My summary of the module 3 of the course "Principles of Project Management".

The Developing or Planning Phase Overview

Why bother about planning?

• Potential risks, constraints and assumptions are identified allowing to smooth the project execution
• Helps measure the progress towards the outcome
• The better planning has been conducted, the less changes will be required when executing the project
• Keeps everyone focused on the project goal

The developing phase includes the following:

• Writing the Project Plan
• Defining the Project scope
• Estimating the time and resources in detail
• Estimating costs
• Establishing quality objectives and planning how to implement and assure them
• Setting up a Communications plan so all stakeholders are kept informed and aware of the project's progress
• Determining and assessing the risks the project has and planning response to negative risks, as well as exploiting positive risks
• Planning how procurements to be handled
• Establishing integrated change control system

Developing a Project Management Plan

Essentially, the Project Mngmt Plan answers why, what, how, who and when of the project.

Inputs:

• The Project Charter
• The outputs of the 19 other planning processes
• Organisational process assets
  • previous project management plans
  • lessons learned
  • existing policies and procedures
  • templates
• Enterprise environmental factors
  • the company culture and structure
  • infrastructure
  • existing human resources
  • any existing PM software that can be used
  • existing Government or Industry standards

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert Judgement (not only your own, but SMEs, Pg Managers, team leaders, stakeholders)
  • to tailor process to suit the project
  • to workout needed resource and skill levels
  • to develop technical and mgmt information
  • to decide areas that require change mgmt
  • to estimate how much change control mgmt, i.e. conf mgmt

Outputs:

• The Project Management Plan

By the time the PMP is put together, it's appropriate to seek authorization for the plan from stakeholders. With all details gathered, the project may need to be reevaluated against its original business case.

Define Scope

3 Planning Processes:

• Collecting requirements
• Define Scope
  • specs (of the project deliverable)
  • project scope (i.e. work required to deliver the above)
• Create WBS

Collecting requirements

Inputs:

• Project Charter
• Stakeholder register

Tools & Techniques:

• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Facilitated workshops
• Group creativity
• Group decision making
• Questionnaires, surveys, etc.
• Prototypes

Output:

• Requirements mgmt plan
  • outlines how reqs will be analyzed, documented and managed
• Requirements documentation
  • documents the analyzed reqs and how they meet original business need, according to Requirements mgmt plan
• Requirements traceability matrix
  • table showing the origins of the documented reqs and also providing a way of tracking reqs

Define Scope

Inputs:

• Project Charter
• Requirements documentation
• Organizational process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert judgement
• Product analysis
• Alternatives Identification
• Facilitated workshops

Outputs:

• Project scope statement
  • product scope description
  • product acceptance criteria
  • deliverables
  • exclusions (i.e. out of scope)
  • constraints
  • assumptions
• Project documentation updates

Create WBS

One of the most important parts of the project planning. The main project goal is split into levels of deliverables (not the work activities!).

Inputs:

• Project scope statement
• Requirements documentation
• Organizational process assets (any historical WBS, templates or guidelines)

Tools & Techniques:

• Decomposition
  • breakdown the project scope into work packages
  • use hierarchy to define level of decomposition
  • engage a team to building the WBS

Outputs:

• WBS
• WBS dictionary
• Scope Baseline
  • equals: Scope statement + WBS & dictionary
• Project documentation updates

Estimate Duration and Resources

5 planning processes:

• Define activities
  • all the work to be done to create each work package
• Sequence activities
• Estimate activity resources
  • materials, people, equipment, supplies
• Estimate activity durations
• Develop schedule

Define activities

Inputs:

• The scope baseline
• Enterprise environmental factors
  • e.g. existing OM software tools (MS Project)
• Organizational process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Decomposition of the WBS to work activities
• Rolling wave planning
• Templates
• Expert Judgement

Outputs:

• Activity list (with identifier for easy reference)
• Activity attributes
  • additional info
  • e.g. WBS ID, Activity ID, name, descriptions, predecessor/successor activities, relationships, constraints.
• Milestone list (significant events, 0 duration)

Sequence activities

4 commonly defined relationships:

• Finish Start
• Start Finish
• Finish Finish
• Start Start

Inputs:

• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Milestone list
• Project scope statement
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Precedence diagram method
• Dependency determination
• Applying leads & lags
• Schedule network templates

Outputs:

• Project schedule network diagrams
• Project documentation updates
  • may include Activity list and attributes
  • Risk register

Estimate resources

Inputs:

• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Resource calendars
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert Judgement
• Alternatives analysis
• Published estimating data
• Bottom-up estimating
• Project mgtm software

Outputs:

• Activity resource requirements
• Resource breakdown structure
• Project document updates

Estimate durations

Inputs:

• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Activity resource requirements
• Resource calendars
• Project scope statement
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert Judgement
• Analogous estimating
• Parametric estimating
• 3-point estimating
• Reserve analysis

Outputs:

• Activity duration estimates
• Project documentation updates

Develop Schedule

Inputs:

• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Project schedule network
• Activity resource requirements
• Resource calendars
• Activity duration estimates
• Project scope statement
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Schedule network analysis
• Critical path method
• Critical chain method
• Resource levelling
• What-if scenario analysis
• Applying leads and lags
• Schedule compression, scheduling tool

Outputs:

• The Project schedule
• Schedule Baseline
• Schedule database
• Project document updates

Developing the Cost baseline

Estimating costs

Inputs:

• Scope baseline
• Project Schedule
• HR plan
• Risk register
• Enterprise env. factors
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert Judgement
• Analagous estimating
• Parametric estimating
• Bottom-up estimating
• Three-point estimates
• Reserve analysis
• Cost of Quality
• PM estimating software
• Vendor bid analysis

Outputs:

• Activity cost estimates
• Basis of estimates
• Project doc updates

Determining the budget

Inputs:

• Activity Cost estimates
• Basis of estimates
• Scope baseline
• Project Schedule
• Resource calendars
• Contracts
• Organisational process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Expert Judgement
• Cost aggregation
• Reserve analysis
• Historical relationships
• Funding limit reconciliation

Outputs:

• Cost performance baseline
• Project funding requirements
• Project document updates

Establishing Quality Standards

The only planning process about quality is Planning Quality.

Inputs:

• Scope baseline
• Stakeholder register
• Cost performance baseline
• Schedule baseline
• Risk register
• Enterprise environmental factors
• Organisational process assets

Tools and Techniques:

• Cost-benefit analysis
• Cost of quality
• Control charts
• Benchmarking
• Design of experiments
• Statistical sampling
• Flowcharting
• Proprietary quality management methodologies
• Additional quality planning tools

Outputs:

• Quality management plan
• Quality metrics
• Quality checklists
• Process improvement plan
• Project document updates

Establishing Communication

Plan communications

Input:

• Stakeholder register
• Stakehlder mgmt strategy
• Enterprise env. factors
• Org. process assets

Tools & Techniques:

• Communication reqs anaysis
• Communication technology
• Comm-n models
• Comm-n methods

Outputs:

• Communication mgmt plan
• Project document updates

3 communication methods:

• push
• pull
• interaction

Determining risks & planning procerements

5 risk planning processes

• Developing a risk management plan
• Identifying risks
• Performing qualitative assessment
• Performing quantitative assessment
• Planning risk responses.

Overview of all the risk processes

The main output is a Risk mgmt plan. It should include the following

• Method(s) for performing risk mgmt
• Roles & responsibilities
• Budgeting (contingencies and estimates for risk mgmt)
• Timing - when and how often risk mgmt should occur
• Risk categories and sub-categrories
• Probability and impact
• Tracking - how risk to be tracked

There are 4 approaches to dealing with negative risks: avoid, transfer, mitigate and accept.

The responses for “positive risks” are exploit, share, enhance and accept.

Plan procurements

Inputs:

• Scope baseline
• Reqs documents
• Teaming agreements
• Risk register
• Risk related contract decisions
• Activity resource reqs

Tools & Techniques:

• Make or buy analysis
• Expert judgement
• Contract types

Outputs:

• Procurement management plan
• Procurement SOW
• Make or buy decisions
• Prourement docs
• Source selection criteria
• Change requests

Planning for Change

There will always be unexpected events. Also, the further you work through the project the better you understand the project reqs. As a result, changes may be required because of the following:

• there are aspects of the project that require more work than planned
• other technology options become available
• regulatory or legislative changes occur during the project
• newer processes or equipment become available
• trying to avoid or mitigate a risk

One of the reasons of the project failure is uncontrolled change.

Scope creep is a change to the project scope. However, changes may be required to any aspect of a project.

A change management plan, a part of Project Management Plan, can include the following:

• The approach that will be used to manage change
• How to evaluate change requests
  • Assess cost, time and risk implications, work considerations, product and technical specifications
• How project change will be implemented during the project
• How changes will be managed during implementation
• What sorts of change will be considered
• The change control board if one exists
• Roles & responsibilities of team members involved in change management
• How the change control process will work from start to end