based on the need. It also helps to get everyone on the same page so that transparency in communication can be managed among all. Your project plan is a framework that helps you manage and optimize the project.
While you prepare the project plan, don’t forget to take references and inspiration from others and involve the complete team. Because brainstorming with the team can give you a better understanding of issues, resources and tasks, which you can deal with and include in discussions.
Project management software is the best thing you can rely on for planning your project successfully. Reporting dashboards and user dashboards like Kanban boards will give you a better picture of the project and workflow management can be configured to ensure the smooth running of the system. This will free up time to focus on the overall project rather than the admin and ensure you deliver results.
