Your Venture Projects
To be certain that you've a totally clear project plan for each project, you should always take the following 5 steps to have a correctly planned project. These steps are: Setting the project direction, identify all of the jobs to be done, create the inter dependencies between applicable jobs, assign the resources and finally managing the plan.
Setting the direction of the project upfront will ensure that each stakeholder in the project is on the same page when the project starts. You need to incorporate here the project’s vision, goals and all real end results. The high level timeframes and resourcing needs must also be indicated. Document all of the “in scope” and “out of scope” end results. Where required you can indicate what is going to be “in scope” in a stage 2, 3 or further along the line. Also identify and document the project benefits, costs and any mileposts and limits. Only once all these have been documented and concluded with the relevant stakeholders, will you be in a position to understand the full extent of the project.
Once you've a clear understanding of the project’s results are you able to move to the very next step, which is to start the actual planning. You will have to identify the high level groups of jobs or phases of the project that may make up the full project. Then each of these would need to be broken down in jobs and even sub-tasks until you have what is referred to as the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This may at first be a sequence of activities following each other. Next allot duration or effort and start and end dates to each of these. Always remember to add a bit of additional time for any future unknowns. Now, also add your landmarks.
The following step is to now determine all the inter dependencies between all the tasks and sub-tasks a to add all of these. This can ensure that when one task starts to slide, it will tell you any slippage or issues you will encounter with other jobs further into the project.
When all inter-dependencies have been added, the next step is to start adding all the required resources to the project. This is not only the people that is needed to do the work, but also resources such as finances, hardware, materials and even the location or locations where the project will be executed. As you add resources, continuously test your resource allocation, as you will over utilize one and under utilize another resource. Over function might be a big problem in your projects, as this may have the effect that not all tasks will be completed on time, if a particular resource is allotted to multiple jobs that require completion at the same time.
Now you have created the jobs, added the inter-dependencies and added resources, you are ready for the final step which is to manage the plan. First you can now make a baseline, which is used to measure the actual progress against. Once you've created the baseline, never change it, as this can then not be well placed to offer you a clear measureable on the effectiveness in handling the project. Then you can begin to record and track the actual time spent on each task against this baseline on an everyday basis. When scope change occurs, don't forget to record any new tasks, start and end dates.
This plan can now be used to steadily track and monitor the development of the project and will also provide you with enough info to regularly communicate the standing of the project to all stakeholders.
And there you've got the 5 steps to simply plan projects. Using these five steps every time you plan and manage the project, will most definitely guarantee success on your projects.
John has over 40 years of experience in business promoting sales engineering general management online real-estate planning, for the past 20 years John has been a active Meditation Student. He has worked for and with worldwide corporations such as IBM, Electronic Data Systems and Mahindra British Telecomm. He has a BS from Brown in Computer Science an MA through IBM in Industrial Electronics, he also has a PhD in International Trade and Management from the London School of Business and Trade.
