Every project should begin with a plan. Without it, you don’t know where you are going and what road you are going to take to get there. A plan sums all of this up – it defines your goal and sets manageable milestones and tasks, it also has information about vendors, budget and so on. Without a plan, you might get lost along the way and risk the entire project.
However, creating plans isn’t an easy task. There are so many things to consider and include that people often give up. But because it is so important, you can’t it intimidate you.
Here are some tips on creating a great plan:
1. Outline
Before you start planning, you should outline. Brainstorm with your team and write everything down. The first thing you’ll need is a clearly defined, measurable goal. Next, you’ll need to define how the business will benefit from this project. You can move on to create small tasks and milestones that will lead to the completion of the project.
Have your team discuss what problems you might run into along the way. You need to plan for these too in order to keep the stakeholders’ trust. Finally, list the metrics with which you’ll measure your success.
2. Communicate with stakeholders
The project manager should talk to the stakeholders to see what they expect from this project, what the possibilities and deadlines are. Having a good stream of communication from the very beginning could prevent a lot of problems. Talk to the vendors to see what their deliverables are, with the management to give them updates when necessary, occasional workers to let them know when they should be available and so on.
3. Consider the timeline and scope
This sets up the boundaries of the project and tells which tasks belong to which team member. Everyone should know the timeline, the most important tasks, and deadlines. The team members should also know how to handle problems and what to do in any given situation.
What this does is keep the project on track thus keeping the stakeholders happy and it also helps the project stay within the budget. The plan should define what time would it take to complete the project, the budget it would take, the number of team members and so on. The project manager should be realistic in this part because any deviations may cause a lot of stress and problems.
4. Format and edit your plan
Every plan needs to be clear and understandable. So many people are using this document and accuracy and clarity are very important. Grammar and spelling mistakes might make your plan seem less professional, or even worse, make people misunderstand the tasks and milestones. The format is also highly important because it makes the document easy to scan and overview the most important parts. If you are not sure how to handle these actions, here is a list of useful tools that can assist you in making your document perfect.
- StateOfWriting – Writing doesn’t come easy to everyone, especially if that is not your main job. This is why some business writing guides like this one can help you write better and with more style.
- UK Writings – Editing can be a pesky task. There are redundancies and repetitive sentences to remove and these business writing and editing tools can help you do that with ease.
- Boomessays – Business language can be complicated sometimes and hard to understand even for the people in the business world. However, you can easily learn the jargon by using this tool.
- Academic Advisor – People often read something and then repeat it unwillingly in their own work. To prevent plagiarism in your plan, use this site.
- Essayroo – This tool is highly praised by Review Eal so it should have no problem of catching all of those typos and mistakes.
- Paper Fellows and My Writing Way – Formatting is always important but it can be hard to achieve sometimes. Tools like these are there to make this job easy and seamlessly make your plan look amazing.
5. Expect problems
Any good plan anticipates problems. These are bound to happen even to the best of the project managers because there are so many people involved. Planning for problems is a good idea. Allocate where your problems may happen based on history and research.
6. Make a schedule
A good schedule will keep everyone on track. Schedule milestones, meetings, and deadlines for best results and least problems. Everyone should be informed of this schedule, including the vendors, management, partners and occasional workers. Try to stick to the schedule as much as possible.
7. Document everything
The project manager should always document everything. “Starting from the process of planning to information on people involved and other details to results as the project comes to its completion, everything should have a paper trail. This will not only be helpful for better understanding of the project but it will also serve for future reference”, – explains Samantha Grier, a Project Manager at Bestbritishessays and Revieweal writer.
Final Thoughts
Planning is essential to any project. It helps everything run smoothly and with no bigger issues. Follow these tips on writing a plan to be sure that everything is prepared once the project starts.
Project management tools, Of course, your job as a project manager can always be made easier if you use the right project management software and tools.
Author’s bio: Freddie Tubbs
Freddie Tubbs is a project manager and business writer at Essayroo. He is running Academized marketing blog and regularly contributes posts to Australian help blog.