If we look at the best project management practice (PMI methodology), then we can see that project planning involves a lot of different elements and that there is not just one project plan but several of them.
The project plan's primary design, namely project plans, includes the following:
- Integration planning, which means looking at what systems need to communicate and what they will communicate
- Planning the scope of the project (that is, what needs to be done)
- Scheduling, links between activities, duration of activities, and people accountable for realization of tasks
- Cost planning will help to determine the project's budget, and this will help monitor the costs, ensuring that the project does not exceed its budget
- Project quality planning includes looking at what quality is, who will deliver it, when, how, and with which metric
- Planning human resources, team building, and determining each team member's roles and responsibilities
- Planning team communication, management, sponsorship, reporting, and meetings
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Project-risk planning, including identifying potential risks, who is responsible for monitoring them, what comes next, how we will reduce their impact on the project, and respectively, how we will reduce the probability of dropping
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Planning how we will manage the parties concerned and how we will keep them on our side to support the project
As you can see, project planning is not a simple task, because it covers all areas of the project. Each area of the project needs to have its own plan because the successful realization of all segments of the project depends on good plans that are realistic and achievable.
It should be noted that the planning process can be repetitive. There can be many versions of a plan until a satisfactory one arises.
During the initial stages of a project, it should be mandatory to include an analysis of all the resources you use in the project, as this is important for defining the necessary activities, plan, budget, and staff, as well as other resources.
The first step of this process might be to advance the way you gather staff as well as the way in which appropriate training is to be conducted.
It is also important that the plan precisely defines the roles and responsibilities of future members of the team. Assigning responsibility to the project is of the utmost importance because it is very important to know exactly who is in charge of each activity. So, when writing a plan, you have to carefully consider everyone's responsibility and debt.
If we were to compare this process to a football match, it would be something like this: the goalkeeper, attacker, and defender should all know their respective positions and tasks. If they don't know their roles and responsibilities clearly, the team would lose their time, both in the game and in the project.
In addition to these kinds of analyses, you should consider any potential difficulties, risks, and complications that you may encounter to resolve them more successfully and over a shorter period of time.
Also consider and determine deadlines for the realization of the activities as well as the time needed for this needs to be discussed with the project team and defined in the plan.