PROJECT PLANNING

An effective end to end project plan must have the buy in of the business stakeholders, delivery team, the end users and the operational team who will support the software once live in production.

PROJECT DEFINITION WORKSHOP (PDW)

A good way to kick start any project – A meeting of key individuals many of whom will be there throughout the project established to clarify such :

  • Project Objectives
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Method To Be Used (agreement on how to go about delivering the work required)
  • Budget expectation
  • High Level Schedule
  • Size of team
  • Reporting requirements
  • Initial RAIDS   

Out of which will come a Project Initiation Document (PID) or Project Plan in MS word format

A project plan is why, who, what, how and when – however many people in IT refer to a Microsoft Gannt Chart or Excel Spreadsheet as the Project Plan when that is really the Project Schedule    

PROJECT PLANNING

  • DH experience is that best laid plans are a summation of best knowledge at the time of planning by key players in the project
  • A PDW should not be held without all key players attending
  • Allowing such to occur will ensure the project starts off in such a way that it will need to be remediated later causing time and money
  • All plans will change as issues arise or new knowledge occurs that can impact the plan either positively or negatively
  • Thus the need for Change Management to impact asses such change and gain agreement to move forward
  • Always review the plan and the schedule with higher level authorities to see if there are better ways of going about the delivery

PROJECT SCHEDULE

  • In defining a project schedule the PM needs to understand what is required to deliver the project and when the work to do so can be completed
  • The schedule would be best represented in phases of activity for example:

1: Initiation

2: Requirements

3: Design

4: Build

5: System Test

6: UAT

7: Implement

 

  • The Build and System Test can be scheduled as 2 week SPRINTS
  • PM with the buy in of the delivery team can build the schedule by understanding and agreeing with the delivery team and with the buy in of business stakeholders and any third party representatives who the schedule has a dependency on – a fully considered end to end delivery schedule
  • PM must take into account Business Readiness (any end user training or adaptation of business process) plus Production Readiness – there will be technical requirements that operational staff will need to be met in order for the new system or product to fit into the existing live environment – such activity has to be scheduled and accounted for