As you are aware, a project passes through different phases in life. In order to make 'Dreams Come True', the project team along with other stakeholders must have an strong and effective plan in place. Moreover, the objectives of the project should be in-line with overall mission, goals and strategy of the organization.
Even though the overall responsibility of the project is on Project Manager's shoulders, it is vital for the senior management of the organization to describe why the project is undertaken, scope outline and how the project outcome will benefit the firm. Also, senior management must be present at the initial coordinating meeting (project launch meeting) since without a clear beginning, later progress can easily go wrong.
Project Planning in Action
Project team should be aware of the activities that need to be performed in order to achieve the final outcome. In other words team should know what to be done in different times of the project life. In order to standardize, a project plan is usually constructed by listing the sequence of activities required to carry the project from start to completion.
As the project passes through each of the planned segment, it is subjected to a series of “quality gates” (also known as “phase gates,” “toll gates,” etc.) that must be successfully passed before proceeding to the next segment.
All activities required to complete the project must be precisely delineated and coordinated. The necessary resources must be available when and where they are needed, and in the correct amounts. Some activities must be done sequentially, but some may be done simultaneously.
The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Work breakdown structure (WBS) is a key project deliverable that organizes the team's work into manageable sections which can be recommended to use as the fundamental tool for planning. This visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that a project team can understand, as each level of the work breakdown structure provides further definition and detail.
Approach to Create a WBS
Using information from the action plan, list the task breakdown in successively finer levels of detail. Continue until all meaningful tasks or work packages have been identified and each task or package can be individually planned, budgeted, scheduled, monitored, and controlled.
For each such work package, identify the data relevant to the WBS (e.g., vendors, durations, equipment, materials, special specifications). List the personnel and organizations responsible for each task. It is helpful to construct a linear responsibility chart (sometimes called a responsibility matrix) to show who is responsible for what.
All work package information should be reviewed with the individuals or organizations who have responsibility for doing or supporting the work in order to verify the WBS’s accuracy.
For the purpose of pricing a proposal, or determining profit and loss, the total project budget should consist of four elements:
Direct budgets from each task
An indirect cost budget for the project, which includes general and administrative overhead costs (G&A), marketing costs, potential penalty charges, and other expenses not attributable to particular tasks
A project “contingency” reserve for unexpected emergencies
Any residual, which includes the profit derived from the project, which may, on occasion, be intentionally negative.
Similarly, schedule information and milestone (significant) events can be aggregated into a projected baseline schedule. The projected baseline schedule integrates the many different schedules relevant to the various parts of the project.
As the project is carried out, step by step, the Project Manager can continually examine actual resource use, by work element, work package, task, and so on up to the full project level. By comparing actual against planned resource usage at a given time, the Project Manager can identify problems, harden the estimates of final cost, and make sure that relevant corrective actions have been designed and are ready to implement if needed.
Finally, the project schedule may be subjected to the same comparisons as the project budget. Actual progress is compared to scheduled progress by work element, package, task, and complete project, to identify problems and take corrective action.
Purindu B Jayatilake
MSc Eng (Reading), MBA, BSc (Hons) Eng, ACMA (UK), CGMA
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