The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

 

 

 

 

This article is based on information from “The Portable MBA in Project Management,” by Eric Verzuh.

 

 

 

 

Assembling the who, what, and when of a project can be a difficult task. Even small projects can have an overwhelming amount of detail. Fortunately, project management and project planning techniques have evolved to provide a systematic approach for breaking the project down and assembling the details in an organized, informative format. Let’s look at what I consider to be the six basic steps to go through in the process of planning your project out in detail:

 

 

 

 

 

 






     
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  • Build a work breakdown structure (step one). The project manager and team identify all the tasks required to build the specified deliverables. The scope statement helps to define the boundaries of the project.





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  • Identify task relationships (step two). The detailed tasks are placed in the proper sequence and interdependencies of tasks are identified.





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  • Estimate work tasks (step three). Each of these detailed tasks is assigned an estimate for the amount of labor and equipment needed and for the duration of the task.





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  • Calculate initial schedule (step four). After estimating the duration of each work task and figuring in the sequence of tasks, the project manager team calculates the total duration of the project. This is just an initial schedule at this point – it will be the basis for managing the remainder of the project and will need to be revised continually.





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  • Assign and level resources (step five). The project manager team adjusts the schedule to account for resource constraints. Tasks are rescheduled to optimize the use of people and equipment used on the project.





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  • Develop the budget (step six). Combine the costs associated with materials, labor, equipment, and external services to create a detailed cost estimate and cash flow projection. Whether this is done top-down or bottom-up depends on your organization, your project management practice and how much control the project manager has. Sometimes the estimate is already in hand and it dictates the schedule, unfortunately.





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These steps generate all the information required to understand how a project will be executed. The steps are systematic, but they don’t necessarily always come up with the “right answer.” Again, depending on how much control the project manager has over the project management process this overall process can take on different looks. However, one thing is a given - it may take cycles of these steps to find the best balance between cost, schedule, and quality.