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Project Planning: How to Make a Project Plan

This guide is brought to you by projectmanager, the project planning software trusted by 35,000+ users worldwide. make a project plan in minutes.

What Is a Project Plan?

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A project plan is a series of formal documents that define the execution and control stages of a project. The plan includes considerations for risk management, resource management and communications, while also addressing scope, cost and schedule baselines. Project planning software is used by project managers to ensure that their plans are thorough and robust.

ProjectManager allows you to make detailed project plans with online Gantt charts that have task dependencies, resource hours, labor costs, milestones, the critical path and more. Plus, your team can execute the plan in any of our five project views, while you track progress along the way with dashboards. Start today for free.

The project plan, also called project management plan, answers the who, what, where, why, how and when of the project—it’s more than a Gantt chart with tasks and due dates. The purpose of a project plan is to guide the execution and control project phases.

As mentioned above, a project plan consists of the following documents:

• Project Charter : Provides a general overview of the project. It describes the project’s reasons, goals, objectives, constraints, stakeholders, among other aspects.
• Statement of Work : A statement of work (SOW) defines the project’s scope, schedule, deliverables, milestones, and tasks.
• Work Breakdown Structure : Breaks down the project scope into the project phases, subprojects, deliverables, and work packages that lead to your final deliverable.
• Project Plan : The project plan document is divided in sections to cover the following: scope management, quality management, risk assessment, resource management, stakeholder management, schedule management and the change management plan.

This guide aims to give you all the information and resources you need to create a project plan and get it approved by your customers and stakeholders. Let’s start with the basics of writing a project plan.

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Project Plan Template

Use this free Project Plan Template for Word to manage your projects better.

Your project plan is essential to the success of any project. Without one, your project may be susceptible to common project management issues such as missed deadlines, scope creep and cost overrun. While writing a project plan is somewhat labor intensive up front, the effort will pay dividends throughout the project life cycle.

The basic outline of any project plan can be summarized in these five steps:

• Define your project’s stakeholders, scope, quality baseline, deliverables, milestones, success criteria and requirements. Create a project charter, work breakdown structure (WBS) and a statement of work (SOW) .
• Identify risks and assign deliverables to your team members, who will perform the tasks required and monitor the risks associated with them.
• Organize your project team (customers, stakeholders, teams, ad hoc members, and so on), and define their roles and responsibilities.
• List the necessary project resources , such as personnel, equipment, salaries, and materials, then estimate their cost.
• Develop change management procedures and forms.
• Create a communication plan , schedule, budget and other guiding documents for the project.

Each of the steps to write a project plan explained above correspond to the 5 project phases, which we will outline in the next section.

What Are the 5 Phases of the Project Life Cycle?

Any project , whether big or small, has the potential to be very complex. It’s much easier to break down all the necessary inclusions for a project plan by viewing your project in terms of phases. The Project Management Institute , within the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), have identified the following 5 phases of a project:

• Initiation: The start of a project, in which goals and objectives are defined through a business case and the practicality of the project is determined by a feasibility study.
• Planning: During the project planning phase, the scope of the project is defined by a work breakdown structure (WBS) and the project methodology to manage the project is decided on. Costs, quality and resources are estimated, and a project schedule with milestones and task dependencies is identified. The main deliverable of this phase is your project plan.
• Execution: The project deliverables are completed during this phase. Usually, this phase begins with a kick-off meeting and is followed by regular team meetings and status reports while the project is being worked on.
• Monitoring & Controlling: This phase is performed in tandem with the project execution phase. Progress and performance metrics are measured to keep progress on the project aligned with the project plan.
• Closure: The project is completed when the stakeholder receives the final deliverable. Resources are released, contracts are signed off on and, ideally, there will be an evaluation of the successes and failures.

Free Project Plan Template

Address all aspects of your project plan with this free project plan template for Word . This in-depth template will guide you through every phase of the project, as well as all the elements you need to outline for a proper document. Download your template today.

We’ve created also created other project planning templates to help you create all the different documents that make up a project plan, like the project schedule, project budget or resource plan.

Now that we’ve learned how to make a project plan, and identified the stages of the project management life cycle, we need to emphasize on the importance of the project planning phase.

The project planning process is critical for any kind of project because this is where you create all the documents that will guide how you’ll execute your project plan and how you’ll control risks and any issues that might occur. These documents, which are part of the project management plan, cover all the details of your project without exception.

There are project plan templates out there that can help you organize your tasks and begin the project planning process—but we here at ProjectManager recommend the use of project planning software. The feature set is far more robust and integrated with every project phase compared to an Excel project plan template, and is a great way to ensure your actual progress stays aligned with your planned progress.

Once you write a project plan, it’s time for implementation . Watch the video below to see how project planning software helps organize a project’s tasks, resources and costs.

Project planning tools has become an invaluable tool for project managers in recent years, as it provides them the ability to maintain and automate the components we outlined above. Project planning software is a great tool to facilitate project management processes such as schedule development, team management, cost estimation, resource allocation and risk monitoring.

Beyond that, planning software also allows managers to monitor and track their plan as it moves through the execution phase of the project. These features include dashboards, for a high-level view of the project’s progress and performance, and in-depth reports that can be used to communicate with stakeholders.

Project planning software comes in all different sizes and shapes. There are some that focus on a single aspect, and others that offer a suite of planning features that can be used in each one of the project planning steps. What’s right for your project depends on your specific needs, but in general terms, project planning software is a much more powerful tool than project planning templates .

Related: 20 Must-Have Project Management Excel Templates

Online project planning software is highly flexible and adaptable to your team’s style of work. It has features that are designed to assist you throughout your project planning process.

Before the rise of planning software, project managers would typically have to keep up with a disjointed collection of documents, excel spreadsheets and so on. Savvy managers, however, make use of the project management tools available to them to automate what they can, and streamline what they can’t.

Some of the time-saving benefits of project planning software include the following.

• Organize, prioritize and assign tasks
• Plan and schedule milestones and task dependencies
• Monitor progress, costs and resources
• Collaborate with team
• Share project plans with team and stakeholders
• Generate reports on plans

Gantt Charts for Superior Planning

A Gantt chart is the most essential tool for the project planning process. Organize tasks, add their duration and they automatically populate a project timeline . Set milestones to break the larger project into manageable phases, and link task dependencies to avoid bottlenecks later in the project.

Get More Than a To-Do List

When planning a project, you need more than a to-do list. Seek out a planning software with a task list feature that lets you set priority levels, filters and collaborate. It’s a big plus if you can also make personal task lists that are private to manage your own work.

Use Kanban for Workflows

Workflows ensure proper execution of your plan, and no feature does this better than kanban boards. Customize boards to match your workflow and drag and drop cards as teams get their work done. See what work needs to be done and keep the focus on productivity with this feature.

Be Able to Track Progress

A dashboard can keep your project plan on track. Try and find a dashboard that’s synced with your planning tools, so everything updates automatically. It will make reporting easier too.

Get Transparency Into Teams

For a plan to go smoothly, you have to know what your team is working on. Find a way to balance your team’s availability with the project schedule. Workload features that map out resource allocation and holidays can be a big help here.

Be Able to Manage Multiple Projects

Rarely do you need to only focus on one project at a time. Give yourself the flexibility to manage multiple projects at once in the same tool. A roadmap feature that maps all of your projects on one timeline can be a lifesaver.

Before we dive into how to create a project plan, it helps to be familiar with some of the terms that you’ll run across. Here is a list of general terms you’ll encounter in this guide.

• Deliverable: The results of a project, such as a product, service, report, etc.
• Stakeholder: Anyone with a vested interest in the project—project manager, project sponsor, team members, customers, etc.
• Tasks: Small jobs that lead to the final deliverable.
• Milestone: The end of one project phase, and the beginning of the next.
• Resources: Anything you need to complete the project, such as personnel, supplies, materials, tools, people and more.
• Budget: Estimate of total cost related to completing a project.
• Tracking & Monitoring: Collecting project data, and making sure it reflects the results you planned for.

The project planning process is critical for the success of your project, and as a project manager, you have to think about all the elements that make up your project management plan such as work, time, resources and risks.

Now, we’re going to take you through the main project planning steps :

• Outline the business case
• Meet with key stakeholders
• Define project scope
• Assemble a project team
• Determine a project budget
• Set project goals & objectives
• Outline project deliverables
• Create a project schedule
• Assign tasks to your team members
• Do a risk analysis
• Create your project plan
• Report your progress

By following these project planning steps, you’ll clarify what you need to achieve, work out the processes you need to get there and develop an action plan for how you are going to take this project plan outline forward.

1. Outline the Business Case

If you have a project, there’s a reason for it—that’s your business case . The business case outlines reasons why the project is being initiated, its benefits and the return on investment. If there’s a problem that is being solved, then that problem is outlined here. The business case will be presented to those who make decisions at your organization, explaining what has to be done, and how, along with a feasibility study to assess the practicality of the project. If approved, you have a project.

2. Meet with Key Stakeholders

Every project has stakeholders , those who have a vested interest in the project. From the ones who profit from it, to the project team members who are responsible for its success. Therefore, any project manager must identify who these key stakeholders are during the project planning process, from customers to regulators. Meeting with them is crucial to get a better picture of what the project management plan should include and what is expected from the final deliverable.

3. Define Project Scope

It refers to the work required to accomplish the project objectives and generate the required deliverables. The project scope should be defined and organized by a work breakdown structure (WBS). Therefore, the project scope includes what you must do in the project (deliverables, sub deliverables, work packages, action items ), but also what is nonessential. The latter is important for the project plan, because knowing what isn’t high priority helps to avoid scope creep ; that is, using valuable resources for something that isn’t key to your project’s success.

4. Assemble a Project Team

You’ll need a capable project team to help you create your project plan and execute it successfully. It’s advisable to gather a diverse group of experienced professionals to build a multi-disciplinary team that sees your project management plan from different perspectives.

5. Determine a Project Budget

Once you define your project scope, you’ll have a task list that must be completed to deliver your project successfully. To do so, you’ll need resources such as equipment, materials, human capital, and of course, money. Your project budget will pay for all this. The first step to create a project budget is to estimate the costs associated with each task. Once you have those estimated costs, you can establish a cost baseline , which is the base for your project budget.

6. Set Project Goals & Objectives

Goals and objectives are different things when it comes to planning a project. Goals are the results you want to achieve, and are usually broad. Objectives , on the other hand, are more specific; measurable actions that must be taken to reach your goal. When creating a project plan, the goals and objectives naturally spring from the business case, but in this stage, you go into further detail. In a sense, you’re fine-tuning the goals set forth in the business case and creating tasks that are clearly defined. These goals and objectives are collected in a project charter , which you’ll use throughout the project life cycle.

7. Outline Project Deliverables

A project can have numerous deliverables. A deliverable can be a good, service or result that is needed to complete a task, process, phase, subproject or project. For example, the final deliverable is the reason for the project, and once this deliverable is produced, the project is completed. As defined in the project scope, a project consists of subprojects, phases, work packages, activities and tasks, and each of these components can have a deliverable. The first thing to do is determine what the final deliverable is, and how you will know that the quality meets your stakeholder’s expectations. As for the other deliverables in the project, they must also be identified and someone on the team must be accountable for their successful completion.

8. Create a Project Schedule

The project schedule is what everything hangs on. From your tasks to your budget , it’s all defined by time. Schedules are made up by collecting all the tasks needed to reach your final deliverable, and setting them on a project timeline that ends at your deadline. This can make for an unruly job ahead, which is why schedules are broken into phases, indicated by milestones , which mark the end of one project phase and the beginning of the next.

9. Assign Tasks to Your Team Members

The plan is set, but it still exists in the abstract until you take the tasks on your schedule and begin assigning them out to your team members. Their roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined, so they know what to do. Then, when you assign them tasks from your plan, they should be clear, with directions and any related documentation they will need to execute the tasks.

10. Do a Risk Analysis

Every project has some level of risk . There are several types of risk such as scope risk, technical risks and schedule risk, among others. Even if your project plan is thorough, internal and external factors can impact your project’s time, cost and scope (triple constraint). Therefore, you need to regard your planning as flexible. There are many ways to prepare for risk, such as developing a change management plan, but for now, the most important thing to do is to track your progress throughout the execution phase by using project status reports and/or project planning software to monitor risk.

11. Create your Project Plan

As discussed above, a project management plan is a document that’s made of several elements. Before we get into a detailed explanation of each of them, it’s important to understand that you should include them all to have a solid project plan. The components that you’ll need might vary depending on your project, but in general terms, you’ll need these main documents to create your project management plan:

• Project charter
• Project schedule
• Project budget
• Project scope statement
• Risk management plan
• Change management plan
• Cost management plan
• Resource management plan
• Stakeholder management plan

12. Report Your Progress

Your ultimate goal is to ensure a successful project for your stakeholders. They’re invested, and will not be satisfied twiddling their thumbs without looking at project status reports to track progress. By constructing a work breakdown structure (WBS) during the project planning phase you can break down the project for them so that they understand how your project plan will be executed. Keeping stakeholders informed is important to manage their expectations and ensure that they’re satisfied. Having regular planning meetings where you present progress reports are a great way to show them that everything is moving forward as planned and to field any questions or concerns they might have. Your stakeholder management plan will specify how you’ll engage stakeholders in the project.

Project planning software is a tool that helps to plan, organize and manage the schedule and resources needed to complete a project. ProjectManager is an award-winning project management software that organizes projects from planning to completion. Sign up for a free 30-day trial and follow along to build a thorough project plan that covers every detail.

1. List Your Tasks for the Plan

Tasks are the building blocks of any project and the start of any plan is identifying all the tasks that lead to your final deliverable.

Open the tool to add your tasks on the Gantt chart or one of the other multiple project views. You can import a task list from any spreadsheet or use one of our templates to get started.

2. Add Duration and Costs to Tasks

Every task has an estimated duration, which is the time it will take to complete it. They will also require a certain amount of funding, which needs to be collected to formulate your plan.

Add the start and end dates for each task in the Gantt and they populate a project timeline, so you can see the whole project laid out in one place. There’s also a column for task costs.

3. Link Dependent Tasks

Tasks are not always separate from one another. Often one cannot start or stop until another has started or stopped. That’s called a task dependency and needs to be noted in your plan.

Link dependent tasks by dragging one to the other. A dotted line indicates that they’re linked, so you stay aware of the fact and can avoid bottlenecks later in the project.

4. Set Milestones & Baseline

A milestone indicates the end of one phase and the beginning of another, which helps with tracking and morale. The baseline sets your plan so you can compare it to actual progress.

There is a filter on the Gantt that automatically sets the baseline, so you can use it to track your actual progress against the plan. The baseline can also be locked with a click.

5. Onboard Team & Assign

Getting the team and the tool together is how a project plan becomes actualized. The easier and seamless this transition, the faster you’ll get to work on the project.

Invite your team from the software and it generates an email with a link. Once they follow that link, they’re in and have access to the tools they need to manage their tasks.

6. Monitor Progress & Report to Stakeholders

Keeping track of your progress and then updating stakeholders is both how you stay on track and manage your stakeholders’ expectations.

See progress as it happens on our real-time dashboard, which calculates data and displays it over six project metrics. Reports can be filtered and shared for a deep dive into those numbers.

7. Adjust Plan As Needed

No plan remains the same throughout a project. Things happen and changes are demanded. Therefore, being able to edit your plan easily is key to the project planning process.

Edit your plan on the Gantt by a simple drag and drop. Move the old date to the new date and not only is that task fixed, but any impacted tasks are also updated automatically.

ProjectManager is an award-winning software that helps managers plan and helps teams get organized. Gantt charts control all aspects of your project plan from scheduling to assigning tasks and even monitoring progress. Multiple project views provide transparency into workflow and give everyone the tools they need to be at their best.

Ready to make your plan? Try ProjectManager today with this free 30-day trial.

The project manager is responsible for producing the project plan, and while you can’t make up all the content yourself, you’ll be the one banging the keys to type it all out. Use templates where you can to save time. Download our free project plan template and write your plan in double-quick time!

The purpose of a project management plan is to serve as a guide for the execution and control phases. The project plan provides all the information necessary for the execution phase such as the project’s goals, objectives, scope of work, milestones, risks and resources. Then, this information helps project managers monitor and control the progress of the project.

We plan at the beginning to save time later. A good project plan means that you don’t have to worry about whether the project participants are going to be available on the right dates—because you’ve planned for them to be. You don’t have to worry about how to pay those invoices—you’ve planned your financial process. You don’t have to worry about whether everyone agrees on what a quality outcome looks like—you’ve already planned what quality measures you are going to use.

A good project plan sets out the processes that everyone is expected to follow, so it avoids a lot of headaches later. For example, if you specify that estimates are going to be worked out by subject matter experts based on their judgement, and that’s approved, later no one can complain that they wanted you to use a different estimating technique. They’ve known the deal since the start.

Project plans are also really helpful for monitoring progress. You can go back to them and check what you said you were going to do and how, comparing it to what you are actually doing. This gives you a good reality check and enables you to change course if you need to, bringing the project back on track.

Tools like dashboards can help you make sure that your project is proceeding according to plan. ProjectManager has a real-time dashboard that updates automatically whenever tasks are updated.

The project planning process already discussed only scratches the surface of what is a deep well of practices created to control your project. They start with dialogue — speaking to stakeholders, teams, et al.

The deliverable for your planning phase is a document called the project plan. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Fifth Edition says that the project plan is made up of lots of subsidiary plans. These include:

• A project scope statement to define all the tasks and deliverables that are needed to complete the project
• A risk management plan for dealing with project risk including the processes for logging and tracking risks
• A change management plan to manage any changes that will be made to the project plan
• A cost management plan for managing costs and the budgeting elements of the project including any procurements or supplier engagements you might have
• A resource management plan for managing the material resources such as equipment and the human resources on the team both in terms of availability and skills
• A stakeholder management plan setting out who is going to receive messages about the project, when and in what format
• A quality plan that specifies the quality targets for the project

That’s a lot of documentation.

In reality, it’s rare that you’ll produce these as individual documents. What you need is a project plan that talks about the important elements of each of these. There’s no point creating a big document that sets out exactly how your business works anyway. If you already have a structured risk management process , then don’t waste time writing it all down again in your project plan.

Your project management plan needs to include enough information to make sure that you know exactly what processes and procedures need to be followed and who needs to be involved. Get your project plan approved by your stakeholders, your project sponsor and your team so there are no surprises later. As explained above, project planning charts and techniques such as Gantt charts, CPM, WBS or PERT can help you create your project plan.

This is hard to answer. It’s going to take longer to plan the moon landing than a new dating app.

The best way to estimate how long your project planning phase will take is to look at similar projects that have happened before, and see how long it took them to plan. Talk to the project manager as well, if you can, because they’ll have a view on whether that length of time was enough or not!

It’s easy to see how long other projects took if you have a project management tool that archives your old project schedules and makes the data available to everyone who needs it. You can then search for similar projects and study their schedules in detail.

A project plan is all about working out what to do and how to do it, so you need to get a lot of people involved. There are several good tools and project planning techniques for getting information from other people including:

• One-to-one meetings or interviews
• Surveys or customer focus groups to gather and validate requirements.

You should also arm yourself with a task management tool , like a list or a kanban board. They are incredibly useful for noting down important things that should be in your project plan. Kanban board software can help structure your plan by writing down the key headings and then moving them around as required until you have a flow that looks right.

Finally, you’ll need an online project management system to store your project management plan in. Make sure that everyone in the team can access the latest version of the project plan.

Your project plan is not a document written in stone. You should be referring back to it and making changes to it as often as you need to. Parts of it, like your project schedule, will change almost daily. Other parts, like your procurement plans and cost management processes, won’t change at all during the life of your project.

The important thing to remember is that if your project management plan isn’t working for you, think about what you can do to change it. It’s there to guide your project management, not restrict you from doing the right thing. If you need to review how you manage work and project resources, then go back and review it. Make the changes you need, get the plan approved again and share it with the team.

How To Make a Project Plan When You Don’t Have All the Answers

Yes, this happens–most of the time! It’s rare to have all the information at the beginning of a project. Most managers want you to dive in and get started, but you might not have the luxury of knowing all the details.

That’s OK; we have techniques to help deal with uncertainty.

First is the project assumption. You use these to put caveats on your plan and to document the things that you assume to be true at this point in time. For example:

• We assume that the resources will be available.
• We assume that the required funding is available.
• We assume that the colors requested will be in line with the company brand and that Marketing sign off is not required.

You get the picture. Then, if the design team comes back and says that they want the product to be a totally new palette of colors and that Marketing has to approve that, you are justified in saying that you’ll have to change the timescales on the schedule to make that possible.

You planned based on an assumption (that everyone agreed to, because you got the document approved) and that assumption turned out not to be true.

Next Steps for Project Planning

The most important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t rush the project planning process. Done properly, project planning takes time. And it’s worth doing it properly because if you don’t, we guarantee that you will hit problems later on as people won’t understand what they are supposed to do and why.

Great planning sets you up for success. It gives you the confidence of knowing that you’ve got all your processes, tools and systems in place to deliver the perfect result.

Now that you’ve learned all about project planning, it’s time to take action. Sign up for a free 30-day trial of ProjectManager and start planning your project today!

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• 5 project management phases to improve ...

5 project management phases to improve your team’s workflow

There are five key project management phases that can help streamline your next project and enable your team with an organized plan. These phases include initiation, planning, execution, performance, and closure.

Project management is often misunderstood. While many professionals view it as managing project timelines, there is so much more to the job. Thankfully, we’ve put together an easy guide to understanding the five project management phases. 

5 phases of the project management life cycle

This five-phase model was defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in the project life cycle PMBOK® Guide, otherwise known as the Project Management Body of Knowledge. The PMBOK® Guide is a great reference point for all professionals looking to grow their project management knowledge and skillset. 

Let’s start with a quick introduction to the many phases of project management. Or, skip ahead to the project management triangle .

1. Project initiation

In the initiation phase of the project management model, the project is defined on a broad level. This is the time to identify project sponsors and stakeholders and begin the initial research phase. It’s also a good idea to document the project in writing so you can easily distribute the communication plan to the rest of the team. Many teams begin a project with an initial project kickoff meeting or feasibility study . How you decide to kick it off should depend on your team’s preferred communication style . 

In addition to presenting the initial idea of the project, you should also outline the benefits, cost, and risk factors associated with project deliverables . You may even want to outline additional metrics depending on how your organization measures success. 

Once you’ve assessed the project, you’ll then create a business case or—for smaller projects—a project charter . These tools can help you outline and pitch your project in-depth, incorporating details such as the project’s goals, budget, and timeline. Whether you create a business case or a project charter, these tools are particularly helpful for referencing later and quickly pinpointing the project’s objectives down the road.  

Get started with this template

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Here’s an example of what should be included in a business case or project charter. 

Company Name: Apollo Enterprises

Project Name: The OKR Playbook

Project Manager: Kabir Madan

Objective: The objective of this report is to increase lead generation by offering world-class resources to our customer base. 

Stakeholders: Daniela Vargas, Kat Mooney, Ray Brooks. 

Timeline: June 1 to July 20, 2021. 

Benefits: The benefits of this report include adapting a new competitive advantage, creating a new lead funnel, and ultimately resulting in a high ROI given the low project budget. 

Risks: While we see more benefits than risks, we could be pulling in unqualified leads that won’t convert. 

2. Project planning

In the project planning stage of project management, you’ll create clear goals using a project roadmap . While there are multiple ways to execute goal planning, SMART goals, CLEAR goals, and objectives and key results (OKRs) are three project planning strategies that can help you get started.  

SMART goals

SMART goals is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Many teams use this method because of its ability to improve team communication, define a clear roadmap, and result in trackable metrics.

CLEAR goals

CLEAR goals is an acronym that stands for Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, and Refinable. Many teams opt for this method because it’s a little more realistic to put into practice and focuses on collaboration. 

OKRs differ more significantly from the other two methods. This method can open goals up to the entire company, creating visibility throughout an organization. Instead of starting with a project and then defining the objective, OKRs start with the objective and then create projects around that g  

SMART goals vs. CLEAR goals vs. OKRs 

While the three strategies take different approaches, they all drive similar results. It’s up to you to choose the method that most closely matches your business objective. 

Additional resources you may use in the project planning phase of project management include milestone charts, Gantt charts , and project risk management analyses —all of which can help clarify details for stakeholders. While these areas may have been discovered during the initial scope of the project , the planning phase is the perfect time to expand on the objectives, goals, and risks. 

Here’s an example we put together of a goal breakdown using the SMART project management methodology.

Initial goal: Increase lead generation

Improved SMART goal:

Specific: Increase lead generation by distributing a resource guide

Measurable: Increase monthly lead generation by 15%. 

Achievable: Based on a recent study, we know our customers are interested in a resource guide.

Realistic: Collect customer contact information in exchange for our resource guide.

Time-Bound: Produce an annual resource guide every January to maintain our lead traffic. 

3. Project execution

In the execution phase, your team will focus on achieving the objectives that were set. They will use the information gathered in the first two steps to create and launch the project within the specified timeframe using teamwork and collaboration. 

Start by assigning tasks to team members. If you already use a project management tool, you can add these tasks to your project workflow so your team can quickly access resources and communicate in one place. Timeline software and other project mapping tools can help your team visualize each step of the project . 

Next, you should prepare your tracking and success methodology so that everyone clearly understands how success will be measured. These could be specific performance indicators you plan to track or post-campaign goals you’re looking to meet. 

Since deadlines and workloads change daily, make sure to update the project schedule as needed and close out dependencies once met. If you have a drop-dead deadline, make sure you organize your team’s schedule based on priority. It’s a good idea to check in with team members regularly to make sure the project is on pace and that deliverables are being met. 

Although schedules fluctuate, it’s important to stay as close to the original timeline as possible so you don’t run into scope creep. In other words, don’t go too far past the original scope of the project.

Take a look at this example timeline plan to better understand how to organize a work breakdown structure . 

Project Timeline: June 1 to July 20, 2021

Project Team: Kabir Madan, Daniela Vargas, Kat Mooney, Ray Brooks

June 1: Kabir to set up project tasks and assign to team members. 

June 14: Daniela to gather resource data.

June 18: Daniela to organize data and submit to Ray for design. 

June 28: Ray to submit design draft 1 to Kabir for review. 

July 1: Kabir to provide design feedback.

July 6: Ray to submit the final design to Kat for implementation.

July 12: Kat to submit staging site to Kabir for review. 

July 15: Kabir to provide staging feedback.

July 19: Kat to submit the final staging to the team for testing. 

July 20: Resource guide to go live.

4. Project performance

Measuring the effectiveness of a project is important for several reasons. Being able to improve the project is a big one, but it’s also important because team members can learn from both success and failure. There are many different key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to set and achieve strategic goals using goal setting software . The KPIs you use will depend on your line of work and the type of project you’re working on.  

One of the first performance metrics you should consider is the initial objective. Did the project address the problem you were trying to solve? It’s easy to get disconnected from the initial objective but it’s important to keep it in mind when measuring performance. 

Your next step should be to examine other KPIs to determine if the project was a success. Some universal KPIs include return on investment (ROI), cost performance index (CPI), planned value (PV), actual cost (AC), and earned value (EV)—though there are many more than just those. 

Communicate to stakeholders on the success of the project, including what went right and what went wrong. Being honest and open to feedback is the best way for team members to learn from their mistakes.

Take a look at our example KPIs below. 

Project Objective: Grow lead acquisition by 15% MoM

Actual Cost: $6,487 in billable hours. 

Earned Value: $47,300 in MoM acquisition growth

Return on Investment: $40,813

Schedule Performance Index (earned value divided by planned value): .88

Customer Acquisition Cost (cost divided by number of leads): $.61 per lead

MoM Lead Acquisition: 18% improvement

MoM Site Traffic: 4% improvement

Net Profit Margin: 8% improvement

5. Project closure

This phase varies the most between different companies and teams. While some like to acknowledge hard work, others like to immediately get started on the next big thing. There is no right or wrong way to close a project, and it’s up to you to figure out what works best for you and your team. 

When closing a project, you may want to meet with project stakeholders for a more in-depth look at success. This type of meeting is often referred to as a “ post mortem .” If you decide to host a meeting, you may want to send out an anonymous survey beforehand to ensure all critical issues are covered during the meeting. It’s a good idea to go over the KPIs you measured in the performance phase so all parties involved have a clear understanding of what did and didn’t go well. This prevents any repeat mistakes in future projects. 

It’s also a good idea to organize and store project materials in a shared folder for teammates to access before closing a project. Materials such as project briefs , templates, copy assets, design files, development work, and so forth are important to keep handy when the time comes to evaluate performance.  

An important opportunity that is often missed in the project closure phase is continuing to monitor performance. Does your team get in the habit of setting and forgetting old projects? It’s important to constantly test and reinvent new ways to execute projects to continue growing as a business. 

Here is an example of a post mortem meeting agenda to help bring your next project to a close.  

Project Name: The OKR Playbook 

Date: August 20, 2021

Time: 10:00 to 11:00 am CST

Agenda Details:

Quick recap of the project (10:00am): Kabir will go over the initial goals and objectives of the project and recap deliverables. 

Recap of the outcome (10:15am): Kabir will review the project performance, focusing on our initial lead generation goal and additional key KPIs.

Stakeholder input (10:30am): Kabir, Daniela, Kat, and Ray to share their input on what went well and what could have gone better.

Action items: Kabir to send out meeting notes by EOD 8/20 and schedule optimizations to be completed by 9/3. 

Please come to the post mortem prepared with input on ways we can improve performance going forward. 

Benefits of project management with the five phases

Managing a project can often feel like navigating through uncharted territory, where unexpected challenges and shifting priorities can lead to project derailment. The adoption of the five project management phases—initiation, planning, execution, performance, and closure—provides a structured solution to this problem, ensuring that every aspect of the project is methodically addressed.

By adhering to these five phases, project managers can ensure more systematic and organized project execution, which leads to more successful projects. Here's what you can expect.

Improved team collaboration and stakeholder engagement

In the initiation phase, defining the project's scope and identifying key stakeholders sets a clear direction. For example, initiating a new product development project involves determining the product's concept and engaging stakeholders, which ensures that everyone is on the same page from the start.

Strategic resource allocation and management planning

The planning phase involves creating a detailed management plan and deciding how to allocate resources effectively. In a software development project, this might include allocating team members to different tasks, planning the development timeline, and ensuring efficient use of resources.

Effective execution and adaptability

The project execution phase is where the actual work happens. Using Agile methodologies here allows teams to adapt to changes in real time, improving responsiveness and project progress. For instance, in a construction project, this phase would involve the actual building process, with adjustments made as needed based on ongoing assessment.

Ongoing monitoring of project progress

The monitoring and controlling phase involves project monitoring to track progress and ensure that the project is on schedule and within budget. In a marketing campaign, this might mean regularly reviewing campaign metrics to ensure that the project is on track to meet its goals.

Structured closing and comprehensive documentation

Finally, the closing phase includes project closing activities such as finalizing work, obtaining necessary approvals, and conducting a post-project evaluation. In event management, this might include post-event analysis and storing all documentation for future reference, marking the end of the current phase of the project management life cycle and preparing for the next phase. 

Proper project documentation during this phase helps capture lessons learned and provides valuable insights for future projects.

Tips to apply project management phases effectively

With the average knowledge worker switching between 10 apps up to 25 times per day and the majority of teams still working remotely, teamwork has never been more distributed. This makes project management such an important part of any successful organization. Whether you’re a team of five or 500, keeping tasks and communication organized and in one place can be a challenge. Using these five project management steps can help your team stay on track and ensure productivity is at its highest.

In addition to understanding the project management life cycle, there are also additional benefits of project management. Not only can the right project management tools keep work and goals organized in one place, but they can also eliminate confusion, improve team effectiveness , increase efficiency, and align communication. That leaves more time to focus on the important stuff—like growing a successful business. 

A good place to start improving your current methods is by continuously learning about new tools and resources. While project management methods like kanban boards and Scrum sprints have been around for some time, there are new software capabilities that can help your team reach a new level of productivity and success. The key to project management is to never stop trying new methods.  

Managing the unmanageable

With so many elements to explore, where do you even start? That’s easy: start by looking to your team. At the end of the day, your job is to enable team members to do their best work. 

The project management process and tools you implement should improve communication, increase productivity with the help of productivity software , and help ease deadline pressure. When in doubt, just ask your team. You’d be amazed at what a group of individuals can accomplish when they put their heads together. 

Need help finding work management tools for a specific team? Check out solutions for every team dynamic —from marketing to event planners—to find innovative opportunities for your organization. 

Related resources

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What is project management and its benefits?

9 tips for taking better meeting notes

The Project Life Cycle Explained: 5 Phases of Project Management

There are many ways to run a project. But to run a project successfully, you have to consider all aspects of the project—from scope and budget to the tasks and conversations that take place after the project is launched and executed.

Traditionally, project management involves 5 key phases, and these stages form what is known as a project life cycle. 

In this article, we’ll define the project life cycle and cover each phase of the project management process. We’ll also share resources and templates you can use at every step. 

What is the project life cycle?

The project life cycle is a framework that represents the 5 key phases of project management: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure. 

The project life cycle is important because it provides firm footing for effective project management. It gives project managers a clear structure for guiding projects successfully from concept to delivery, maturity, and finally completion.

5 phases of the project management life cycle

As I mentioned, the project management life cycle is made up of 5 essential steps:

• Project initiation & conception
• Project planning
• Project execution
• Project monitoring & control
• Project closure

In some ways, these stages show what goes on behind the scenes before a project might even come to a project manager’s attention.

If this process feels too rigid for you, that’s okay! Pick up the fundamentals, understand how the steps are formalized, and adapt the process to fit your project, team, or organization.

Now, let’s take a closer look at each step of the project life cycle in more detail.

1. Project initiation phase

Project initiation is arguably the most critical phase of the project life cycle. That's because what happens here will set the tone and goals for what’s to come. 

A project usually arises from a business need or goal aimed at solving a problem or exploring new ways to do business. For instance, if a company is looking to cut down the number of customer service calls they receive, they’ll investigate what’s driving the number of calls. That research will then inform what can be done to reduce the number of calls.

The best way to understand the challenges and objectives is through a project brief or charter that outlines the business case and provides a high-level overview of project details, such as goals, constraints, risks, and deliverables. This kind of background is invaluable to a team when kicking off a project. It’s also a great way to get all involved parties and stakeholders aligned on what’s to come.

While you can proceed without every detail documented, it’s a good idea to get buy-in on project objectives and intended outcomes during the initiation phase of the life cycle.

Key steps in the initiation stage of the project life cycle

• Identify the why behind the project—usually the business case and goals
• Conduct a feasibility study and/or SWOT analysis
• Create a stakeholder register to identify key project players
• Develop a project charter or brief
• Hold a project kickoff meeting

2. Project planning phase

The project planning stage is where you’ll lay out the details of your entire project from beginning to end. The plan you create here will lead your team through the execution, performance, and closure phases of the project life cycle.

As part of your project management plan, you’ll want to consider these factors:

• Project timeline : This should include deadlines for key project milestones (like deliverable reviews and meetings). Be sure to build in plenty of time for approval processes.
• Project scope: Projects tend to go off the rails without some level of constraint or control. Clearly document how much time has been allotted for the project and what the deliverables include. You can always adjust the guardrails later if needed.
• Project communication : Set expectations for how and when you’ll communicate as a team. Communication plans are particularly valuable for projects with cross-functional teams or external stakeholders.
• Potential risks : It’s the project manager’s job to look out for risks and report them to the team. The best way to do this is to conduct a risk assessment that identifies foreseeable risks and how to avoid them.
• Project estimates : Good estimation sets the stage for better project management because it’s easier to tell when things go off track. Consider using a work breakdown structure (WBS) to itemize tasks and estimate effort. 
• General workflow and process : This should include internal workflows for project teams, as well as how you’ll work with stakeholders, to ensure you get it all done on time and under budget.
• Team roles and responsibilities : A responsibility assignment matrix can help you outline clear roles for everyone involved in the project.

Once you estimate the project’s time and effort , you can create a project plan that lays out phases, tasks, resources, responsibilities, milestones, and deadlines. Using a gantt chart tool like TeamGantt can truly help you to build a well-defined plan that’s easy to understand and update.

Explore our library of free project management templates , and save time on every aspect of your project plan.

Key steps in the planning stage of the project life cycle

• Set SMART goals for the project
• Define and document the project scope and requirements
• Create a project roadmap with a detailed timeline of tasks and milestones
• Estimate project time and costs
• Assess resource availability and assign task roles and responsibilities
• Catalog potential project risks and establish a contingency plan
• Document expectations for project communication
• Create a stakeholder engagement plan
• Develop a procurement plan for third-party suppliers and tools
• Outline a financial plan that fits the project budget

Lay a clear path to success with a visual plan that’s easy to understand, and keep everyone in sync with flexible workflows and team collaboration.

3. Project execution phase

In this phase of the project life cycle, the team is off and running! The project execution stage is typically the longest in the project management process because it’s when the actual work is done. You’ll find teams collaborating, reviewing work, presenting to stakeholders, and revising.

In the previous phase, a project manager does a lot of heavy-lifting. During project execution, a project manager guides the team—and stakeholders—through a series of tasks and milestones.

In this life cycle step, a project manager typically oversees the project budget, timeline, resources, and risk. That’s a lot to be responsible for! So how do project managers handle all of it? They stick to the plan. 

All of the documentation you create during the planning stage comes together to form a holistic project management plan. Use those documents as your source of truth to guide decisions and create efficient workflows during project execution.

Don’t forget to stay tuned-in to what’s happening with the team. This can be done through regular team check-ins, status updates, timeline review, and budget tracking.

Having a single platform to track your budget, timeline, resourcing, and communications certainly makes managing a project easier. Lucky for you, TeamGantt does it all .

Key steps in the execution stage of the project life cycle

• Provide easy channels for team collaboration
• Establish streamlined workflows for your team
• Schedule and lead regular project meetings
• Send project status reports to stakeholders
• Facilitate reviews and approvals of project deliverables
• Clear blockers that get in the way of progress

4. Project monitoring & control phase

The monitoring and control phase is all about making sure the project runs smoothly and things go according to plan. This step of the process typically happens alongside project execution. 

As part of the project monitoring stage, you should keep an eye on:

• Budget and timeline : Keep a close eye on milestone completion and whether time spent on tasks aligns with your estimates. That way you can spot delays and overages early and adjust your plan before things get too far off track. TeamGantt makes it easy to track and monitor progress with simple visualizations built into your gantt chart.
• Project goals : Use those goals to help make decisions about design, functionality, and any new requests. Sometimes it’s okay to stray a bit. Just be sure to keep the lines of communication open with the stakeholders, and bring new ideas to the table with enough time to rework them as needed. (Yup, it happens!)
• Quality control : Be the person who not only manages the process, but also cares about the work. Consult with leadership on quality standards, and review all deliverables before they’re sent out or presented for review. Your team and stakeholders will love you for it. 😍 ‍
• Risk management : Risk is a conversation you want to keep going throughout the project. Report on project risks in weekly status updates to keep them top-of-mind and allow the team to provide input. ‍
• Team performance : As a project manager, your role is to look out for the project. But the success of a project depends on the team working on it. If you see someone slacking or unintentionally dropping the ball, address it. Just be empathetic, and find the right avenues to handle performance issues with team members.

TeamGantt’s Project Health Report makes it easy to monitor team performance and stay on top of deadlines by showing you which tasks are falling behind before your project goes off the rails.

Key steps in the monitoring stage of the project life cycle

• Review timesheets to ensure hours logged stay within budget
• Track task and milestone completion
• Compare actual progress against the plan to spot potential delays
• Track baselines and report on project health
• Monitor and manage scope creep and other risks
• Manage change requests and adjust the plan as needed

5. Project closure phase

When your project is complete and everyone is happy with what’s been delivered, tested, and released, it’s time to wrap up. In the project closure stage, the team will complete the steps needed to close tasks, hand off the project to stakeholders, finalize any reporting, and celebrate the project.

Many organizations move from one project to the next and don’t take time to properly close down a project. It’s a smart move to take a few hours to properly close, reflect, and even celebrate a project.

Here are a few steps to consider in this final stage of the project management life cycle.

• Conduct a project retrospective: Schedule a project debrief, and discuss what went well and what didn’t as a team. Record the outcomes, and share the notes to improve teamwork and performance on future projects.
• Create a project closure report: Write a 1-page report that recaps project goals and results. This document should outline the date of initiation, original deadline and budget, and actual date of delivery and budget used. You might also want to include team members and stakeholders involved, project issues and pain points, and project wins in your project closure report.
• Celebrate the project: ‍Organize a small party over lunch or after work to get the team and stakeholders together to acknowledge the hard work done and the great product produced. 🎉 If there’s no budget, that’s fine. A high-five or thoughtful email works really well when it comes to team morale.

As the project manager, the more you can be a cheerleader for your team, the better experience you’ll have working with them.

Key steps in the closing stage of the project life cycle

• Secure final approval and hand the end product off to the project sponsor or client
• Hold a post-mortem meeting to review project wins and hiccups
• Store all the final project documentation in a centralized archive
• Send final payments to contractors and suppliers

Put the project management life cycle to work for you

Processes and frameworks are great to have in your back pocket. But remember, every organization runs differently. 

You have to consider the people, organizational history, challenges, and existing practices before you roll something out. 

Motivations and empathy are everything in project management. So carry on, attack those projects, and do what’s right for everyone involved.

Simplify your project management process

Want to take the pain out of project management without sacrificing your hard-earned gains? TeamGantt makes every project step a whole lot easier. (Heck, we’d even call it fun!) 

Spend less time in spreadsheets and more time giving your team high-fives for all the awesome work you’re doing together. TeamGantt provides clear visibility into the details with easy collaboration for the whole team every step of the way. 

Give TeamGantt a free try today!

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• The Workstream
• Project management
• Project management phases

Understanding the project management phases

There’s more to it than “to-do” and “done”

Browse topics

The project life cycle is broken down into five project management phases: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, closure. These phases are your road map as you and your team conquer complicated projects.

Meet Sofia. She leads the HR team at her company, and they’re about to tackle the colossal project of overhauling their employee onboarding process.

Most of us (Sofia included) think of projects in two phases: you start them, and then you finish them.

There’s a lot more to it than that. Think of it like baking a cake. You can’t go straight from a pile of random ingredients to a delicious, frosted masterpiece. There’s a whole lot of shopping, preparing, mixing, and taste-testing that happens along the way. 

Project management phases represent the different steps you take to go from beginning to completion. Understanding them will help you create more accurate project plans, estimate more realistic timelines, and conquer projects in a strategic and organized way.

Using Sofia and her team as our example, let’s take a look at the typical project life cycle and the phases that make it up. 

What is the project life cycle?

The term “life cycle” sounds like something straight out of your high school biology class, but the concept is actually pretty straightforward. The project life cycle is the set of stages a project moves through from beginning to end. You move sequentially through the phases to take a project from an idea to a completed deliverable.

Rather than tackling a project haphazardly and knocking out the low-hanging fruit first, understanding the project management life cycle enables teams to:

• Move projects from start to finish in an organized and strategic way
• Monitor project progress and status
• Complete projects faster, because they’re more accurately planed with less unforeseen obstacles

Add all of those benefits together, and you get the biggest benefit of all: teams can deliver more successful projects more quickly.

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), for every $1 billion invested, $122 million is wasted due to poor project performance.

Using the project life cycle to your advantage means you won’t throw money at projects that don’t meet their original goals.

Alright, you get it. The project life cycle has a lot of pluses. Now, what stages do you need to push projects through?

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) breaks the project management life cycle into five distinct stages:

Now that you have the bird’s-eye view, it’s time to dig in.

The 5 steps of the project management life cycle

Five stages might seem like a heavy lift (especially if you’re used to thinking of projects only in terms of “beginning” and “end”). Each phase serves a distinct purpose in pushing your project toward best results.

Much like the alphabet, these phases are sequential. In order to reap the benefits of the project management life cycle, you need to move through these phases in order.

Phase #1: Project initiation

Sofia and her team are eager to give their employee onboarding process a much-needed reboot. Think the first step is mapping out a plan and a timeline? Not so fast.

Planning isn’t the first step of the project life cycle —it’s initiation. 

During this stage, the project isn’t actually approved and in motion. Sofia’s team is staying broad and defining it from a high level, with the goal of determining if the project is even worth pursuing in the first case. To do so, they’ll figure out:

• The business case for the project
• The benefit of completing it (i.e. what broader business goal does it support?)
• The major deliverables
• What success looks like

After thinking through these elements, Sofia and her team members have determined:

• Business case : Sofia’s company has been struggling with employee turnover. The majority of employees leaving within their first 12 months of employment.
• Benefit : The revised onboarding process will boost clarity, communication, and engagement during an employee’s first few months with the company, and hopefully keep them around for the long haul.
• Deliverables : The HR team needs a documented procedure to refer to and manage, as well as an online dashboard for employees to work through during their first weeks of employment.
• Success Metrics : A 15% increase in employee retention by the end of Q4, and positive feedback scores from at least 85% of new employees.

All of these elements can be pulled into a project poster , which Sofia’s team can reference whenever they need to zoom out and understand the project at a higher level. 

Once the team has worked through all of these factors, they should ask: Is the project feasible and worth pursuing?

If the answer is yes, they’ll get approval on the project (if necessary) and move to the next phase. If not? No need to panic. The team will head back to the drawing board and see if there’s a different way to solve the problem they’re facing, like using a project poster template .   

Phase #2: Project planning

Now that Sofia has defined the project at a broad level, it’s time for her to get into the minutiae. In this phase, she and her team will hash out a plan for actually getting the project completed.

Even if you’re eager to get to the actual work, it’s important not to cut corners in the planning stage. Effective planning can prevent a lot of the main causes for project failure , including inadequate vision and goals, poor communication, and inaccurate time estimates.

Planning is also going to require some time and elbow grease,  so make sure you set aside plenty of time for it at the start of your project.

Questions Sofia and her team will answer in this phase include:

• What is the goal of this project?
• What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• What is the scope?
• What is the budget?
• What are the risks?
• What team members are involved?
• What tasks are involved?
• What milestones need to be met? 

It’s best to start by defining an objective for the project using the SMART goal framework . That stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Following that acronym, Sofia and her team define the following goal for their employee onboarding project:

Create a new employee onboarding process that educates and engages new hires and boosts employee retention by 15%. This new program should be launched by January 25, 2021.

Now Sofia and her team know what they have their sights set on. But, they aren’t going to reach that goal by wishing and hoping. The team needs to figure out what work actually needs to be accomplished.

Creating a work breakdown structure (WBS) can help. This splits the entire project into tasks that are displayed in a graphic format, so everyone involved can easily see the project’s action items. In the case of Sofia and her team, they identify the following tasks: 

• Survey existing employees for feedback on the current onboarding process
• Interview managers about what they want included in the process
• Create general flow of new onboarding process/ 90-day plan
• Record video tutorials to be included in the employee dashboard for extra clarification
• Build a digital employee dashboard
• Launch a portal where new employees can ask for help
• Draft procedures and checklists for onboarding process
• Upload videos and documentation to the dashboard

Once the team knows what the project requires, it’s a lot simpler for them to figure out how much time it will take, what supplies they need, and what they should do first. 

They’re also able to identify who the key project players are (in this case, the HR team, web development team, graphic designer, and content team), as well as any task and resource dependencies. These dependencies are aspects of the project that are tied to another.

For example, here’s a task dependency: materials can’t be uploaded to the employee dashboard before the dashboard actually exists. One task needs to be completed before the next. Or maybe the web development team can’t help with this project until they wrap up the company’s website redesign. A required resource isn’t readily available, because it’s dependent on something else.

Now, Sofia’s team can keep those dependencies in mind, put the project tasks in a reasonable order, and assign deadlines to each and every step on individual to-do lists .

Once they’ve done that, they’ve just crafted their project plan. It should be documented and stored somewhere that the whole team has access to ( Confluence is the perfect place for this). 

Phase #3: Project execution

This phase is where a lot of the hard work actually happens.

This is when Sofia’s team goes heads down and completes those project tasks they identified. They’re drafting the procedures, recording videos, conducting interviews, and more. 

As they keep trucking through those project to-do’s, they’ll also be engaged with the following phase…

Phase #4: Project monitoring

Let’s go back to our baking a cake example. Do you only glance at the recipe once and then watch in amazement as the world’s greatest cake comes to fruition? Probably not. 

You refer back to that recipe as you crack eggs and stir the batter to make sure you’re doing things right. You peek into the oven every five minutes to make sure the top isn’t burning. You keep a close eye on that precious cake of yours.

Projects work the exact same way, and that’s what the monitoring phase is all about. It happens at the same time as the “executing” phase, and Sofia will evaluate the project at regular intervals to make sure the team is:

• Meeting task deadlines
• Avoiding scope creep
• Sticking with the budget
• Staying committed to the goal (the broader vision can get lost when you’re executing — it’s the old “missing the forest for the trees” trap)

Monitoring is much easier when using project management software. It increases visibility into the entire project and centralizes project-related conversations and information. 

Additionally, regular status meetings help the entire team stay on top of progress. This weekly meeting notes template makes it easier to record discussion topics, decisions, and action items from those conversations.

If Sofia notices that things aren’t working as planned, she can either course correct right away or make adjustments to the original project plan to account for this new direction. 

Phase #5: Project closure

The team did it! They rolled out a new and improved employee onboarding process. They’re ready to celebrate with a victory team lunch and wash their hands of that project once and for all.

But before they chalk this project up as a win, they need to move through this closure phase to wrap up any loose ends. This includes:

• Conducting a postmortem or retrospective to discuss what went well and what they would’ve like to go better
• Preparing a final project report and presenting it to stakeholders if necessary
• Storing all project documentation somewhere safe so it can be easily accessed and referenced at a later date (again, Confluence can keep all of that in one organized spot!) 

After all of that hard work, your projects deserve to end on a high note. Even though the actual project tasks are behind you, closure is important for ending this project right and setting future projects up for success. 

How project management software can help

Think project management software is one of those “nice to have” things? Think again. If you want to boost success and reduce stress, project management software is a must. In fact, 77% of high-performing projects use project management software.

What makes it so great for managing the project management life cycle? This software:

• Improves transparency and visibility, since the entire team can track the life cycle
• Clarifies roles and responsibilities, so everybody knows what’s expected of them
• Makes the project plan more actionable by creating assignable tasks, owners, and more
• Reduces inaccuracies, because everybody knows how to find the right information
• Provides real-time updates, so nobody is operating with outdated information

Don’t try to manage your project life cycle with endless email threads, random documents, and messy spreadsheets. Project management software like Jira will help your team take projects from lightbulb to launch day with strategy and organization.

Score more project wins

Projects don’t just jump from point A to point Z. Project management will guide you through the different stages of your project and help you tackle it strategically. 

Move through the phases in order and, much like Sofia and her team, you’ll be ready to pat yourselves on the back for yet another project win. We recommend celebrating-- with cake, of course.

The planning phase of project management is where a lot of the thought and hard work happens. Simplify it with our project planning templates .

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Project poster template.

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Define, scope, and plan milestones for your next project.

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Home » Blog » The Definitive Guide to Project Phases

The Definitive Guide to Project Phases

Were you handed a big project?

Are you looking for the best way to approach it?

A smart first step is to break the project into manageable chunks.

The project lifecycle model gives you a good structure for organizing your project. It consists of four main phases: initiation, planning, execution, and closing. 

For each phase, we have a set of recommended steps. These steps help you take a project goal from idea to implementation. All happens in a logical sequence, ensuring that each phase builds upon the previous one. Due to its generic nature, this phase model can be applied to projects of any size or field. 

In this guide, I’ll explain what each phase involves and the key steps within them.

What is the Project Life Cycle?

The term “project life cycle” indicates that projects go through a series of developmental stages and are meant to be temporary. In other words, every project has a start and an end, even if it sometimes feels like they go on forever.

Rather than approaching work in an unsystematic way, we follow a sequential order with extensive upfront planning. This approach has several benefits: 

• Everyone has a clear understanding of the tasks and deliverables within each phase.
• We have accountability built in, because the end of each phase marks a milestone where specific tasks must be completed.
• We also minimize unnecessary effort or spending, because we only start executing once we have a complete understanding of what needs to be done.

Let’s look at each phase in detail:

The 4 Project Management Phases

It may seem that the four project phases apply only to big projects with timelines spanning months, but that’s not the case. The phases can be adapted to fit any project, no matter its size or duration. You can set each phase to be as short or as long as makes sense for your project.

By reading the following explanation, you’ll see how to break down your project into these phases and understand what work should happen in each one. This approach will help you organize your tasks and make sure you don’t miss any important steps.

Initiation phase

The initiation phase is where an idea is introduced and the organization commits itself to pursue it as a project.

This is the phase where an idea begins to take shape, going from “maybe we could do it” to “we’ll do it.” It starts when someone in the organization identifies a need or opportunity and decides to kick off a project.

Initial discussions take place to explore the idea and its potential benefits. These often lengthy conversations are a good thing, because we want to ensure we have a common understanding of what the project should achieve. Ideally, the team agrees on a value-based goal that promotes the organization’s vision and strategy, and not just a technical goal that provides zero real benefit to the organization.

Overall, the main driver behind the project seeks support from various stakeholders and departments to ensure the project has the necessary backing and resources. Basically, the organization checks if others are interested in the project too, gathering input and gauging the level of interest.

Once there is enough support, the project proposal is formally submitted for consideration. What follows are discussions with leadership, where the project’s potential impact and alignment with organizational goals are assessed. If the leadership team approves the project, we have an official project and may continue our preparatory activities.

Once approved, objectives are defined, outlining what the project is supposed to achieve on a more detailed level, for example departmental goals or particular business metrics.

The next step is to search for a project manager with the necessary experience who is available in the foreseen timeframe. The project manager will be in charge of building a detailed plan and executing the project.

The project team is then formed, with roles and responsibilities clearly outlined . The high-level scope of the project is determined, providing a broad view of what the project will cover.

A rough time frame for the project is established, giving a rough estimate of how long the project will take. Resource needs are assessed to ensure that the project has the necessary resources and budget. The feasibility of the project is also checked to confirm that it is practical and achievable within the given constraints.

By the end of this phase, all stakeholders should be on board with their roles and responsibilities on paper. Everyone should have a common understanding of the project’s goal, scope and approach. There’s one main document we draft during this phase: the project charter. This document outlines the project’s main parameters, like objectives, scope, team setup, and a high-level plan.

Keep in mind that the initiation phase often feels quite chaotic. The main parties have heated discussions about what is the “right” way to go forward and stakeholders negotiate to ensure their specific interests are considered. Plus, there is a general uncertainty about whether the project will get the green light or not. Fortunately, this chaos will settle once the project is fully defined and we move into the planning phase.

Planning phase

After the initiation phase, the project manager takes over to refine and elaborate on the project’s scope. This involves clearly defining what is included in the project and what is not, ensuring everyone understands the boundaries.

During this phase, requirements are gathered from the customer and stakeholders to understand exactly what needs to be delivered. This helps in creating a detailed resource plan, specifying the personnel, equipment, and materials required. A detailed cost estimate is developed, breaking down all anticipated costs.

A detailed timeline with milestones is created, mapping out the key stages of the project and their deadlines. Vendors are asked for quotes, and negotiations are conducted to secure the best possible terms. A risk assessment should be performed to identify potential pitfalls and develop strategies to mitigate them.

A communication plan is established to ensure clear and consistent information flow among stakeholders and team members throughout the project. This plan outlines how and when updates will be provided and when the various sub teams will meet.

It’s important to note that during the planning phase, actual procurement of resources and construction or development work do not begin. The focus remains on preparing and planning to ensure a smooth start to the execution phase.

The outcome of the planning phase is a detailed plan that provides enough information and structure to begin the actual work. Key documents produced include the project timeline and budget.

Once the planning is complete, a kickoff meeting is held to officially start the project. At this point, the project is approved, and the team is ready to move forward with execution.

Execution phase

The execution phase is where the project vision turns into reality, turning a plan into tangible results.  Up to this point, we’ve focused on planning and paperwork, but now it’s time to implement our plan.

Here’s a breakdown of what happens during this phase:

The execution phase involves concepting and building the project deliverables. For example, if the project is to build a new software application, this phase includes writing code, designing the user interface, and integrating necessary systems.

Before committing fully, we might start with a prototype. For example, in developing a new product, creating a working model allows us to test its functionality and gather feedback from customers, ensuring we’re on the right track.

We conduct frequent meetings with the sponsor or client to ensure the work meets their expectations. For example, demonstrating a software feature to a client helps confirm it meets with their needs. These check-ins simplify adjustments based on client feedback, ensuring the final product meets the defined quality standards. In the same way, we look for regular alignment with our other stakeholders. 

Procurement and vendor management become active during this phase. We acquire the necessary materials or services, such as ordering supplies or hiring subcontractors for an engineering project.

Cost management is critical because the bulk of project expenses occur during execution . We monitor expenditures against the budget, using budgeting sheets to track spending and ensure we’re not overspending. Implementing cost-saving measures and adjusting plans as needed helps us control costs and stay in budget .

Effective team communication and issue resolution are essential. Regular updates, such as daily or weekly meetings, discuss progress, identify issues, and address potential roadblocks early on to avoid major delays.

As work progresses, testing of the “product” ensures it meets required standards and functions as intended. For instance, quality assurance testing in software development checks for bugs and performance issues.

Training is another key activity of the execution phase. We create or update training materials to ensure users can use the new product, process or system — or whatever we are building.

For example, developing user manuals and conducting training sessions helps users adapt to new software. Organizational change management may be necessary to help the organization adjust to new processes or technologies introduced by the project.

At the end of the execution phase, the project outcome is fully realized and handed over to the client. The client begins to use the new product or system, marking the transition from planning to practical use.

We ensure a smooth handover by providing necessary support and training, helping the client get started and fully utilize the project outcomes. This marks the completion of the execution phase and sets the stage for the final phase: closing.

Closing phase

The closing phase marks the final stage of the project lifecycle, where we wrap up project activities and focus on ensuring a smooth transition to normal operations. 

Although the main deliverables are completed, the closing phase has its own set of challenges and pitfalls that must be managed very carefully.

One of the main activities during this phase is providing assistance during a “hypercare” period. This involves offering intensive support to the client as they fully integrate and use the new product, process or system. It ensures any issues or questions are addressed promptly, facilitating a smooth transition.

Another crucial task is gathering final costs and preparing a final project report. This report details the financial performance of the project, comparing actual expenses against the budget and highlighting any variances. It also includes an overall summary of the project’s outcomes, deliverables, and performance metrics.

Doing a lessons learned session is helpful for continuous improvement. The project team reflects on the entire project, identifying what went well and what could be improved. These insights are documented and shared with the organization to inform future projects and enhance project management practices.

Releasing the project team is another important step. With the project concluded, team members are reassigned to other tasks or projects. This process involves formally acknowledging their contributions, providing feedback, and ensuring a smooth transition to their next roles.

Finally, ensuring all project documentation is completed and archived is essential. This includes storing all project records, agreements, and reports in a central repository for future reference.

In summary, the closing phase is about giving proper support, wrapping up costs and reports, capturing lessons learned, releasing the project team, and finishing all the paperwork. Handling these tasks well ensures a smooth end to the project. By documenting lessons learned, we help future project leaders by sharing what has worked and how to avoid the pitfalls encountered in previous projects.

Don’t let phases constrain you

The model I shared is a great starting point for organizing projects. It provides a clear structure and emphasizes thorough planning before execution, which is never a bad idea. This phased approach works well for most projects, but don’t take it as written in stone! 

For example: 

• You can name the phases however you like.
• You can add new phases if needed. For example, in my projects, we added a “study phase” after the planning phase. The study phase allowed us to assess customer requirements at a more detailed level, evaluate potential solutions and come up with a more reliable schedule and cost estimate.
• You might find it useful to add phases around major technical activities, such as a “migration phase” involving data transfers or a “transition phase” for projects involving significant changes in operations or processes. Use whatever structure you think allows you to manage the involved project work in an effective way.

Use the best methods within each phase. During the concept development, you might use agile methods to simplify collaboration and integrate feedback quickly. For instance, a deliverable may be some kind of software user interface. In this case you may use agile sprints to refine the product iteratively based on user feedback. Alternatively, some project deliverables may require a more structured approach, where the waterfall method is more appropriate.

The key is to adapt the framework to best support your project, not to force it into a fixed structure. Each project is unique, and your approach should reflect that. If you’re curious about agile and other project management approaches, check out my article that provides practical tips on when to use agile and when to go with waterfall .

Busting Myths: No Separate “Monitoring and Control” Phase in Projects

You might have come across articles suggesting there are five phases in project management, adding a “monitoring and control phase” to the usual four. This is wrong, and it is based on a misunderstanding of the PMI’s framework. Monitoring and controlling are not separate phases. They are ongoing activities throughout the project. It would be odd to have a dedicated phase for monitoring progress and costs when these tasks should be part of a project manager’s daily routine .

Let’s clear this up: there is no “Monitoring and Control” phase in project management. The confusion stems from the PMI’s definition of so-called process groups. Process groups are used to categorize the different activities and processes involved in managing a project. For example, a project involves work focused on initiating, planning, executing and closing items tasks. Process groups are just a way to organize methodical steps into a logical sequence. Don’t confuse them with project phases!

For more details, read about PMI’s process groups . There’s also a forum thread confirming what I stated above.

Additional guides you may find useful

Now that you understand the important concept of using phases to organize your project, you might want to learn more about project preparation. What are the recommended steps? How do you ensure you don’t miss anything? That’s exactly what my other articles cover. Here is a selection of articles you should check out next.

How to Plan a Project: From Zero to Green Lights

This article is for you if you’re starting a new project. It breaks down the main activities for launching a new project, including everything you need to do step-by-step, like setting clear goals, identifying your main stakeholders, and planning resources and creating a timeline. Each step is explained with practical tips, making it easy for you to follow and apply.

Essential Project Documentation

In this article I walk you through the 11 project documents I recommend for every project. Each document is described in detail, including its purpose, structure, and how to create it. This guide helps you understand what information to capture and how to organize it in a professional way.

Ultimate Guide to Project Kick-offs

This is a step-by-step guide to preparing and hosting a project kickoff meeting. You’ll find tips on creating an agenda, preparing a clear slide deck, and communicating roles, responsibilities, and project goals. The kickoff is extremely important and you want to make sure everyone is aligned and engaged from the start.

Hope you found this article valuable!

Cheers, Adrian

Hi! I’m Adrian, founder of Tactical Project Manager and Ex-Project Manager with over ten years of experience in project management. Led large-scale IT implementations and business projects. I started Tactical Project Manager to offer you a straightforward and pragmatic approach to project management, enabling you to lead any project with confidence.

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What Is The Project Life Cycle: The 5 Phases Explained

The project life cycle is comprised of 5 key stages. Learn more about initiation, planning, executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing, and why the life cycle is so important.

All projects have a beginning and an end. They go through the same project management steps of initiation, planning, and execution. Projects are temporary efforts, born to create value, and when that value has been delivered, the project ceases to be. This cycle of project birth, maturity, and closure is known as the project life cycle, or project management life cycle.

I'm going to explore each phase of the life cycle and how you can apply it to your projects today and future projects. A key aspect of successfully managing projects within the project life cycle is being equipped with the right project management software tools or apps that can support each phase of the project.

What Is The Project Life Cycle?

The project life cycle is the phases of a project that are necessary for the effective delivery of that project. It dictates the order of processes and phases a project goes through as it's completed, and describes the high-level workflow of the project.

The PMI (Project Management Institute) has defined these five project management process groups, or project management phases, which come together to form the project life cycle.

• Project Initiation
• Project Planning
• Project Execution
• Project Monitoring & Controlling
• Project Closure

The PMI took what’s really common sense and called it the project life cycle. The PMI methodology is the de facto standard for project delivery, which you can find in their 370 page 7th edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) .

It’s a really long, and to be honest, deathly boring read, so here’s a condensed breakdown of each project management step, which contains all the important takeaways.

What Are The 5 Phases Of The Project Management Life Cycle?

Below, I go into each of the life cycle stages and explain what happens in each of the 5 phases of project management .

1. Project Initiation Phase

Initiating the first phase of the project life cycle is all about doing a project kickoff meeting with your team and with the client, and getting their commitment to start the project.

You bring together all of the available information in a systematic manner to define the project’s scope , cost, and resources. The goal of the initiation phase is to take the (sometimes) loose brief of a project and understand what the project needs to do and achieve in order to be successful.

That usually necessitates identifying the project stakeholders and making sure they all share the same perception of what the project is and the specific business case—the problem that the project is trying to solve. 

It’s during this project initiation phase that you also decide whether delivering the business case is feasible. As a project manager, you will need to conduct adequate research to determine the project goals and then propose a solution to achieve them.

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Key Steps During Project Initiation

• Make a project charter : What is the vision, objective, and goal of this project?
• Identify the high-level scope and deliverables: What is the product or service that needs to be provided?
• Conduct a feasibility study : What is the primary problem and its possible solutions?
• Ballpark the high-level cost and create a business case : What are the costs and benefits of the solution?
• Identify stakeholders: Who are the people this project affects, how does it affect them, and what are their needs?

Typically for Prince2 or PMI methodologies, the above is summed up in a Project Initiation Document (PID) , but in an agency, the information is usually captured in an initial statement of work (SoW).

2. Project Planning Phase

After receiving approval to proceed in the initiation phase, you can begin project planning, typically using a Gantt chart tool .

Planning is where you define all the work to be done and create the project roadmap that you follow for the remainder of the project. This is when you figure out how you’re going to perform the project and answer these questions:

• What exactly are we going to do?
• How are we going to do it?
• When are we going to do it?
• How will we know when we’re done?

During this project management step, you have to decide how you and your team will attain the goals of the project. It’s worth evaluating those goals with three criteria: what’s possible , passionate , and pervasive ?

• Possible: Strive for something that is achievable. Ask yourself, does this solution match the budget? Does my team have the ability to do this? Do we have enough time? Setting unrealistic goals is setting yourself up for failure.
• Passionate: Projects are tough, so you want a team that is emotionally engaged in the project. Ask yourself, is this a project that your team can be passionate about? Is it something that can bring them together to collaborate and achieve the same goal? Even though it might be their job to do what you tell them to do, no one is going to invest into something they don’t think is worthwhile
• Pervasive: Does this have the potential to become a ground-breaking success? Is this something that is a complete solution to the problem that was given to you or is it really just a band-aid solution? Does it have the potential to be improved on, developed, and to become a permanent way of working?

I like this 3 Ps lens for goals, but you might also be familiar with the principle of setting CLEAR goals: collaborative, limited, emotional, appreciable, and refinable. Read more about CLEAR goals and their benefits over SMART goals.

The planning phase results in a project plan that outlines the activities, tasks, dependencies, and time frames, as well as costs. In addition, it’s prudent to develop a plan for resources, quality, risk, acceptance criteria, communication, and procurement .

Key Steps For Project Planning

• Create a project management plan : Identify the phases, activities, constraints , and project schedule, and create a project timeline with a work breakdown structure (WBS) and Gantt chart .
• Create a financial plan : Create a project budget and cost estimate, and a plan to meet your maximum cost, complete with allocations across resources and departments
• Create a resource plan : Build a great team and recruit and schedule the resources and materials needed to deliver the project in your resource management software
• Create a quality plan : Set your quality targets and measures
• Create a risk plan : Identify the possible risks, assumptions , issues, and dependencies; assign an owner; and develop a mitigation plan for how you will avoid/overcome them
• Create an acceptance plan : Assign criteria for what constitutes ‘done’ and ‘delivered’
• Create a communication plan : List your stakeholders and plan the communication cadence in your project communications tool
• Create a procurement plan : Find any 3rd party suppliers required and agree on terms

3. Project Execution Phase

This is the part of the project life cycle where you finally get to execute on your awesome project plan. You bring your resources onboard, brief them, set the ground rules, and introduce them to one another. After that, everyone jumps in to perform the work identified in the plan. Easy peasy (in theory).

As the project manager, you shift from talking about a project and creating documentation to getting the green light to proceed with the execution phase. Now, you’re leading the team and managing them toward delivery. You’ll spend your time in briefings, meetings, and reviews, and keep the project on track as it moves through the project life cycle.

Key Steps For Project Execution

• Team leadership: Cast a vision for success and enable the team to deliver on it
• Create tasks : Clearly define what needs to be done and the criteria for each project task
• Task briefing : Ensure the team is clear about what they need to do, and when they need to do it by
• Client management : Work with the client to ensure deliverables are acceptable
• Communications : Ensure you’re informing and updating the right people at the right time through the right channel

4. Project Monitoring & Controlling Phase

This project management step involves reporting on performance and monitoring and controlling the project.

That means ensuring the project is going according to plan, and if it isn’t, controlling it by working out solutions to get it back on track. As a project manager, you’ll be monitoring and controlling a project in some way throughout all of the project life cycle phases.

First, that means ensuring you capture the data (usually derived from timesheets and reports in your project management software) to track progress effectively against the original plan.

Second, it means taking the data and comparing overall project progress, milestone and task completion, budget spend, and time allocated in the original plan. By comparing the actuals against the plan, you can establish whether or not you’re hitting the objectives for timeline, cost, quality, and success metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs).

And when you realize that things aren’t quite going to plan (they rarely do), it’s figuring out the options for pivoting the project so that it still delivers something the client is happy with while meeting the budget, timeline, and quality constraints. 

Pro-tip: usually that means reducing the scope of the project !

Key Steps For Project Monitoring And Controlling

• Cost & time management : Review timesheets and expenses to record, control, and track against the project’s budget, timeline, and tasks
• Quality management : Reviewing project deliverables and ensuring they meet the defined acceptance criteria
• Risk management : Monitor, control, manage, and mitigate potential risks and issues
• Acceptance management : Conduct user acceptance testing and create a reviewing system, ensuring that all deliverables meet the needs of the client
• Change management : When the project doesn’t go to plan, managing the process of acceptable changes with the client to ensure they’re happy with necessary changes

5. Project Closure Phase

In the closing phase of the project life cycle, your project is essentially over and your job as a project manager comes to a close. But the project’s not over yet. 

During this project closing step, before everyone forgets, it’s useful to hold a post-project review meeting or post-mortem to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the project and team, what went wrong or didn’t go so well, and how to improve in the future.

This can be one of the most rewarding stages of project management, as it’s a great opportunity to recognize and acknowledge valuable team members and celebrate successes.

Key Steps For Project Closure

• Project performance analysis : This is an overall look at how well the project was managed, and whether the initial estimates of costs and benefits were accurate. Were there unforeseen risks? What issues arose and how well were they dealt with? Has the project plan been changed, and how?
• Team analysis : Did everyone do what they were assigned to do? Were they passionate and motivated enough? Did they stay thorough and accountable? Was the communication within the project team healthy and constructive?
• Project closure : Document the tasks needed to bring the project to an official end. This includes closing supplier agreements, signing off contracts, and handing in all the necessary project documentation.
• Post-implementation review : Write down a formal analysis of successes and failure, resulting lessons learned , and suggestions for the future. At the end of every successful project, you will learn that room for improvement always remains.

Why Is The Project Life Cycle Important?

While the project life cycle might not sound that interesting, it is important because it’s what we as project managers lead and facilitate.

The steps involved in any project are generally the same: define a project’s objectives, create a project plan to meet the objectives, and then make stuff happen to accomplish it. Different project managers or agencies may use slightly different terms to describe the project life cycle phases in various projects, but fundamentally, they’re pretty much the same.

A project always has to start somewhere: the problem that needs fixing needs to be defined. A solution to fixing that problem and an approach to doing it then has to be created.

That plan has to then be put into action, and then that plan has to be tracked to make sure it does what it’s supposed to. The project is then deployed, performance is evaluated, and the project is officially over.

The project life cycle provides project managers with steps to follow throughout projects. It defines where to start, and where to go next at each stage in the project. No matter how crazy things get, you’ll have a reliable structure to go back to and regroup on. 

When The Project Life Cycle Gets Complex

The project life cycle is simple, right? No, of course not! Like most things in life, projects are complex and involve a large number of variables, along with plenty of grey area.

Get advice and help from 100s of other digital project managers by becoming a member and joining the conversation in Slack ! You’ll also get access to 100+ templates, samples, and examples of project documents, which will save you time and increase your chances of project success.

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Table of contents

The project planning process is essential to laying the groundwork for a successful project.

But planning a project is not linear. The project manager might need to change things on the fly to adjust plans to reality. For example, you could need to adjust the project timeline after planning your resources to avoid burning out your employees.  As a result, the project planning processes can quickly become complicated!  

In this guide, we’ll share a structured approach to project management planning that will help you plan your future projects better.

[fs-toc-omit]What are the stages in project planning?

There are nine essential stages in the project planning process that should be adhered to. Follow these steps to create your project plan:

1. Determine the project goals and objectives

The first step in the project planning phase is to define the goals and objectives of your project.

Project goals and objectives help you decide if the project should be prioritized (or even undertaken—essentially you need to use a proof of concept ). They also assist you in deciding what to deliver to the client and in identifying problems early on, e.g., a short deadline.

Your project goals provide a broad idea of what you’re trying to accomplish and help dictate the direction of your project.

Your project objectives are similar to your goals, but they define the project in more specific terms like cost, time, and quality. Once you have your project objectives, it's easy to determine the deliverables .

To set your project goals and objectives, refer to the information gathered in the project initiation stage . For example, the project brief or project proposal state that the client needs an e-commerce store to handle the volume of orders on their social media pages. Their goal, in that case, is to launch an e-commerce website. Their objectives might be to launch a fast and user-friendly e-commerce website by the end of Q4 at a cost of $20,000.

If you're wondering where to start, take a look at our project planning templates or the more specific project charter templates that will help you save time and effort.

2. Determine the project scope

Stakeholders often request extra tasks or significant changes in direction (sometimes several of them) during a project that could derail it.

Your project scope protects you from unrealistic expectations, conflicting interests, and unattainable demands as the project progresses.  

To determine your scope, look at your project goals and objectives. What do you need to do to achieve them? What isn’t necessary? For example, the scope of a new housing project may be limited to erecting and finishing the building but might not include landscaping or the construction of an outdoor pool. And it certainly does not include switching the design to a skyscraper!

It’s normal to feel uncertain about all the details. Stephen Whitworth, co-founder of incident.io, recommends being flexible in your approach. “You can scope with different levels of detail in your scope. It’s helpful to start vague, get early feedback, and then go precise.”

Using a scope document or a scope statement ensures you can refer back to it if the need arises (this can be achieved in several ways).

3. Build your work breakdown structure (WBS)

At this stage, start determining which tasks, subtasks, and deliverables must be carried out to complete the project. You can do this by referring to your scope and creating a work breakdown structure—a structured decomposition of tasks needed to complete a project. A WBS is often accompanied by a resource breakdown structure (RBS) , where both represent what activities the project team needs to complete and what resources are necessary for each work package.

In his book Project Management for Humans , Brett Harned emphasizes the importance of work breakdown structure:  "Creating a work breakdown structure for any plan or set of tasks helps you get granular about the work that needs to be done on any given project."

You can create a written work breakdown structure by:

• Breaking down your project using a Kanban board like Trello
• Mapping out tasks and timelines using Gantt charts in a project management tool like Asana

Start by taking the project itself and breaking it down into large chunks or workstreams. For example, your initial workstreams for an e-commerce website would be setting up the site infrastructure and authentication, creating the cart system, and connecting the payment gateway.

You can go further by breaking your workstreams into smaller deliverables (don’t forget to add managerial tasks at each level!). For the e-commerce website, tasks like buying a domain name, instituting website hosting, and load balancing all fall under setting up the site infrastructure.

<tip>

If you’re using a project management tool like Asana or Trello to create your WBS, you can integrate with Float to easily allocate tasks based on your team’s skills, availability, and capacity.

<tip-button> Find out more </tip-button>

</tip>

4. Set timelines  

Now that you have individual tasks created, you can set timelines for each activity.

Project timelines help you estimate the completion date and keep things on track. Timelines are usually plotted on a Gantt chart or in a resource management tool like Float .

You can set timelines by comparing the duration of tasks in similar projects or asking your team how long specific tasks take them.  

Remember to add a buffer period for unplanned events like switching hosting providers or delays in getting approval from building control inspectors. "If there's a project I can get done in a week, I'll estimate two and half weeks for it. In case of unforeseen circumstances, I'd like to overestimate so I'll have more time," says David Ibia, CEO of BoxMarshall LLC .

Here are some other things to keep in mind when creating timelines:

• Set milestones for project phases : An example of a milestone could be that 2 months from the start date, the engineers will have completed their work on the backend of the e-commerce site .
• Be conscious of time constraints : Your timeline might have to fit the deadline given by clients. In this case, you may need to follow the critical path.

Learn more about project timelines in our brief guide to project scheduling.

5. Determine and plan resources

For a project to succeed, you need the right people and resources.

The resource planning process in project management involves a lot of project assumptions and making estimates . But from the past steps—especially your WBS, scope, and goals—you should have a rough idea of what resources you need.

For example, if you’re building an e-commerce website, you’ll need a developer, a designer, and a copywriter.  You’ll also need to purchase hosting and a domain name for the website. If they are a co-located team, you should provide a meeting room for collaboration.

For a new house construction project, you’ll need masons, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, and materials like sand, rocks, wood, pipes, and wires.

When planning your resources, ensure you:

• Determine the skills/criteria you need
• Confirm future availability of resources
• Identify costs of resources, e.g., hourly rates
• Find out about special requirements, e.g., do you need to find a contractor who is licensed through a guild?

You’ll want to make sure that you have the people with the right skills and capacity to make the project a success. Also, ensure your plan shows clear ownership of tasks. One easy way is to use your WBS to create an organizational structure.

6. Estimate costs

One of the challenges in the project planning process is balancing your budget with your stakeholders' desire to save money.

However, if you underestimate costs, you might find yourself without funds in the middle of the project. To approximate the cost of the project , you can use:

• Ballpark estimation: What do you think the entire project will cost based on project objectives and client expectations? This is not an exact figure. It could cost less or more, so let your clients know. Use this method when you need to give a cost estimate before determining things like your WBS or resources.
• Parametric estimation: Use historical data in your resource management tool and the cost of variables to estimate costs. Turn your WBS into a cost breakdown structure. You can take the prices of a unit of labor, such as a mason working at $23 an hour, and multiply it by the amount of time the project will take.  

Choose your method and establish an initial cost baseline . Make sure to include details about the contact person and processes for releasing the funds. For example, the team lead could approve spending for limited amounts, while larger amounts must be approved by the finance department.

A convenient way to manage project budgets

Easily manage project budgets with Float by selecting hourly or dollar-value options, tracking billable or non-billable tasks, and monitoring real-time progress through reports. Simplify your budgeting process and stay on target with Float!

7. Determine risks and constraints

No project exists without risks or constraints. The key to avoiding a project failure is identifying the potential pitfalls and creating an action plan to handle them.  

One way to properly prepare is to create a risk register—a document that lists all of the potential risks and information about them. Also, include an action plan to counter each project risk in your risk register .

8. Plan out communication

Creating a communication blueprint is essential in developing a project plan. "No matter what role you’re playing on a project, if you’re not making a strong effort to communicate with your team, you will likely fail," says Harned.

Be sure to include details about the following:

• Communication channels: This may be via email for clients, while team members might communicate primarily over Slack.
• Frequency: This may be weekly,  on-demand asynchronously, or per milestone.
• Communication type/details: Execs typically need fewer details and more high-level information, while team members who are actively working on the project need more granular information.
• Contact persons: Define who you go to and with what type of information to avoid delays.

Did you know?

Float centralizes your people and projects, so everyone can always see who’s working on what and when. Automate notifications via Slack, email, and mobile to let the team know when plans change.

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9. Make plans for quality control and assurance

Planning for project quality control involves providing guidelines for managing, assuring, and maintaining standards within the project.

Without a plan, it will be very tough to achieve your desired results. You might end up with a slow e-commerce website or a leaky plumbing system!

To set quality control metrics, you should:

• Leverage in-house experts' knowledge of best practices
• Reference industry standards—for example,  e-commerce sites need to have a secure and fast payment system
• Work with key stakeholders to determine expectations of quality

Your plan should also include acceptance criteria, define the people in charge of verifying work, and set any corrective actions.

[fs-toc-omit]What are the components of a project plan?

The elements will vary from project to project, but here are some essential components every successful project plan should have:

• Scope: Define the boundaries of your project. What will be included and excluded in the entire project?
• Deliverables: Define what products/deliverables need to be submitted at the end of the project.
• Budget: Define how much the project will cost. One easy way is to use your WBS to create a cost breakdown structure by assigning costs to each task.
• Quality: Define how quality will be assured and controlled on the project.  
• Schedule: Assign time to each project activity and people to tasks.  
• Resourcing: Define what human and material resources will be needed to complete the project.
• Stakeholder management/communication: How will you communicate with your stakeholders and keep them in the loop? Define which stakeholder will be given what information at what times.    
• Governance: To keep your project transparent and compliant, define which team members are responsible for project monitoring and decision-making.
• Risk: Enter all risks in a risk register. Also, include details about each risk and plans to combat them.

Learn about the factors to successful project planning .

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Why is project planning software important?

Planning a project involves a lot of guesswork. The truth is, as accurate as you try to be, your estimates may still end up a bit off track.

Project planning software makes this work easier by providing a central place to document and share plans with stakeholders. It allows you to automate timeline planning and milestone setting. It also provides reliable historical data to inform decisions for future projects.

With project planning software, you can forecast potential risks and resource shortages before they happen. You can track the availability and capacity of resources and find the right skills in your resource pool, effectively planning your project from start to finish.

Not sure which tool is best for you? Check out our listicle of project planning tools that helps you evaluate each tool and choose one that works.

Project plans are not set in stone

The planning phase is iterative. More often than not, you will need to change your project management plan to match reality.

Don't hesitate to find a way to redistribute resources or cut costs if you are falling behind schedule. If your communication plan isn't working, reassess and try new ways to keep your stakeholders informed .  

A successful project requires contributions from everyone involved, and that’s only possible with a solid project plan.

Related reads

Project timelines: how to deliver projects on time and on budget.

9 expert tips to help you get better at IT resource management

A project manager’s guide to work planning: steps, tips & a real-life example

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Project Planning 101: A Step-by-Step Guide

By Kate Eby | October 17, 2018

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The success of your project depends on your project plan. It’s the ultimate guide that tells everyone where you’re going and how you will get there. But, it can also be the most difficult part of the process because it requires you to gather all the information into an organized, clear roadmap.

Planning a project means you have to understand the goals and stakeholder needs in order to plan all the tasks that ensure you meet your objectives. In this article, you’ll learn a simple process that turns vision into deliverables. We’ve included a clear guide focused on the time, money, and staffing you need to succeed. And, we’ve got tips and templates to get you there.

What Is Project Planning?

Project planning, also called work planning, drives your project. It clarifies what you want to accomplish and creates a clear, detailed roadmap that describes how you will get there. Whether you’re developing a computer game, building a parking garage, or creating a new flavor of ice cream, planning is critical to your project’s success.

According to the text, A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) , project planning is the second phase of project management, following the conception and initiation phase. It takes the concept of what you want to do, based on the inputs of the project charter and concept proposal, and outlines the nuts and bolts of how you will achieve your goals. When planning your project you will define the following:

The scope of the project

Deliverables and the tasks you need to meet them

The sequence and schedule of those tasks, with a timetable and deadlines

Roles and responsibilities

Resources, such as staffing, budget, and equipment

Plans to manage time, staff, suppliers, costs, risk, and quality

Baselines and performance measures

Management plans to monitor your progress

Project planning is more than a list of steps and requirements. It is the heart of your project’s life cycle and reflects the mission and goals of your organization. When you communicate the project plan, you’re telling the story of who you are and what you want to accomplish.

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The History of Project Planning

Any project, from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to modern software systems, relies on the time-tested principles of project management and project planning. The master builders of the Great Wall of China and the aqueducts of the Roman Empire had to clarify objectives, define tasks, manage resources and schedules, and ensure quality.

But the origins of modern project management date back to the early 20th century, starting with the publication of The Principles of Scientific Management, by Frederick Winslow Taylor, in 1911. Taylor, drawing on his experience in the steel industry, focused his work on a systematic study of ways to improve efficiency in complex projects. Six years later, Henry Gantt developed the Gantt chart , a diagram that project managers could use to schedule and show each step of a project on a visual timeline. This was the first of many approaches to systematically sequencing and scheduling project tasks.

In the 1950s, new planning techniques formed the foundation of modern project management: the critical path method (CPM) , developed by the DuPont Corporation and the Remington Rand Corporation, and the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) , developed by the U.S. Navy. At the same time, professionals of project management established the American Association of Cost Engineers (now AACE International ), an organization for project managers, cost engineers, project control specialists, and more. Other professional organizations were formed in the 1960s, including the International Project Management Association (IPMA) in 1965 and the Project Management Institute (PMI) in 1969. A range of approaches, from Waterfall techniques to Agile (and the Scrum subset) and Projects in Controlled Environments (PRINCE) , have evolved since.

Regardless of the approach or the tools, project planning is output oriented, establishing the who, what, when, and how of a project. The project plan answers questions, like who will do the work, what they will do, when it will happen, and how much it will cost. A solid project plan is the ultimate source of information and communication for the project, keeping team members on track and keeping stakeholders in the loop.

For example, if you’re developing a new mobile device or app, you need to know whether designers can start creating the visual concepts while wireframes and functionality are in development. Which resources do you allocate to various tasks? How do you know how long the steps will take? What keeps the project from growing beyond its initial scope and budget? A realistic project plan is the best way to answer these questions.

Why Have a Project Plan?

No matter the size and scope of your project, you’ll need a plan to succeed. For example, you may want to build a faster system for your web users. Once you’ve identified how quickly you want your system to load, you can determine the tasks to reach the goal, who will do that work, when it’s due, how much it will cost, and who will give final approval. Without setting those parameters, all you have is an idea, not a project.

A sound project plan is a project manager’s best friend. It’s the main communication document for the project and acts as the roadmap for your team throughout project execution. Not only does it tell everyone what you are going to do, but it also establishes, identifies, and organizes the business requirements, resource plans, cost, schedule, goals, list of deliverables, milestones, quality standards, and delivery dates.

Additionally, without a plan you can run into unanticipated problems, costing you — and your organization — time and money. But by taking the time to develop one, it can help you to identify and anticipate roadblocks.

The final document will define how your project is implemented, executed, monitored, and controlled. In short, the project plan answers these questions:

What is the project’s scope?

What are the objectives?

What are the specific outcomes?

What are the major deliverables?

How will you get to those deliverables?

What are the deadlines?

When will the team meet specific milestones?

How will you define roles and responsibilities?

Who will provide feedback?

A key reason for project planning is to define the item you’re trying to solve for and identify the steps to get there. When you identify the objectives of the project, you articulate the problem your project is designed to solve. And as you plan the work, you can spot any conflicts among the schedule, cost, and resources, so you can identify the tradeoffs you need to make in order to stay within scope and meet your objectives.

Plus, once you’ve created the plan, you can get management approval and proceed confidently to the next phase: project execution. By creating a solid project plan, you get the project off on the right foot, demonstrating that you will meet the objectives and deliver your project on time, budget, and schedule.

What Is in a Project Plan?

At its most basic level, a project plan is a management document, with a set of tasks that guides your team in implementing the project and identifying the baselines for scope, schedule, cost, risk, and performance measurement. It helps you finish your project on time and on budget, allowing you to meet the standards identified at the beginning of the project.

For example, let’s say your company wants to roll out a new line of greeting cards for the holidays. The objective might be to produce three types of cards, with 10,000 cards in each line, to be shipped by September 30 at a maximum cost of $100,000. Now that you know the parameters, you can develop a plan to organize your team and tasks in order to meet those goals.

A project plan is not merely a project schedule, although that aspect is crucial, whether producing greeting cards or new software. As the foundation for managing the project, your plan  should include the following components:

Executive Summary or Introduction : A high-level overview of the goals and objectives of the project, including your project management approach

Project Scope : Based on the scope statement from the project charter, with plans for managing what falls within scope and identifying what is out of scope

Deliverables : The major components that will be delivered throughout the project

Schedule Baseline and Plan : The estimated project schedule and milestone deadlines and how you plan to manage time and schedule

Cost Baseline and Plan : The estimated budget and an explanation of how you will manage expenses and cost

Resource Baseline : Estimated resources needed and details around managing those resources, including procurement plans, solicitation plans, and plans for managing external suppliers, human resources, and staffing

Work Breakdown Structure : The deliverables, milestones, and resources that will ensure the project is completed

Communication Plan : A description of who will be informed about the project, how often, and how they will receive this information

Change Management Plan : The formal process to receive, review, and accept or reject changes to the project

Risk Management Plan : The risks to the project and the contingency plans

Configuration Management Plan : The components of the project and the audit changes

Quality Plan : The quantification of the baseline standards the project must meet

Process Improvement Plan : A document of how the team will analyze the effectiveness of the project, including the identification of where and how they can make improvements

Related Issues : The internal and external factors that could affect the completion of your plan

Material and Equipment Requirements : A list of what you need to accomplish the work

Approvals and Stakeholder Management : The details of the milestones that need formal approval and the identification of how stakeholders will be included in the approval proces

Who Uses a Project Plan?

The project plan tells the story of your project and organizes all the project factors, including documentation plans, workload, and management and oversights of each component. Since it touches so many areas, all the people involved will review, approve, and rely on the project plan. Here are the key stakeholders that will use the project plan:

Project Manager : The plan is the blueprint and roadmap for keeping the project on track. It’s the north star that a project manager uses to make sure the project succeeds.

Project Sponsor : Since the sponsor has the overall accountability for the project, they approve the plan and use it to ensure the project has the necessary resources, staffing, and support within the organization.

Designated Business Experts : These experts provide insight into the project’s requirements and deliverable standards. They use the plan to ensure that the end product is what they want and that it is delivered on the schedule they need.

Project Team : Much like a football playbook, the plan lets all team members know what they are assigned to do, when they will do it, and who they will work with.

End Users : Internal or external customers may be included in the development of the project plan. They are the ones who most clearly understand the problem you are trying to solve and can offer insight into the requirements and quality of the solution your project offers. They can tell you whether the output of your project meets their needs.

Auditors : They will assess the project to ensure whether the project’s objectives are aligned, whether you have the resources and processes to ensure your success, and whether you have achieved what you set out to do.

Quality and Risk Analysts : Use their expertise to ensure that you have considered all possible risks or roadblocks and can still meet the standards, budget, and timelines of the project.

Procurement Specialists : These stakeholders find the best vendors for all necessary project resources or materials and can help the project manager by managing the relationship with the vendor.

How Do You Write a Project Plan?

Project managers must gather all the information needed to write a project plan. In this process, they will need to make projections based on assumptions about time, staff, resources, costs, equipment, and marketing needs. To learn more, read our step-by-step guide to writing a project plan.

What Happens in the Planning Phase of a Project?

In the planning phase of any project, you take the inputs of both the project charter and the concept proposal and produce the outputs of the project requirements, project schedule, and project management plan. The work during this phase involves thinking about and planning what you need to do and then putting the structure in place to accomplish the project’s goals.

Remember, you are planning and guiding the project, not creating it. There is no single way to plan a project because each project is different. You may decide to use the traditional Waterfall approach or an Agile methodology to manage your project, and this decision will impact how your plan. The Waterfall approach is a fairly fixed process, with a set sequence of activities that the project manager drives.

An Agile approach, on the other hand, is designed to be more flexible, with shorter sprints that allow the team to work iteratively and adjust the product as it’s developed. Agile approaches tend to be used with software and technology projects that require frequent testing and feedback. Use a traditional approach when you want to stick to the original scope of the project and need to control the outcomes.

Don’t rush the planning phase , which is when you will be integrating all the knowledge management areas into a cohesive, comprehensive plan. The beginning of this stage is the most difficult part and it takes time to do it right.

Working with your team, define and refine the project’s objectives, determine the methods you’ll use to achieve those objectives, identify the deliverables and the tasks to achieve those deliverables, specify the baselines of the project plan, and schedule and write all the necessary supporting documents.

This doesn’t happen all at once. When you review the outline, you’ll discover other options for completing the project, adjust the resources and schedule, and receive feedback from your stakeholders. The project planning process actually involves two kinds of processes: core processes and facilitating processes.

Core processes follow a set sequence, regardless of the project. They include the following:

Scope Defining and Planning : Identify the deliverables and requirements of the project.

Activity Defining, Planning, and Sequencing : Break down the deliverables and requirements into activities or tasks and estimate the time for each, as well as the sequence in which they must be completed.

Resource Planning : Identify the people, equipment, facilities, and materials needed for the activities.

Cost Estimating and Budgeting : Estimate the amount of money you need, based on staffing or external vendors, the materials and goods required, and any other expenses.

Schedule Developing : Create the project schedule, based on the sequence of tasks, your budget, and your resources.

Project Plan Developing : Finalize the plan and all supporting documents for formal approval.

The facilitating processes depend on the project and how the core processes interact. They can follow any sequence in your project. Facilitating processes include the following:

Organizational Planning : Determine the roles for each of your team members, assign them responsibilities, and acquire additional staff as needed. This process may include the work breakdown structure.

Quality Planning : Establish the quality assurance standards and criteria for the project, and how you will ensure that you meet them.

Risk Management Planning : Identify any risks to the project, consider their probability and impact (quantitative risk analysis), prioritize their impact (qualitative risk analysis), and develop a plan to minimize or reduce those risks.

Procuring and Solicitation Planning : Decide what goods and services you need to acquire for the project, and identify potential vendors.

Communication Planning : Establish how and what you will communicate to stakeholders, the project sponsor, your team, and any others with an interest in the project.

Another critical element of communication is to not only involve your team in the planning phase but maintain that communication throughout. Although you will be the main author for the plan, use your team to help divide and conquer key aspects. Here are some other communication considerations:

How well do we understand the objective?

Has our organization or team tackled similar projects in the past?

How well did it go? What were the successes and lessons learned?

What factors will impact the schedule?

Are there dates when key resources and staff are unavailable? Will the office be closed during the project?

How will you gather feedback? Will you have to present progress to stakeholders in formal or informal meetings?

What tools will you use to communicate? Are there preferred online project planning tools?

How will we explain your progress to stakeholders? What will we do if they don’t understand?

How Long Does Project Planning Take?

Don’t assume that there isn’t enough time to prepare a plan. The success of your project depends on a sound and complete plan. However, there is no typical time frame for project planning. Because each project and team is different, the amount of time it takes to develop the plan will vary.

The best way to estimate how long the planning process will take is to look at how long it has taken to plan similar projects at your organization. Talk to others who were involved in similar projects, both project managers and team members. Ask them how long it took and what obstacles they encountered, and seek tips for being efficient in your process.

What Are the Steps for Planning a Project?

Planning a project can seem overwhelming. But, following these steps will ensure you have a plan that successfully guides your project, keeps everyone working toward the same goal, and guarantees you meet your objectives.

Step One: Define the Project Goals, Objectives, and Scope

The first phase of the project management process ends with a project charter and concept proposal. In the planning phase of the project management process, you use those outputs to articulate and define precisely what you want to accomplish. Start by asking these questions:

What needs to be completed?

What product or service will be delivered?

What does the client expect? What does the client need?

What is the deadline?

What are the reasons, events, or factors for that deadline?

The answers will help you capture your big-picture goals for the project. Based on the rough expectations and timeline you uncover with these initial questions, you’ll be able to list basic steps. Now that you’ve set some goals, it’s time to put priorities around those expectations.

To get more clarity for your objectives, spend time with the project stakeholders to understand their needs, expectations, deliverables, and deadlines. Use one-on-one meetings, interviews, workshops, and focus groups to uncover the requirements or functionality that offer real benefits. Remember that stakeholders are everyone who is affected by the product or service, including clients, the project sponsor, the project manager, the project team, and the customers who are the end-users.

Also, identify the responsibility of the developer and the user by determining the need that your project is addressing and how you will educate users about the product. Finally, identify the project’s supporters within your organization. Use their feedback to ensure that the project plan aligns with the company’s strategic and organizational goals.

Think of the objectives as articulating the “reason to be” for the project. These objectives may include acquiring or maintaining your market share, growing sales or profits, or improving efficiency. While your goals may be broad, the objectives must be specific and measurable. Refine project objectives by providing quantifiable definitions (i.e., schedule, cost, quality) for qualitative or subjective terms. Consider the S.M.A.R.T . framework to clearly identify, define, and scrutinize each objective.

By clarifying and quantifying the goals and objectives, you can understand and define the project’s scope and value. Now you’re ready to write a scope statement for the project that covers the following elements:

Business Needs : A high-level summary that outlines the benefits and puts this project in context for stakeholders and other decision makers in your organization

Objectives : Specifically what the team will do

Roles and Responsibilities : Who owns the project, who is on the project team, and what role each member plays

Requirements : Qualitative and quantitative descriptions of the expectations of the stakeholders

Deliverables : The tangible and measurable work products that you will produce

Milestones : Dates you establish for key deliverables

Quality Standards : The acceptance criteria your deliverables must meet, including who is responsible for signing off on the acceptance criteria

Exclusions : Any products or services that you will not create as part of this project

The outcome of this work is a clear communication tool that documents the project goals and the effort required to meet them. You can leverage this information to create a product breakdown structure (PBS) that defines the project outcome clearly so the sponsor and stakeholders can agree on your direction. The document also feeds into the work breakdown structure that you will soon develop.

Step Two: Break Down the Project into Tasks

With your scope document in hand, you can now identify the activities and tasks needed to create the deliverables. For every project, the activities will be different, but you can use previous project plans to guide what you might need for your project.

At this point, you will begin to break down the larger project into smaller sections. Work with your team to identify the activities, tasks, and processes needed to fulfill your requirements and objectives. For each task, identify the amount of effort it will take to complete the task and who will do the work. Then, group related tasks into work packages , which are the smallest unit of work in a project.

By spelling out the breakdown of the project in this way, you are creating your work breakdown structure (WBS) — a structured listing of the work and end items that serves as the basis for cost accounts, budgets, schedules, and project life-cycle cost estimates. The WBS is accompanied by the WBS dictionary, which describes every component of the WBS, including milestones, deliverables, scope, and activities. These downloadable templates can help you create your own WBS.

As you create the network of tasks and the WBS, you will see which tasks are dependent upon others and which schedules are interrelated. You can link the tasks based on dependencies, to develop the critical path , or network activity diagram, which helps you identify the tasks necessary to complete your project as scoped. Additionally, the critical path method helps you stay on track throughout your project.

Step Three: Map Out the Resources

Now that you have the tasks mapped out, it’s time to identify the resources you need to complete the work. Identify the necessary facilities, equipment, supplies, raw materials, staffing, and special skills for each task and deliverable. These activities form the core process of resource planning, including who will do what work, when will they do it, and how much will it cost. Make sure to include the following resources in your analysis:

Staffing : Determine the staff and skills available in house, and identify what skills you’ll need to procure from outside vendors and subcontractors.

Costs and Budget : Estimate the cost of each task, depending on the resources the task will consume. The total of those budgeted costs leads to the total project cost, which is incurred upon the completion of the project.

Time : Estimate how much resource time will be spent to complete each task or deliverable. Since you have to estimate the duration, consider weighing your estimates with optimistic, normal, or pessimistic variables.

Resource Constraints : As you estimate and assign resources, consider how much time each person can realistically devote to the project or whether you can procure all the materials and budget you need.

One of the challenges of project planning is managing the uncertainty when you estimate resources. While the critical path method helps you organize tasks, the critical chain method builds buffers into your plan so you can anticipate potential delays.  

Step Four: Outline Your Plan and Schedule

Armed with the information about the tasks and resources, you can draft an outline of your project plan and create the sequence of events that will build your schedule. The outline starts with the questions you have addressed in your project planning, including:

Who will do the work (staffing)?

What work will they do (goals, objectives, deliverables)?

When should it be accomplished (project deadline)?

How will it be done (tasks and work breakdown structure)?

Your draft plan will map out the schedule of activities, the dependencies among them, the sequence in which they will be implemented, and how resources will be allocated at each stage. At a basic level, the schedule is a timeline of all the tasks and resource estimates.

In addition to showing the amount of effort and resources needed to complete each task, the project schedule should help you balance the amount of resources with the duration of the task or project. If one task takes longer than you estimated or requires more materials, the schedule will need to be updated so you can ensure you still meet your objectives.

Your team is a valuable resource that can help you develop an action plan for the project and provide feedback on your resource estimates. You can also consider a range of project management tools, many of which are available online, including:

Gantt Charts and Schedules : A Gantt chart is a visual timeline that generally employs horizontal bars that illustrate each task and identify at what point it appears on the schedule. The completed chart shows the entire project in one simple view. Online Gantt chart tools can show task dependencies, key milestones, and the critical path of your project. Learn all about online Gantt chart software here .

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) : A PERT chart is a graphic illustration of a project that depicts a network diagram or network model. The diagram consists of numbered nodes representing events that are linked by directional lines, or vectors, that symbolize tasks and the sequence of the tasks.

Graphical Evaluation and Review (GERT) : GERT charts, like PERT charts, depict network models. GERT charts also allow loops between tasks, which you can use to demonstrate more possibilities between activities and events.

Decision-Event-Logic-Time-Activity (DELTA) : A DELTA chart displays the project as a flow chart by using five elements — decision boxes, event boxes, logic boxes, time arrows, and activity boxes.

Online project management software, tools, and templates can help you get started quickly, along with providing real-time updates as you manage the project and delivery dates, and calculate slack time, down time, and float time. Additionally, templates can help you craft the project plan outline and the detailed work plan that you will provide stakeholders for review.

In addition to creating a schedule of the tasks, you should also identify what factors that determine when a task is completed and who has the authority to sign off. Clarify what quality standards must be met for any deliverable, what happens if the deliverable falls below that standard, and who manages that process.

Step Five: Review and Refine Your Plan

Once the plan is drafted, gather feedback to help refine and finalize the work plan. Present and explain the project plan to stakeholders and discuss the key elements. Be flexible in how you present the plan. Some stakeholders may prefer to see workflow charts or budgets. Others may want an executive summary with bullet points listing deliverables, resources, and milestones.

Use your presentation as an opportunity to ask tough questions that will test the assumptions of your plan and ensure that you will be successful in meeting their expectations. Request feedback on the process, politics, and risks, and consider asking the following questions:

Are the estimates, assumptions, and constraints for budget, resources, and schedule realistic?

What are the preferred options for dealing with unrealistic estimates: renegotiating the schedule, adding additional resources, reducing the scope, etc.?

Are the standards for quality in the project realistic or overly ambitious?

Are there additional pressures that accelerate how quickly the project needs to be completed?

What internal factors have changed that could affect the resources or schedule?

What external factors have changed that could affect the project?

What is the best way to measure and report on actual progress?

Is there a stakeholder that needs to be considered who is not on the list? (A president, division director, supplier, customer, etc.?)

Is there anything else that would prevent the project from being successful?

Some issues and project risks that could surface in these conversations include:

The time, staffing, and cost estimates are too optimistic.

The roles and responsibilities are unclear.

No stakeholder input has been obtained.

Changing requirements or new requirements have emerged.

There is a lack of organizational commitment to the project, and there is competition for a share of company resources.

At this point in your project planning process, consider your risk management plans , specifying any contingency plans and mitigation strategies. The cousin to risk management plans are change control procedures. When you need to change your plans, you need to have formal procedures and mechanics that specify who is responsible for making those decisions and what information is required.

Another topic to discuss with stakeholders and your team deals with how you will formulate and document policies and guidelines during the execution of the project. During the day-to-day work, a myriad of decisions will be made. Establish how you will track these, which ones need to be communicated to stakeholders and team members, and any formal process for sharing these decisions.

With all this feedback in hand, you can refine the plan based on the realities and risks you’ve uncovered during the review process and be confident that your final plan will achieve its goals and fulfill your stakeholders’ expectations.

Step Six: Write the Full Project Plan

You’ve got all the information you need, the feedback to refine the plans, and buy-in from your team. Now, it’s time to assemble the final plan.

Your final plan will, first and foremost, focus on the performance measurement baseline . That is, the point of reference that serves as the north star for the entire project. This baseline is a combination of the following elements:

Scope Baseline : The approved version of the scope statement, work breakdown structure, and WBS dictionary

Cost Baseline : The approved spending plan or time-phased budget that includes all the costs by time period and money set aside to respond to risks

Schedule Baseline : The fixed project schedule that has been approved by project stakeholders

These baselines are fixed standards for the project and reflect all the hard work of defining scope, schedule, costs, staffing, deliverables, resources, quality, risk management, and more. They must be fully defined and documented before you can begin the project.

Once they are approved, they become the official plans for your project and can only be changed through the approved change control and management process. The final project plan also includes the baseline management plans and the supporting plans for core and facilitating processes previously mentioned.

In addition to the baseline and management plans, you’ll need to include all the supporting documents that walk your stakeholders, clients, and team through the project. Use this checklist to make sure you’ve included everything required. Need help assembling your plan? Here are some templates you can use .

Project Plan Checklist

The final plan can seem like an overwhelming document. Here are some formatting and presentation tips to ensure that your plan is readable and engaging:

Use a clear outline and clear section titles.

Use consistent formatting for titles, headers, bullets, and notes.

Include all the pertinent project information, including the name of the project manager, the title of the project, the client name, key stakeholders, and the project sponsor.

Provide a clear executive summary.

Use a Gantt chart to illustrate the schedule, dependencies, or other key milestones.

Highlight dependencies and use headers and bullets to break out deliverables and milestones.

Identify which team or team member is responsible for each task.

Clearly show the duration of each task.

List the related resources (staff, time, cost, materials) for each task.

Add notes to tasks that might seem confusing or unclear. (Even better, revise the wording of the task, so it’s clear to all readers.)

Include the resources allocated for each task.

Use your client’s logo and your company’s logo for external projects.

If you have other company branding (fonts, tag lines, etc.), use where relevant.

Ask a team member to review the plan for grammar,spelling errors, and typos.

Once all the plans are assembled, it’s time to get final approval from your client and other stakeholders. Good communication during the planning process and a willingness to answer questions up front will help you avoid surprises at this late stage.

Step Seven: Launch Your Project

The plan is approved, so you can publish and share it with your team. Schedule a kickoff meeting to walk them through the project, making sure everyone has read the plan and is ready to dig in. Be ready to answer any questions and set an effective leadership tone. A strong start will help you get across the finish line with an enthusiastic team and high morale.

Step Eight: Monitor and Review Your Progress

Project planning isn’t finished until the project is finished. You will need to monitor progress and project scope , compare it to the baselines, and manage any changes. No plan is perfect, so be prepared to adjust the plan and making critical decisions as issues arise.

During the project planning phase, you put time into the core and facilitating processes. Now you focus on change management, quality control, and governance to keep everything running smoothly. You should regularly analyze the progress by comparing it to baseline plans. Measuring project performance and progress is called earned value management (EVM). EVM takes project tracking a step further and helps you evaluate your progress more accurately.

Another area to monitor is project risks . Keep a log that identifies all the risks you’ve anticipated and the plans for preventing or addressing those risks. Review the risk log regularly to see what’s happened, any new risks that may occur, and what is no longer at risk.

As project manager, you should document everything in this phase. Record changes that go through the change management process, as well as smaller factors that can shift the deliverables on your project. These documents can be the basis for your communication with team members, stakeholders, and clients. They can also serve as part of the archive for the project to be used by another project manager the next time a similar project arises.

Managing successful projects is hard. But you’ve put a lot of hard work into building this plan, so enjoy the parts that go well, be enthusiastic about leading your team when tough calls have to be made, and continue to inspire creativity as the project unfolds.

What Are the Challenges in Project Planning?

You won’t be able to anticipate every factor, risk, or variable that bubbles up during the project. The customer review and feedback cycle may be slower than you had estimated, or your company may face unexpected budget cuts. There’s always a level of uncertainty in any project environment. But you can prepare for the unexpected by building flexibility and strong change control and approval workflows into your planning process.

Avoid simply thinking that a plan is unnecessary. Maybe the project seems small so you think your team can wing it. Or, maybe there are so many variables and uncertainties that it doesn’t seem worth the effort to plan. Sometimes, stakeholders will skip the project plan, so they can just get started on the work.

Project planning is inherently uncertain because you will never have all the information you need. You will have to make assumptions about resources and plan for certain kinds of risks. But the degree of uncertainty in a project tends to be inversely proportionate to the information at hand. While you can’t be precise about the variables that affect your assumptions, you can plan for several broad categories of variables and risks, including marketplace competition, changing regulations, and evolutions in technology.

The Challenges of Poor Communication

Poor communication leads to misunderstandings, failure to meet quality standards, work that has to be redone, or even canceled projects. Poor communication starts in several places:

Unclear roles and responsibilities

A lack of stakeholder input

A lack of stakeholder approval if needs or objectives are not understood

Stakeholders changing or adding requirements after the project has started

Communication, from asking questions to sharing project updates and getting stakeholder buy-in, is critical to the success of your plan. Additionally, managing stakeholder input is crucial to the continued success of the project.

Make sure you ask enough questions to understand what your clients and stakeholders need, provide enough information to ensure that you are on the right track, and give them options up front to reduce the likelihood of requested scope changes after the project is underway.

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8. Overview of Project Planning

Adrienne Watt; Merrie Barron; and Andrew Barron

Click play on the following audio player to listen along as you read this section.

After the project has been defined and the project team has been appointed, you are ready to enter the second phase in the project management life cycle: the detailed project planning phase.

Project planning is at the heart of the project life cycle, and tells everyone involved where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. The planning phase is when the project plans are documented, the project deliverables and requirements are defined, and the project schedule is created. It involves creating a set of plans to help guide your team through the implementation and closure phases of the project. The plans created during this phase will help you manage time, cost, quality, changes, risk, and related issues. They will also help you control staff and external suppliers to ensure that you deliver the project on time, within budget, and within schedule.

The project planning phase is often the most challenging phase for a project manager, as you need to make an educated guess about the staff, resources, and equipment needed to complete your project. You may also need to plan your communications and procurement activities, as well as contract any third-party suppliers.

The purpose of the project planning phase is to:

• Establish business requirements
• Establish cost, schedule, list of deliverables, and delivery dates
• Establish resources plans
• Obtain management approval and proceed to the next phase

The basic processes of project planning are:

• Scope planning – specifying the in-scope requirements for the project to facilitate creating the work breakdown structure
• Preparation of the work breakdown structure – spelling out the breakdown of the project into tasks and sub-tasks
• Project schedule development – listing the entire schedule of the activities and detailing their sequence of implementation
• Resource planning – indicating who will do what work, at which time, and if any special skills are needed to accomplish the project tasks
• Budget planning – specifying the budgeted cost to be incurred at the completion of the project
• Procurement planning – focusing on vendors outside your company and subcontracting
• Risk management – planning for possible risks and considering optional contingency plans and mitigation strategies
• Quality planning – assessing quality criteria to be used for the project
• Communication planning – designing the communication strategy with all project stakeholders

The planning phase refines the project’s objectives, which were gathered during the initiation phase. It includes planning the steps necessary to meet those objectives by further identifying the specific activities and resources required to com­plete the project. Now that these objectives have been recognized, they must be clearly articulated, detailing an in-depth scrutiny of each recognized objective. With such scrutiny, our understanding of the objective may change. Often the very act of trying to describe something precisely gives us a better understanding of what we are looking at. This articulation serves as the basis for the development of requirements. What this means is that after an objective has been clearly articulated, we can describe it in concrete (measurable) terms and identify what we have to do to achieve it. Obviously, if we do a poor job of articulating the objective, our requirements will be misdirected and the resulting project will not represent the true need.

Users will often begin describing their objectives in qualitative language. The project manager must work with the user to provide quantifiable definitions to those qualitative terms. These quantifiable criteria include schedule, cost, and quality measures. In the case of project objectives, these elements are used as measurements to determine project satisfaction and successful completion. Subjective evaluations are replaced by actual numeric attributes.

A web user may ask for a fast system. The quantitative requirement should be all screens must load in under three seconds. Describing the time limit during which the screen must load is specific and tangible. For that reason, you’ll know that the requirement has been successfully completed when the objective has been met.

Let’s say that your company is going to produce a holiday batch of eggnog. Your objective statement might be stated this way: Christmas Cheer, Inc. will produce two million cases of holiday eggnog, to be shipped to our distributors by October 30, at a total cost of $1.5 million or less. The objective criteria in this statement are clearly stated and successful fulfillment can easily be measured. Stakeholders will know that the objectives are met when the two million cases are produced and shipped by the due date within the budget stated.

When articulating the project objectives you should follow the SMART rule:

• Specific – get into the details. Objectives should be specific and written in clear, concise, and under­standable terms.
• Measurable – use quantitative language. You need to know when you have successfully completed the task.
• Acceptable – agreed with the stakeholders.
• Realistic – in terms of achievement. Objectives that are impossible to accomplish are not realistic and not attainable. Objectives must be centred in reality.
• Time based – deadlines not durations. Objectives should have a time frame with an end date assigned to them.

If you follow these principles, you’ll be certain that your objectives meet the quantifiable criteria needed to measure success.

Text Attributions

This chapter adapted by Adrienne Watts from the following source:

• Text under “Overview of Project Planning”  adapted from “ Project Planning ” in Project Management by Merrie Barron and Andrew Barron. Licensed under a CC BY 4.0 licence

8. Overview of Project Planning Copyright © 2014 by Adrienne Watt; Merrie Barron; and Andrew Barron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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After defining the project’s objectives and success criteria in the project initiation phase , the next step is to plan each task that the team must perform to cover the project’s scope and complete the necessary deliverables to meet the overall goal. This next step is the project planning phase.

Project planning is one of the most important phases of project management and is critical to the project’s success, as it lays the groundwork for the entire project and ensures that everyone involved is on the same page.

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Objectives and Goals of the Project Planning Phase

The primary objectives of the planning phase of project management are to define the project’s scope, objectives, and deliverables, as well as identify the resources required to complete the project.

In this stage, project managers develop a comprehensive project plan detailing the schedule, budget, and quality requirements. They also identify and analyze potential risks, which is necessary to form a risk management plan.

Effectively steering through the project planning phase allows project managers to establish a solid foundation for their projects.

The Importance of a Well-Defined Project Plan

 A well-defined project plan helps project managers ensure that everyone involved in the project is on the same page. This helps to minimize confusion, reduce the likelihood of errors, and make sure that the project is completed on time and within budget.

Studies indicate a robust correlation between planning and project success. A conference paper showcased on PMI.org by the Project Management Institute underscores the pivotal role of the planning phase in enhancing efficiency and overall project outcomes. Breaking down the project into more manageable tasks empowers project managers to better allocate resources, monitor progress, and identify potential risks. This approach leads to a more efficient and effective project management process, resulting in timely delivery and high-quality results.

Key Components of Project Planning

Following are some key components of project planning with terms :

Project scope review and refinement: This involves reviewing and refining the project scope until it is all-encompassing and well-defined, measurable, and achievable. It also involves identifying issues or risks that may impact the project’s success.

Work breakdown structure (WBS) : This is the effort of breaking down the project into smaller, more manageable tasks. A WBS helps project managers define deliverables and milestones, ultimately helping the team stay within budget and schedule.

Resource planning: This is the exercise of identifying and allocating resources needed to complete the project, including the skills and expertise required, as well as the necessary equipment and materials.

Creating a detailed project schedule: A detailed project schedule clearly lays out the timeline, milestones, and deadlines. Following this plan moves the project forward toward timely completion.

Risk management: An important component, risk management involves identifying potential risks that may impact the project’s success and developing a plan to mitigate them. Risk triggers and contingency plans are also part of this phase.

Budgeting and cost management: Creating a budget and managing costs throughout the project life cycle involves tracking expenses, identifying cost overruns, and making adjustments as needed.

Communication and stakeholder engagement: Developing a communication plan that outlines how project information will be shared with stakeholders is crucial to keeping them engaged throughout the project lifecycle.

Quality control: Does the project meet the required quality standards? Quality control involves determining quality metrics, monitoring progress, and adjusting to changes.

Challenges and Mitigation Strategies in Project Planning

Project planning is a complex process that often comes with challenges. Here are some of the common challenges that project managers face during the project planning phase, along with mitigation strategies to lessen business risks:

Overcoming scope creep: Scope creep rears its head when the project’s scope expands beyond its original boundaries. To counteract scope creep, project managers need to distinctly define the project’s scope and communicate it to all stakeholders. Establishing and implementing a change management process to manage any alterations to the project’s scope is also a good idea.

Adapting to changes in resource availability: The availability of resources can change during the project lifecycle, negatively affecting the project’s timeline and budget. To address this, project managers must identify the necessary resources for the project and formulate a contingency plan to address these unexpected changes.

Managing unforeseen risks: It is not uncommon for unpredicted risks to arise during project execution. To mitigate the negative effects of these risks, project managers must create a comprehensive risk management plan that identifies potential risks and delineates strategies. Regular monitoring of the project’s progress is required to allow for adjustments as necessary.

The Role of Project Management Software in Project Planning

Project management software is a powerful tool that helps project managers create and manage project plans. It aids in organizing and streamlining communication and workflow, as well as centralizing all work- and project-related activities. These tools also make it easy for PMs to manage resources, visualize data, and generate reports, helping them keep projects on schedule, within budget, and aligned with goals. 

There are many different types of project management software available, each offering unique features and benefits. Some popular types of project management software include:

Task management tools: Platforms like Asana, Trello, and Jira help break down project plans into manageable tasks. They facilitate collaboration through features that promote seamless assigning of tasks, setting deadlines, and tracking progress.

Gantt chart software: Tools such as Microsoft Project and Smartsheet enable the creation of Gantt charts, visualization of project timelines, outlining dependencies, and writing milestones. This aids project managers in planning and monitoring project progress efficiently.

Collaboration platforms: Software like Slack and Microsoft Teams enhances communication among team members. They offer real-time messaging, file sharing, and collaborative spaces that allow for seamless information exchange.

Resource management tools: Tools such as ResourceGuru and Float assist project managers in managing and allocating resources effectively, optimizing team capacity and preventing resource bottlenecks.

Document management systems: Platforms like SharePoint and Google Workspace provide centralized document storage and collaborative editing. This ensures that project documentation is organized, accessible, and up to date.

From crafting tasks and timeframes to balancing workloads and tracking KPIs, project management tools equip project managers with everything they need to steer projects to successful completion. Seamless communication, risk assessment, and change documentation are all baked in, leaving no detail behind.

Next Step: Executing the Project Plan

Now that we have covered the project planning phase, the next step in project management is the project execution phase. This is the stage where everything that the project team has planned is put into action. We’ll cover this in more detail in the next article in this series.

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Whether you’re in charge of developing a website, designing a car, moving a department to a new facility, updating an information system, or just about any other project (large or small), you’ll go through the same four phases of project management: planning, build-up, implementation, and closeout. Even though the phases have distinct qualities, they overlap.

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Planning Phase: Nail the project planning process

Project planning isn’t always an easy, straightforward process and balancing scope, timelines, and budgets with key stakeholders’ needs may feel daunting.

But with the right process, planning doesn’t have to be stressful. By the end of this article, you’ll learn a step-by-step process that makes project planning easier and maybe even fun.

Let’s start with the basics.

The 5 Project Management Phases

• PHASE 1: Project Initiation
• PHASE 2: Project Planning
• PHASE 3: Project Execution
• PHASE 3: Project Monitoring
• PHASE 4: Project Close-out 

What is project planning?

Project planning is a strategy that lays out the objectives and scope for the project team, company, and stakeholders. Project planning is the second step in the project management life cycle:

During the project planning process, you want to identify:

• What you want to accomplish
• The completion date
• How much it will cost
• Who’s involved and for which steps and stages?
• Which steps you’ll take to ensure it’s a success

The project plan sets a clear roadmap of action to achieve your goals. It should cover every aspect of the project, from the scope to costs, task dependencies, communication, risk, quality, and even stakeholder engagement. Sometimes, it’s helpful to break all of these responsibilities for this project phase into smaller pieces.

What are some typical tasks within the project planning phase?

As we mentioned above, a project plan can help your team understand what’s required of them and when, help you get an idea of progress, and how long the process should take. During the project planning phase, you’ll:

• Decide on a budget
• Set a project schedule or timeline
• Identify resources and any roadblocks and plan for those scenarios
• Ensure required resources are available
• Define project objectives, roles, deadlines, responsibilities, and project milestones

The above tasks may, while potentially time-consuming initially, can help you save on resources later on throughout the process. But project planning doesn’t just provide a list of all project components—its benefits extend far beyond that.

Why is project planning an important part of the project management process?

With so many variables, no project manager can guarantee a project will run smoothly, but project planning can reduce chaos and uncertainty as much as possible. By understanding the risks and potential roadblocks before getting started, project managers and stakeholders can either avoid those bottlenecks or develop a plan for dealing with them.

For instance, if a project relies on a stakeholder to produce an asset but they miss the deadline, a project plan would outline how to proceed in those situations without losing progress.

Project planning—and by extension, the project plan—will become your baseline for measuring progress, allowing you to compare actual progress with the project plan so you can monitor team performance.

Though each team may approach project planning a little differently, there are a few resources project managers can use to make the most out of this phase.

What's the difference between Traditional vs. Agile project planning?

The difference between Traditional and Agile planning lies in how each methodology deals with chaos and uncertainty.

Let’s talk about some of those differences.

Traditional planning

Traditional planning is more fixed and rigorous. The execution phase begins after the project manager approves the plan and the team agrees on how to measure progress (typically against the project baseline ). Any changes go through a change control process and require approval before anyone can move forward.

One downside to this approach is that if an aspect of the project changes, it can take time before the team can adapt to meet the new requirements.

In Traditional Planning, the client provides specifications for the project and only sees the final result. This may allow the client to focus on other priorities, but it can also cause discrepancies in the expected results leave them unhappy with the final results. Agile is one way to keep clients involved throughout the process.

Agile planning

The approach for Agile planning is much more flexible and involves the customer during the entire project life cycle. Agile helps teams adapt fast to necessary changes and keeps the momentum going.

At some point, any project may need some adjustments, so instead of restructuring teams, workflows, milestones, and the entire plan, Agile allows you to pivot direction in short iterations.

The team cycles through one iteration at a time, allowing the client to provide feedback and request changes throughout the process.

Now that you’re familiar with both approaches to project planning, it often helps to see how they would look in practice. Let’s take a closer look.

How to create a project plan using the traditional planning method

Whether you choose the Traditional or Agile route, make sure all tasks contribute to the end goal. Check out this breakdown of the Traditional method in project planning.

Step 1: Collect the project requirements

Before working on your project management plan, think about your key stakeholders. Consider the following questions:

• What do they want?
• What are they trying to accomplish with this project?
• How do they define success?

To avoid miscommunication or project misalignment, don’t assume the answers to the above questions—ask the stakeholders for their input in a kickoff meeting to have a better understanding of what this project should accomplish.

Step 2: Define your objectives

Now that you’ve confirmed what your stakeholders are looking for and received some insights, it’s time to define and prioritize your project objectives .

Create a list of all the things you want to achieve and prioritize them based on importance, urgency, effort (difficulty), and impact. Prioritization matrices, such as Eisenhower’s, can be helpful for this step. Here’s an example of the Eisenhower Matrix:

Once you input your information, it’s onto step three.

Step 3: Define the project scope on a work level

There’s only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time. When it comes to achieve a goal—regardless of its size—chunking it down into small, individual steps often makes it feel more manageable.

After setting and prioritizing goals, identify the different tasks that make them up and create a clear project scope and roadmap of action. Using a robust project management software , you can easily set dependencies for each tasks and define which ones you and your team can tackle concurrently. Then, as you start your project, you can use the Work OS to track progress against your plan.

Step 4: Define your deliverables

Now that you’ve set goals and specific tasks, get clear on how to define success. In this stage, you’ll want to define your deliverables.

A project deliverable is the result you produce from completing a process or project. For instance, if you’re a marketing agency, a deliverable could be a website, a magazine ad, or a documented sales process.

No matter what kind of project you’re working on, you’ll need deliverables to show results or proof of success. What will those look like? Get as specific as you can. Recording and planning concrete deliverables makes it easy to track progress.

Step 5: Prepare the overall schedule and project budget

Now that you have goals, tasks, and deliverables, it’s time to design a project schedule. A project schedule will define who is working on what and each task’s completion date.

It’s also helpful to include all of the resources you need to complete each task. Recording all of this information in one place will help you uncover  any potential adjustments you might need to make for other project stages.

Step 6: Set a communication plan

To get all team members on the same page, define which communication channels you’ll use throughout the project with a project communication plan . Many teams choose to communicate over several channels and in this case, it helps to have a way to manage and organize all of these channels.

Step 7: Design a contingency plan

Even the best planned projects have some risk. The next step in creating an effective project plan is to create a contingency plan . Essentially, it’s a plan for handling the unplanned.

When coming up with your contingency plan, it’s helpful to ask a few questions:

• What are the main risks for this project?
• How likely are they to occur?
• How can you minimize or eliminate them?
• How should you act in case of a “disaster”?

The Traditional approach to project planning has you collect all assets and information before starting the project. In Agile, you’ll take a different approach.

How to adapt the traditional planning process for Agile teams

Now that you understand the traditional approach to project planning, let’s see how you can adapt it for Agile projects.

Step 1: Preplanning

The Agile planning process starts with preplanning. In this stage, the team will collect any requirements for the roadmap and product backlog and create a high-level estimation of time for each iteration, team roles, and costs.

Based on this information, the team can create a rough estimate of the total project duration.

Step 2: Release planning

Next, the team starts planning releases. In the planning phase, you can define whether you’ll release iterations as they’re completed or multiple iterations at once during specific periods.

( Image Source )

You’ll focus on breaking down the product backlog into an estimated number of iterations and assigning them plan releases. Based on the release plan, the team can identify when the final product might be completed.

Step 3: Iteration planning

Agile is all about iterations. Instead of focusing on planning the project as a whole, Agile teams focus on planning only the next iteration. After each iteration, your team will gather and review how things went and define the scope — sprint backlog — of the next iteration.

This can be done following the process below:

Step 4: Manage product backlog

After each iteration, the project team reviews and updates the product backlog based on their outcomes, findings, and client feedback.

You can add new features and bugs, further elaborate on requirements, and shift priorities. Now’s the time to update your overall plan to reflect new information.

Step 5: Back to iteration planning

Now the cycle continues. Once you’ve updated your product backlog, you’ll launch into the next sprint or iteration planning stage. This process continues until you deliver the final iteration and product to your customer.

Then all that’s left to plan is the celebration.

Whether you choose the Traditional or Agile route, you’ll need the right tools to successfully complete any project. No matter which stage in the project life cycle ,  a Work OS—such as monday.com—will help foster clear communication between all stakeholders, track project progress, show who is responsible for what, keep all documents in one central place, and much more.

Start your project planning with monday.com

As the project plans is a roadmap of how you’ll achieve your goals, it’s an essential part of the project life cycle process. Thorough project plans usually include every part of the project including project scope, cost breakdown , resource breakdown , project assumptions , risk, and stakeholder engagement.

And as we covered above, whether you choose Agile or traditional methodologies, a solid plan will strengthen your project management efforts and save you a lot of wasted time.

monday.com Work OS can help you implement any process easily so you always have a clear idea of where your project stands. Don’t leave your success up to chance. Ensure your project planning strategy is a success with the help of monday.com.

Understanding the 5 phases of project management

It’s always daunting at the outset of a new project (unless you’re like the Spiderman of project management or something, in which case, good for you — but I’m speaking for the rest of us, Peter Parker). Anyway, the point is, don’t worry so much — with the right tools and processes, you’ll nail this one just like you did the last one (maybe better!). 

To help you gain clarity and control over your project, let’s break down the five phases of project management in a way that’s as easy to follow as your favorite superhero movie. From dreaming up your project (phase one) to crossing the finish line (phase five), let’s see how a project lifecycle works.

What is project management lifecycle?

Project management lifecycle is a framework that outlines the stages or phases through which your project progresses from initiation to completion. Each stage has its unique set of tasks, goals, and objectives.

Now, why is this important? Think, if you would, about building a house. You wouldn’t start by randomly laying bricks, would you? First, you’d design a blueprint to make sure that every room serves its purpose, from the kitchen to the bedroom. The project lifecycle works the same way. It structures your project into manageable stages, ensuring you plan, execute, and review every task with precision.

Related: 4 best practices for collaborative project management

Five phases of project management lifecycle

The five project management phases help you meet the requirements of a project, which includes defining what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and how to keep everything on track.

Let’s take a closer look at each phase.

Phase 1: Project initiation

This phase marks the starting point of your project journey. It’s where you define the project’s objectives, scope, and stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities.

Key activities of the first phase include:

• Project charter: It’s akin to your project’s mission statement, outlining the goals, scope, budget, and timeline. Think of the charter as your north star , guiding the team toward a common destination.
• Stakeholder identification : These are the folks who’ll be directly impacted by your project or have a say in its outcome — whether they’re team members, clients, or sponsors. Getting them on board early on sets the stage for collaboration and support throughout your journey.
• Initial scope of the project : This step clarifies what’s in and what’s out of your project. If you’re building a website, defining the scope involves specifying what features the website will have (like a homepage, contact page, and product listings) and what it won’t have (like a forum or chatroom).

Use visual collaboration software like Mural to make sure your whole project team is on the same page about the expectations. 

• Pro-tip: Mural’s project kickoff template includes a pre-built agenda to help you easily align your team.

Phase 2: Project planning

The planning phase is all about taking the big-picture vision and breaking it down into actionable steps. It involves laying out all the steps and strategies you’ll need for a successful project.

Key activities of the second phase include:

• Resource allocation : Determine what resources — whether it’s people, equipment, or materials — you’ll need to bring your project to life. 
• Scheduling: Create a timeline for your project and map out key milestones, deadlines, and dependencies to make sure everything stays on track.
• Risk identification: List potential risks, assess their likelihood and impact, and develop strategies to address or mitigate them.
• Budget planning: Estimate costs, allocate funds, and establish mechanisms for tracking and managing expenses throughout the project lifecycle.

When it comes to the planning phase of project development, you need effective collaboration for decision-making. That’s where Mural truly shines. 

• Pro-tip: Our project planning template provides a digital workspace to brainstorm ideas and share insights. With features like voting, commenting, and annotations, you can evaluate alternatives, identify trade-offs, and make informed decisions that align with project objectives.

Phase 3: Project execution

The execution phase is where you put your plans into action and make things happen. Think of it like building a LEGO set — you’ve got all the pieces laid out, and now it’s time to start assembling them.

In this phase, you and your team dive into the work, tackling tasks, solving problems, and progressing towards your project goals. 

Key activities of the third phase include:

• Task implementation: Begin executing the tasks outlined in the project plan. This step involves activities such as design, development, testing, and production, depending on the nature of the project.
• Quality assurance: Make sure deliverables meet the standards set out in your project plan. Conduct thorough testing, review work against predefined criteria, and promptly address any discrepancies or defects.
• Change management: Despite your best efforts to plan ahead, changes to project scope, schedule, or resources may occur during execution. You must implement the approved changes while minimizing disruption to the project’s progress.
• Documentation: Use agile documentation to capture information in a lightweight and flexible manner. It includes maintaining user stories, sprint backlogs, and task boards, as well as documenting decisions, agreements, and lessons learned in real time. 

In the execution phase of project management, you can use Mural’s free templates, like a Kanban board or process flowchart , to visualize workflows. By tracking who's doing what and when you easily identify potential bottlenecks in the project.

Phase 4: Project monitoring and controlling

This phase involves tracking, reviewing, and regulating your project to ensure it stays on course and achieves its objectives. Keep a close eye on the project’s progress, including tasks completed, milestones achieved, and resources used.

Key activities of the fourth phase include:

• Scope verification and control: Verify that each deliverable meets the specified requirements and standards. If there are any changes or deviations from the plan, carefully evaluate them to make sure they won’t throw you off track.
• Schedule control: Continuously review the project schedule to ensure tasks get completed on time. If there are delays or schedule changes, you need to reallocate resources or adjust task dependencies to keep things under control.
• Cost control: Money matters! Keep a close eye on your project budget, making sure you're not spending more than you should. If costs start to creep up, figure out ways to rein them in — whether it’s renegotiating contracts, finding cheaper alternatives, or reallocating resources.

Phase 5: Project closing

Congratulations, you’ve made it to the finish line! The closing phase of project management is the point where you formally complete all project activities and tasks.

Key activities of the fifth phase include:

• Handover: If the project involves handing off deliverables to another team or department, provide necessary training or documentation to ensure the new owners can easily take over responsibility for the project.
• Stakeholder feedback : Reach out to your project stakeholders — clients, team members, sponsors — and ask for their honest feedback. What worked well? What could’ve been better? It’s like conducting a post-mortem on your project, learning from your mistakes, and celebrating your successes.
• Resource release: It’s time to say goodbye to your project resources and return them to the organization. This step involves returning equipment, releasing team members to their respective departments, or closing out any contracts or agreements related to project resources. 
• Project review: Finally, use Mural’s retrospective template to conduct a comprehensive review of the project’s performance, outcomes, and lessons learned. This review includes a formal post-project evaluation, where you assess the project against its initial objectives and identify areas for improvement.

Optimize and visualize the phases of project management with Mural

From initiation to closing, Mural empowers you to collaborate and succeed — all in one virtual workspace. With Mural’s free templates , you optimize and visualize all five phases of the project management journey seamlessly. 

From creating interactive team charters in project initiation to mapping out product roadmaps in project planning, Mural serves as your virtual command center. During the project execution phase, Mural helps you visualize workflows for quick decision-making. With customizable dashboards and metrics tracking, you get effective project monitoring and control. And in the project closing phase, you're able to analyze project metrics, document lessons learned, and more. 

Sign up for free today to experience the power of visual collaboration firsthand.

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The PMBOK’s Five Project Phases

March 20, 2017 by Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP Leave a Comment

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) divides projects into five phases.  Although the term ‘phase’ implies that they are carried out in chronological order, in practice they can be performed out of order.  For example, when project changes occur the project manager would proceed back to the planning phase.  For this reason they are officially called process groups .

The process groups are:

• Initiating.  The project is authorized, funded and defined.  This phase occurs on the organizational level (i.e. above the project).  The organization defines a business need the project is meant to satisfy.
• Planning.  The project manager develops a project management plan , which defines how the project will be carried out, who will do the work, how long it will take, and so forth.  The project management plan must be approved by the project sponsor to become official, and changes must be re-approved according to the change management processes described therein.
• Execution.  The project team gets to work producing the project’s deliverables .
• Monitoring & Controlling.  The project manager ensures that the work is carried out according to the plan, and tracks deviations using earned value analysis for schedule and cost, as will as monitoring the scope, communications, vendors, and any other item necessary to ensure the project goes according to plan.
• Closing.  The project must be officially closed, final details determined, vendors released, and so forth.

Project Initiating

This phase includes the initial work necessary to create and authorize the project.  In the PMBOK it contains only two processes:

• Develop Project Charter
• Identify Stakeholders

The project charter’s purpose is to incorporate the project and authorize the project manager. It is developed by the performing organization (i.e. above the project) but it can be delegated to the project manager. It contains whatever information is necessary to perform this function, but can also include things like:

• Scope statement
• Initial project budget allocation
• Primary stakeholders

Once the project has been initiated, the project manager proceeds into the planning phase.

• Project Planning

This phase is frequently underestimated.  In the PMBOK, it contains all 10 project knowledge areas .  Project success is usually directly related to the amount of planning that has been performed.

The primary project management document created during this phase is called a Project Management Plan , and it contains the following information:

• Success Factors.  The definition of project success is established.  This usually includes schedule and budget, but often there are many other smaller factors that cannot be overlooked.
• Scope statement.   The work that will be part of the project is identified, and its boundaries established.
• Deliverables.  The products and/or services that the project will produce are listed.
• Schedule.   The project is broken down into tasks.  Timelines of each task are determined and deadlines for each project deliverable are determined.
• Budget.   The estimated cost of each task is determined and rolled up into an overall project budget.
• Human resource plan.   The project team roles and responsibilities are identified, and the method of acquisition for project team members is established.
• Quality management plan.   The quality standards for the deliverables are identified and quality assurance and control metrics established.
• Risk management plan.  The most important risks to the project success factors (#1) are determined and analyzed to ensure they can be managed.
• Procurement management plan.   The external vendor needs are established and methods for acquisition and control of outside vendors established.
• Change procedures.  The documentation and methods by which changes to the project management plan will be handled.

The project management plan should be approved by the project sponsor to kick off the project execution phase.  From this point on, changes must be made through the project change control methods described within the plan, which normally should include a re-approval by the project sponsor.

• Project Execution

In this phase the bulk of the project work takes place.  The project manager directs and manages project work, and the project team carries it out.  The project deliverables are produced and delivered to the project sponsor (or whomever they are produced for).  The two key project management documents during this phase are:

• Project Status Updates.  The project manager produces regular status updates according to the requirements of the project management plan.  These updates generally include cost and schedule status as well as future projections.
• Stakeholder communications.  Each stakeholder generally needs to be communicated with on their own terms with information specific to them.  During project execution this communication is performed as outlined within the project management plan.
• Monitoring and Controlling

This phase occurs concurrently and parallel to the project execution phase.  The project manager must perform sufficient monitoring and control to ensure that the project’s deliverables are produced on time, on budget, and to sufficient quality.

The bulk of a project manager’s time in the project monitoring phase will be spent on a process called Earned Value Analysis .  In this system the project manager calculates the project status from two standpoints:  Schedule and Cost.  It can be done at any time and can give you excellent advanced warning of the project going astray.

The variables calculated in this method are:

• Planned Value (PV) , is the budgeted amount for each task at the specified point of analysis (usually today).
• Earned Value (EV) , is the actual completion amount of each task relative to the task budget.
• Actual Cost (AC) , is the actual expenditure for each task.
• Cost Variance (CV) is the amount that the project in a cost overrun or underrun position.  CV = EV – AC
• Cost Performance Index (CPI) is the relative amount that the project is over or under budget.  CPI = EV / AC.
• Schedule Variance (SV) is the amount that the project is behind or ahead of schedule.  SV = EV – PV.
• Schedule Performance Index (SPI) is the relative amount that the project is ahead or behind schedule.  SPI = EV / PV.
• More advance variables include Budget at Completion (BAC) , Estimate at Completion (EAC) , Variance at Completion (VAC) , Estimate to Complete (ETC) , and To Complete Performance Index (TCPI) .  Each of these variables is described in our Practical Guide to Earned Value Analysis .

Earned value analysis is instantaneous, that is, it will give you a project status right at the point of analysis.  It is a “snapshot” of the project’s schedule and budget status at any given time.

If the monitoring of the project results in changes to the project management plan, the change control procedures outlined within the plan are implemented.  For small projects this could be as simple as a “change log” form.

Project Closing

Interestingly, project closing is the phase that is most ignored (or minimized) by project managers.  This is probably because the project budget is gone, or mostly gone.  Or maybe we just want to move on.  But regardless of why, the project closing phase is extremely visible to the corporate executives and can have a major impact on project managers’ careers.

Closing the project has one project management deliverable: A final report.  This report should have the following parts:

• Formal closure.   Contracts are finalized, and the project is declared complete.
• Funding.   The project’s final budget is confirmed and excess funding released into general revenue.
• Procurements.  The project’s vendor contracts are finalized and completion certificates issued.
• Final Details.  Documentation of actual work performed, as-built drawings, or other details that need to be filed away for future reference.
• Liabilities.   Warranties, insurance coverage, and bonds need to be established and agreed to.
• Release of Resources.   The project team, equipment and other resources need to be returned to their rightful place.
• Lessons Learned.   Documentation of lessons learned during the project can be invaluable to future projects.

Related posts:

About Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP

Bernie Roseke, P.Eng., PMP, is the president of Roseke Engineering . As a bridge engineer and project manager, he manages projects ranging from small, local bridges to multi-million dollar projects. He is also the technical brains behind ProjectEngineer , the online project management system for engineers. He is a licensed professional engineer, certified project manager, and six sigma black belt. He lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, with his wife and two kids.

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Project Planning Phases: Key Strategies for Success

Unveil the world of Project Planning Phases and understand the vital role they play in successful project management. Explore the significance of project planning and dive into the five key phases: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closure. Gain insights into essential strategies for achieving success in project planning.

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In this blog, we will d ive into the various Project Planning Phases and explore key strategies for ensuring a successful outcome. From initiation to closure, we will explore the Phases of Project Planning and provide you with insights that can be applied to your own projects. 

  Table of Contents  

1)   The importance of Project Planning 

2)  Phases of Project Planning   

     a) Phase 1: Initiation 

     b) Phase 2: Planning 

     c) Phase 3: Execution 

     d) Phase 4: Monitoring and controlling 

     e) Phase 5: Closure 

3) Key strategies for success in Project Planning 

4) Conclusion  

The importance of Project Planning    

Project Planning is the compass that guides a project from inception to completion, ensuring it stays on course and achieves its objectives efficiently. It provides clarity by defining project goals, scope, timelines, and resource allocation, allowing stakeholders to understand their roles and responsibilities.  

Moreover, effective planning minimises risks, anticipates challenges, and facilitates better decision-making throughout the project's lifecycle. It saves time and resources by preventing scope creep and reducing the need for corrective actions later on . Ultimately, Project Planning is the foundation upon which successful projects are built, leading to better outcomes, satisfied stakeholders, and enhanced Project Management. 

Enhance your Project Management skills with our Project Management Courses | Training & Certifications . Join now and drive project success!  

Phases of Project Planning   

Phase 1: Initiation   

The initiation phase is the project's birth, where the seeds of success are sown. During this critical stage, the project's purpose and objectives are clearly defined. It's about answering the fundamental questions: What are we trying to achieve, and why? Stakeholders are identified, and their specific needs and expectations are assessed.  

The development of a project charter, a document that encapsulates the project's essence, is a hallmark of this phase. By meticulously laying these foundations, you establish a robust framework for the entire project, ensuring everyone is aligned towards a common goal. 

Phase 2: Planning   

The planning phase is akin to drawing up the blueprint for a building. Here, you d ive into the specifics of how the project will unfold. Key elements such as scope, time, resources, and risks are thoroughly examined. The scope defines what is within the project's boundaries and what isn't.  

A detailed project schedule is created, allocating time and resources optimally. Risk assessments are conducted to identify potential pitfalls and develop mitigation strategies. This phase is the backbone of Project Management, providing a roadmap that guides the project from inception to completion, reducing uncertainties and improving control. 

Phase 3: Execution   

With a solid plan in place, the execution phase is where the project takes shape. It involves mobilising the project team, allocating resources, and putting the plan into action. Effective communication is paramount during this phase, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and progress is tracked. 

Quality assurance measures are implemented to maintain the standard of deliverables. Additionally, change management strategies come into play as unforeseen challenges may arise. Successful execution relies on the coordination of efforts, efficient resource utilisation, and a constant focus on meeting the project's objectives. 

Phase 4: Monitoring and controlling   

Once the project is underway, the monitoring and controlling phase serves as the compass to keep it on course. Here, progress is rigorously tracked against the project plan. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are used to measure just how well the project is meeting its goals. Issues and deviations are identified promptly, and corrective actions are taken to address them.  

Cost management is integral to ensuring the project remains within budget. Scope changes are carefully managed to prevent "scope creep," which can derail the project. This phase is all about maintaining control and making timely adjustments to ensure the project stays on track. 

Phase 5: Closure   

The closure phase marks the project's triumphant finale. Here, deliverables are reviewed and accepted by stakeholders, ensuring that they meet the agreed-upon criteria. Knowledge transfer is a crucial component, as the project team imparts their expertise to those who will be responsible for ongoing maintenance or support.  

A post-implementation evaluation is conducted to assess the project's overall success and learn valuable lessons for future endeavours. Closure activities include administrative tasks like finalising contracts, releasing project resources, and archiving project documentation. Successfully closing a project not only wraps it up neatly but also paves the way for new beginnings and future successes. 

Take your first step into Project Management excellence. Sign up for our Introduction to Project Management Certification Course today!  

Key strategies for success in Project Planning    

Clear communication  

Effective communication is paramount throughout all project phases. Ensure that project goals, objectives, and expectations are clearly articulated to all stakeholders. Encourage open and honest communication channels, fostering an environment where members can share their ideas and concerns. Regular updates and status reports keep everyone informed and aligned. 

Stakeholder engagement  

Identify and engage with stakeholders early and consistently. Understand their needs, interests, and concerns. Regularly seek their input and feedback to make informed decisions and manage expectations. Engaged stakeholders are more likely to support the project and contribute to its success. 

Risk mitigation  

Comprehensive risk assessment and management are crucial. Identify potential risks, assess their impact and likelihood, and develop mitigation strategies. Review and update the risk register regularly throughout the project's lifecycle. Being proactive in addressing risks can prevent costly setbacks. 

Quality c ontrol  

Quality should be at the forefront of Project Planning. Establish clear quality standards and procedures from the outset. Regularly monitor and assess deliverables to ensure they meet these standards. Implement quality assurance processes to identify and rectify issues early, preventing rework later in the project. 

Continuous improvement  

Embrace a culture of continuous improvement. Regularly review and learn from past projects, identifying areas for enhancement in your planning and execution processes. Encourage team members to share lessons learned, promoting a culture of innovation and growth. 

Flexibility and adaptability  

While a well-defined plan is essential, be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances. Project plans should be dynamic documents that can accommodate unforeseen challenges. Build contingency plans and be open to adjusting timelines or resources when necessary.  

Resource allocation  

Allocate resources judiciously, considering the project's scope and objectives. Ensure that team members have the necessary skills and tools to complete their tasks efficiently. Regularly monitor resource usage and make adjustments as required to maintain optimal productivity. 

Clear scope management  

Prevent scope creep by rigorously managing project scope. Document all scope changes, assess their impact on the project, and obtain proper approvals. A well-defined scope ensures that the project stays on track and within the agreed-upon boundaries. 

Team collaboration  

Promote a collaborative team environment where members feel valued and empowered. Encourage cross-functional collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a shared sense of ownership. A cohesive team is more likely to overcome challenges and deliver successful outcomes. 

Comprehensive d ocumentation  

Conclusion  

Success in Project Management is not just a matter of chance; it's a product of meticulous planning and execution. The Project Planning Phases form the bedrock of this success. By adhering to key strategies like clear communication, stakeholder engagement, risk mitigation, and a commitment to quality, project managers can navigate the complexities of any endeavour, ensuring that projects reach their intended destinations with efficiency and excellence. 

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Project planning: What is it and 5 steps to create a plan

• Ben Lutkevich, Site Editor

What is project planning?

Project planning is a discipline addressing how to complete a project in a certain timeframe, usually with defined stages and designated resources. One view of project planning divides the activity into these steps:

• setting measurable objectives
• identifying deliverables
• planning tasks

Supporting plans may encompass human resources, communication methods and risk management .

Enterprises often have an information technology project planning guide that identifies the processes used. Tools used for the scheduling parts of a plan include Gantt charts and PERT charts .

Why is project planning important?

Project planning is important at every phase of a project. It lays out the basics of a project, including the following:

Planning enables project managers to turn an intangible idea into reality. Key purposes of planning include the following:

• facilitate communication and provide a central source of information for project personnel;
• help the project sponsor and other key stakeholders know what is required;
• identify who will perform certain tasks, and when and how those tasks will happen;
• facilitate project management and control as the project progresses;
• enable effective monitoring and control of a project;
• manage project risk; and
• generate feedback useful for the next project planning phase.

What are the components of a project plan?

The three major parts of a project plan are the scope, budget and timeline. They involve the following aspects:

• Scope. The scope determines what a project team will and will not do. It takes the team's vision, what stakeholders want and the customer's requirements and then determines what's possible. As part of defining the project scope, the project manager must set performance goals.
• Budget. Project managers look at what manpower and other resources will be required to meet the project goals to estimate the project's cost.
• Timeline. This reveals the length of time expected to complete each phase of the project and includes a schedule of milestones that will be met.

How do you create a project plan?

Project planning includes the following 10 steps:

• Define stakeholders. Stakeholders include anyone with an interest in the project. They can include the customer or end user, members of the project team, other people in the organization the project will affect and outside organizations or individuals with an interest.
• Define roles. Each stakeholder's role should be clearly defined. Some people will fill multiple roles, however.
• Introduce stakeholders. Hold a meeting to bring stakeholders together and unify the vision behind the project. The topics covered should include scope, goals, budget, schedule and roles.
• Set goals. Take what is gleaned from the meeting and refine it into a project plan. It should include goals and deliverables that define what the product or service will result in.
• Prioritize tasks. List tasks necessary to meet goals and prioritize them based on importance and interdependencies. A Gantt chart can be helpful for mapping project dependencies.
• Create a schedule. Establish a timeline that considers the resources needed for all the tasks.
• Assess risks. Identify project risks and develop strategies for mitigating them.
• Communicate. Share the plan with all stakeholders and provide communications updates in the format and frequency stakeholders expect.
• Reassess. As milestones are met, revisit the project plan and revise any areas that are not meeting expectations.
• Final evaluation. Once the project is completed, performance should be evaluated to learn from the experience and identify areas to improve.

What are the 5 phases of a project?

Projects typically pass through five phases. The project lifecycle includes the following:

• Initiation defines project goals and objectives. It also is when feasibility is considered, along with how to measure project objectives.
• Planning sets out the project scope. It establishes what tasks need to get done and who will do them.
• Execution is when the deliverables are created. This is the longest phase of a project. During execution, the plan is set into motion and augmented, if necessary.
• Monitoring and management occur during the execution phase and may be considered part of the same step. This phase ensures that the project is going according to plan.
• Closing and review is the final Contracts are closed out and the final deliverables are given to the client. Successes and failures are evaluated.

What are some project planning tools and software?

Project planning and project management software facilitate the project planning process. The best tools support collaboration among stakeholders, have intuitive user interfaces and provide built-in time tracking and invoicing.

Some project planning software tools include the following:

• Asana offers different project views to suit a team's preferences.
• ClickUp comes with several Agile -based features, including a custom automation builder that lets users create reusable task templates.
• Freedcamp lets users organize their projects using a Gantt chart or Kanban
• Hive has a template creation tool in the task management feature that speeds up task creation.
• Scoro is a combination of tools and includes customer relationship management
• Trello provides Kanban features, budget management, resource management and progress tracking features.
• Wrike integrates with tools like Jira , Slack and Dropbox.

Learn more about the various tools that help with project management .

Continue Reading About Project planning: What is it and 5 steps to create a plan

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• 10 top project management courses and certifications
• RACI matrix for project management success, with example
• Quiz yourself on Agile project management principles
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Project Plan Examples: How to Write an Effective Plan (2024)

Key takeaways What is a project plan? A project plan outlines the project’s scope, objectives, and schedule; it details what needs to be done, when, and by whom. The plan includes significant deliverables, methods to achieve them, team roles, stakeholder feedback, and milestones. This transparency makes sure everyone involved understands their role and how it…

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Key takeaways

• A project plan is a vital document in project management that outlines the project’s scope, objectives, and schedule.
• Effective project planning enhances resource management, mitigates risks, and improves project implementation and success.
• Project plans can vary in format, such as Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Gantt charts, and mind maps for brainstorming.

Jan. 8, 2024: Irene Casucian reviewed the information on this page for accuracy, refined the page layout, and added elements to improve the visual flow of information. She also created a downloadable project plan template.

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What is a project plan.

A project plan outlines the project’s scope, objectives, and schedule; it details what needs to be done, when, and by whom. The plan includes significant deliverables, methods to achieve them, team roles, stakeholder feedback, and milestones. This transparency makes sure everyone involved understands their role and how it contributes to the overall goal.

A project plan is the tangible output of the second phase of project management , project planning . This phase involves identifying and arranging each task necessary to cover the project’s scope, achieve deliverables, and meet the project’s goals. A comprehensive project plan developed in this phase is instrumental in tracking dependencies, staying updated on the status, and maintaining productivity throughout the project.

What are the key elements of an effective project plan?

A well-prepared project plan requires several key elements that will outline the project’s goals and define the stakeholders ‘ individual roles. Incorporating these key elements into a project plan is essential for effective project management and a higher success rate.

How do you create a project plan?

Step 1: define the project’s overall goals and objectives.

Identifying your project’s overall objectives and goals will help you measure the project’s success and keep your team aligned with the overarching mission. In this step, you should determine the desired outcome of your project that would represent its success.

By clearly understanding what the project aims to accomplish, project managers and teams can better identify the necessary tasks and establish the project scope . 

When defining your project goals, apply the SMART standards for a solid foundation. Make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This approach guarantees a clear, focused, and actionable framework for your project.

Step 2: Establish the project’s success criteria

To measure success effectively, align your success criteria with the project’s key deliverables and outcomes, and make sure they are based on its intended result. Confirm that these criteria are quantifiable and accurately reflect the impact and value your project aims to deliver. Such alignment is essential for accurately assessing the project’s performance and its effectiveness in achieving the intended results.

Step 3: Identify project milestones, dependencies, risks, and deliverables

To identify project milestones, break the project down into key tasks and outcomes and specify significant progress points or phase completions as milestones. Consider dependencies when establishing a realistic workflow. Additionally, identify potential risks that can impact task completion and define deliverables clearly as measurable results expected from each project phase.

Step 4: Assign roles and responsibilities to the team and stakeholders

Your project’s stakeholders include any individuals or groups related to the project. To assess if someone is a stakeholder in a project, determine how much they influence, impact, or have an interest in the project’s outcome. Consider if their involvement is direct, if the project’s results affect them, or if they can influence the project’s direction or success.

Examples of stakeholder groups include:

• Team members.
• Departments.
• Project sponsors.
• Contractors.

Once you have determined your stakeholders, you can define their roles and responsibilities. This can help you structure your project team, identify members who are directly responsible for its success, and make sure they are assigned the correct tasks to carry out the project appropriately.

When assigning roles and responsibilities, utilize a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to clarify the involvement of each stakeholder in the project. This provides clear communication and accountability and prevents overlaps or gaps in responsibilities.

Step 5: Create a schedule and set a timeline

Creating a schedule and timeline for each task can provide visibility into the execution process and keep each team member productive.

Consider how much time is required to complete each task necessary for your project milestones. You can even break down tasks into smaller subtasks to make them more manageable. However, be mindful of factors that can cause delays such as:

• Resource limitations.
• Task dependencies.
• Unforeseen risks.

When creating a project schedule, visual tools like Gantt charts and Kanban boards help you map out task dependencies and timelines. A useful project management tool you can use for this step is Trello. Trello offers an intuitive platform for creating Kanban boards. It allows easy visualization and management of tasks through customizable columns and cards for streamlined project workflow.

Step 6: Establish an estimated project budget

To generate an estimated project budget, you must consider all of the necessary project resources, including personnel, labor, materials, and equipment. Establishing a project budget will help you make wise spending decisions throughout the project execution phase to avoid overspending. 

Step 7: Plan for communication and collaboration

A communication plan should show how information is shared among stakeholders. For instance, in a software development project, the communication plan might specify that the development team shares a beta version of the software with the client for feedback every two weeks. It’s a systematic approach to making sure that the client receives consistent updates about the project’s progress. Having a communication plan in place will also outline the channels of communication and frequency to all necessary parties. 

Leverage collaboration tools , such as Slack , that integrate with your project management software to receive real-time updates and interactions among team members and stakeholders. 

Step 8: Document the project plan

Compile all related planning information and documentation as you plan your project. Some of these vital documents include: 

• Stakeholder analysis.
• Feasibility study .
• Business case.
• Work breakdown structure .

Having these reports in one place will serve as a reference during the project’s execution.

Utilize a centralized digital platform, like Sharepoint , where stakeholders can store, update, and access all project documentation. This approach serves as a reliable reference and streamlines the management and tracking of the project’s progress.

Learn more about Sharepoint and other document management tools in our video overview:

Free project plan template download

Project plan examples.

Using an appropriate project plan format is essential to keeping stakeholders well-informed. Here are some of the widely-used project plan formats: 

1.  Spreadsheets

Using spreadsheets for project planning is beneficial due to its simplicity and widespread use, especially suitable for small-scale projects with straightforward tasks. Its customizable nature is excellent for simple initiatives like office events or basic marketing plans.

However, a significant drawback of using spreadsheets in project planning is the limited visualization options. While spreadsheets can manage data, they fail to offer comprehensive visual representations essential for a holistic view of project progress. Lastly, the risk of human error in data entry and formula setup in spreadsheets is high and can lead to critical miscalculations affecting the entire project plan.

Try this software

For more complex projects, Smartsheet is an ideal upgrade. It merges the simplicity of a spreadsheet with advanced project management features such as real-time collaboration, automated workflows , and app integration. More than just a basic spreadsheet tool, Smartsheet is particularly effective for large-scale projects like detailed marketing campaigns or cross-departmental efforts, offering comprehensive task tracking and resource management in a user-friendly format.

2. Slideshow presentations

Slideshow presentations for project plans provide a visually engaging method to simplify complex information. They effectively break down project components into understandable segments, using visuals, charts, and bullet points to highlight key information and timelines for team members and stakeholders.

However, the downside is that slide shows can oversimplify complex projects and potentially leave out critical nuances. They also require significant preparation time and may not be the best medium for detailed, data-heavy projects.

Microsoft PowerPoint is an excellent choice for creating slide show presentations as part of project plans. It’s user-friendly and offers many templates and design tools. That’s why it’s suitable for beginners and seasoned professionals. PowerPoint’s ability to integrate with other Microsoft Office tools, like Excel for data representation, enhances its utility in project planning.

3. Gantt charts

Gantt charts create a clear visual timeline of a project’s schedule and progress by displaying various project elements’ start and finish dates. This approach helps identify potential bottlenecks and overlaps and facilitates better resource allocation and time management. However, Gantt charts can become cumbersome for complex projects with numerous tasks and dependencies.

Gantt charts are particularly effective in construction projects, event planning, and software development, where timelines and task dependencies are critical.

TeamGantt is an effective PM tool that creates clear visual timelines for project schedules and progress tracking. By allowing users to input various project elements, including tasks, milestones, and dependencies, and then assigning start and finish dates to each, TeamGantt generates an intuitive Gantt chart.

This chart visually represents the project timeline, displaying how different tasks and phases overlap and interconnect over the project duration. The color-coded bars and easy-to-read format make it simple to understand the sequencing of tasks and the project’s overall progress at a glance.

4.     Mind maps

Mind maps differ from other project visualization methods by showing a radial, non-linear format ideal for brainstorming and capturing the holistic view of a project. They emphasize the creative mapping of ideas and relationships. They promote the free flow of ideas and easy visualization of relationships between different aspects of a project. Mind maps can also help identify key components, dependencies, and potential challenges at the early stages of a project.

Moreover, using a mind map before presenting a Gantt chart can help ease the transition from creative brainstorming to detailed scheduling, resource allocation, and progress tracking.

Lucidchart is an excellent software solution for creating mind maps that can be converted into detailed reports. Its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface is ideal for conceptualizing project plans.

Lucidchart also stands out because it integrates with various tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. This integration can facilitate the transition from a visual mind map to a comprehensive written report.

Components of project planning

Work breakdown schedule development.

Using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in project planning offers distinct advantages and some drawbacks. The primary benefit of a WBS is its ability to break down a complex project into manageable components. It is then easier to allocate resources, assign responsibilities, and track progress. This hierarchical project decomposition guarantees that every part of the project is apparent.

However, the main disadvantage lies in its potential rigidity; a WBS can become overly prescriptive, limiting flexibility and adaptability to changes or unforeseen challenges. Additionally, creating a comprehensive WBS can be time-consuming, and if not done meticulously, it may lead to gaps or overlaps in project planning.

monday.com includes a work breakdown feature to help teams organize complex projects into manageable tasks. Each task is separated into more minor subtasks assigned to the appropriate individuals. The chart also displays additional information, such as the deliverables, end dates, and schedules based on interdependencies.

Project and documentation management 

Project and documentation management in project planning has its own advantages and disadvantages. With this process, you can make sure that all project-related documents are organized, up-to-date, and easily accessible. This approach is essential for maintaining consistency and clarity throughout the project lifecycle. Yet, the downside includes the possibility of information overload, where team members might get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of documents.

Agile teams use Jira for planning and managing their projects. Here, you can see some of the information regarding risks and dependencies compiled within Jira. This method of organizing this information can be helpful, as the platform can act as a single source of truth to keep team members updated on the status of specific tasks. It also makes it easy for teams to communicate with external stakeholders about factors impacting the project.

Benefits of creating a project plan

Effective project planning is the cornerstone of successful project execution. It involves several key aspects contributing to a project’s smooth functioning and success. Some of these benefits include:

Remember, an effective project plan is not just a document; it’s a strategic tool that integrates various critical elements to secure the project’s success.

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What is Project Planning? Steps, Process, Importance, Tools

Home Blog Project Management What is Project Planning? Steps, Process, Importance, Tools

There is a golden adage that says - "you don't plan to fail but you fail to plan"; well, it holds pretty much the same importance in project management as it does in all aspects of life. Project planning is quintessential to the project and projects that are not planned well result in unwanted overheads or at times sunk costs which result in pressures on the execution of the project and often escalate situations out of control for the project manager. 

What is Project Planning in Project Management?   

Project planning or project management planning is the foundation and most important stage of the project management life-cycle. The project planning activity sets the project foundations by base-lining the project scope, schedule, quality standards, objectives, and goals. Planning typically involves creating a document with all project information that comprises the respective tasks, assignee's, and areas of responsibility.

A project plan usually includes management plans for all areas of the project viz - integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholders. Creating a consolidated project plan can be done manually or with the help of automated project management software such as Agile Central, Jira, Asana, Wrike, nTask, etc. Creating a comprehensive project plan and envisioning a concrete project execution strategy can streamline and strengthen the project process and ensure successful project execution and delivery. 

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Why is Project Planning Important?   

In a formal project management life cycle, projects begin with the project charter providing authority to the project manager to utilize organizational resources and assets for the project. A lot of novice professionals may at this point question - what is project planning & why is it important? Here is where the importance of the project planning phase comes into the picture as planning goes a few steps ahead and guides the project manager in strategising: 

• How the project will move ahead i.e. how to plan a project’s activities,
• What kind of resources will be engaged at what duration,
• How unforeseen situations will be handled, and finally,
• What will be the baselines against which progress will be measured and reported 

The planning process in project management forms the basis of the next project phases i.e. execution, monitoring & controlling closure, and also stipulates how the project team will pursue the goals outlined in the business case and project charter. Project planning in project management is also important from a cost-saving perspective as any project can easily run into unknowns, environmental challenges, and scope creep that haunt the completion and delivery of any/all types of projects. It is only effective project planning that provides the required structure and foresight, thereby helping eliminate wasteful tasks and patterns to optimize efficiency and execution. 

Types of Project Planning   

Project planning can be of various types depending on the objective, scope, and purview of the activity in consideration. The 3 broad categories of planning include: 

• Vertical Planning  - involves creating a detailed hourly plan to roll up to the day and is also known as daily planning as it is done on that particular day; 
• Horizontal Planning - involves creating a plan for the day as a whole instead of focusing on every hour and can be done weekly or monthly as well; 
• Joint Planning - as the name suggests, involves both horizontal and vertical planning i.e. planning the tasks for the day as well as the week to have a bird's eye view and also a detailed plan at the same time. Joint planning requires careful consideration of the task duration and order of items, to sequence activities and complete them. 

What are the Components of a Project Plan?   

• Scope - Project scope includes the stakeholder requirements, deliverables, and goals that attribute to the project's success and completion. 
• Budget - Budget allocations define which resources will be aligned to the particular project activities based on their priority and requirements. Budget planning involves the allocation of people, processes, and technology per project needs.
• Timeline - Project planning involves defining timelines to the scope and aligning project tasks and activities, creating schedules with milestones, and tracking progress. 

Together, these 3 components viz, scope, budget, and timeline determine what the project will accomplish, how much will be spent on the project and when will the project be delivered and completed and form the foundation for an effective project planning process. 

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Project Management Planning Techniques   

Project management planning techniques are what put the whole project planning process in project management into real and practical action. They help formulate the roadmap with milestones, deliverables, and task-level action plan to create the project deliverables and complete the project successfully. While there may be many different techniques that project managers may use, each of them has its impact on the project outcomes and may be used at different times during the project. 

1.  SMART Goals 

Goal setting is the first step in the project planning methodology and entails creating an outline of the project outcome to define what steps need to be completed and what activities need to be performed to achieve the desired outcome. In this process, the goals that are defined should have the following attributes: 

• Specific - should be clear and concise to be achieved 
• Measurable - should be quantifiable and not open to interpretation 
• Attainable - should be realistic and feasible 
• Relevant - should align with the overall business objectives 
• Time-bound - should have a deadline or time-limit

2. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 

WBS is what defines how the overall project goals will be broken down into unit-level tasks/activities that will help create project deliverables to achieve project outcomes. It is essentially a visual representation of project tasks and activities presented in a hierarchical format. Creating a WBS involves breaking up high-level goal statements into doable tasks and activities to their respective unit level and allocating resources to the WBS items to create the outlined deliverables. There is also a WBS dictionary that augments the definition, break-up, and scope of work packages i.e. items in the WBS chart.

3. Cost Breakdown Structure 

This is an extension of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and is a hierarchical representation of costs at various levels of the WBS. CBS represents the cost of components in the WBS. It is a useful tool for structuring project financial management and the application of cost controls to track and manage project costs. 

4. Action Priority Matrix 

This is a prioritization tool that determines the sequence of tasks to balance between time and resources to optimize efficiencies. An action priority matrix is most useful in critical situations or time-crunch scenarios in the project. It has 4 quadrants - resulting in 4 possibilities, that are: 

• Quick Wins/urgent
• Major projects/not urgent 
• Fill-ins/delegate 
• Hard slogs/Postpone or ignore 

5. Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA）  

This is an important project scheduling and control tool which helps project teams determine whether the project is ahead of schedule or behind schedule and applies techniques or corrective actions to avoid variance. MTA involves creating a chart with the planning line vs the implementation line along with the respective milestones to represent trends and analyze the same. With the help of MTA, project managers can easily identify the bottlenecks and any constraints that may derail the project from its planned course of action. Want to get a project management certification? Understand the nitty-gritties of the real world project management life cycle easily in our PRINCE2 course ! 

10 Steps to Successful Project Planning   

Step 1: Define stakeholders  

Identifying and defining stakeholders is the first step to successful project planning as any stakeholder identified late will cause scope-creep or unwarranted changes which may be too expensive for the project. 

Step 2:  Define roles & responsibilities  

Outlining clear roles and responsibilities is an important next step; not all stakeholders will have the same level of interest in the project and hence it is important to establish the responsibility, accountability, and role expectations in the project.

Step 3:  Introduce stakeholders   

Bringing the stakeholders together and introducing them to the project as well as each other in a formal setup helps build trust and alignment with the overall project and organizational goals. This step helps ensure everyone's voices are heard and also secures commitment from stakeholders for the project. 

Step 4:  Set goals  

Goal setting is the key step in planning, without which it will be impossible to assess project success and mark the project closed upon completion i.e. meeting the defined goals. 

Step 5:  Prioritize tasks   

Task prioritization is the key to understanding what kind of resources will be aligned to the project at what durations. Not having a prioritized list of tasks will only confuse overlapping activities and also cost overruns in the project execution. 

Step 6:  Create a schedule   

Once the goals are established and prioritized, creating a roadmap with the project milestones helps understand dependencies, constraints, and sequencing of activities for the project. Project scheduling helps outline which activities will be completed in what order, how and when they will start, what will be their outcomes and how will the project manager track and measure progress. 

Step 7:  Assess risks   

Risks are uncertain events that may affect the project and planning involves understanding the risk and assessing its probability i.e. the chance of occurrence as well as its impact i.e. the effect on the project 

Step 8:  Communicate   

Communication plays a key role in project management and according to the PM role, a project manager spends about 90% of the time communicating. Communication of plans, timely reviews, and change management are all important aspects of the project that need attention at regular intervals. 

Step 9:  Reassess   

Reviewing and adjusting planning activity is as important as planning itself. An outdated plan can be as dangerous as having no plan at all and will give false direction to the project team and stakeholders. 

Step 10:  Final evaluation   

Project plans need to be evaluated and signed off by those accountable; every planning activity must inculcate the practice of inspection and adaptation post which the adjusted planning decisions must go through final evaluation and approval.  

How can Project Planning Software Help to Plan Projects?   

Project planning and implementation of planned activities involve handling a lot of concurrencies and managing a lot of conflicting tasks, priorities, and resources. This activity often entails a thorough understanding of the current state as well as the proposed state/outcome of the project. In such an intense environment, project management software can be a boon if rightly used to align and sequence project activities.

The project planning software essentially creates a structured framework for collaboration and automation of recurring tasks and processes. Planning software also facilitates the centralization of all information making it easy to retrieve and available on a need basis, especially in hybrid and agile setups where communication is the lifestream of business activities and execution. Project management software provides a transparent overview of completed, in progress, and planned projects to avoid bottlenecks and manage dependencies effectively. A short overview of project planning benefits include: 

• Improved schedule management 
• Facilitate cross-team communication and collaboration 
• Provide visibility to better manage and mitigate risks 
• Effective breakdown and allocation of tasks
• Improved team productivity 
• Easy-to-use reports and dashboards 

Best Project Planning Tools and Software in 2023   

1. gantt chart .

Gantt charts are one of the most essential and effective tools project managers use to track project progress and are used throughout the project lifecycle. They facilitate the creation of a visual project schedule/roadmap, point out milestones, and dependencies, and act as an indispensable information radiator for teams and stakeholders. Gantt charts are quite popular with teams of any size/methodology because they project the most realistic project schedule when correctly maintained and can highlight areas of risk or attention to project managers.

2. Critical Path Method (CPM) 

CPM is one of the most undermined project planning and management techniques. It involves envisaging the longest path or sequence of activities in the project by making use of the Gantt chart, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), and network diagramming techniques. The activities that fall on this sequence or "critical path" are termed critical activities and assume the highest priority on the project schedule. The other activities which do not fall on this critical path are activities that have a float and this helps determine the other path i.e. the critical path which represents the shortest time needed to complete the project.

3. Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) Chart 

PERT is an estimation as well as scheduling technique that uses probabilities and simple statistical calculations to create a visual PERT diagram and identify independent activities. It is represented in the form of nodes and arrows sketched based on the order of activities in the project. Once the activity diagram is created, the earliest time (ET), latest time (TL), and slack time are determined for each activity. 

4. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 

WBS is a technique that comes in handy to organize and track project tasks sequentially and hierarchically. It is a visual representation of every task in the project and involves the decomposition of work into a smaller and more manageable set of tasks/activities. It is often used by project managers in conjunction with CPM and PERT. 

5. Project Documentation  

Project documentation is the beginning point that provides a glimpse of the project details, status, and open items. Every project should have a knowledge base or repository which aids newcomers to ramp up quickly on the project know-how and also address their concerns effectively.

Tips for Project Planning   

• Always start with the end in mind. 
• Understand project objectives, benefits, success metrics 
• Identify stakeholders and their interests 
• Understand the current state/problem statement 
• Understand the proposed state/solution statement 
• Define roles and responsibilities 
• Review risks and communicate about them 
• Create a unit-level roadmap with milestones
• Ensure to be considerate of environmental challenges 
• Revisit and review the plans drafted frequently along with tracking changes 

Apart from the above tips for project planning professionals, it is very vital to understand when to quit or pull the plug in certain unfortunate circumstances where projects drag and go on the downside - in which case, absorbing the sunk costs and shutting down the projects is only the feasible and economical resort. 

Simple Project Plan Example  

A traditional or simple project plan primarily has the following components: 

• Project purpose 
• Project stakeholders information 
• Executive summary 
• Business Objectives 
• Work Breakdown Structure 
• Deployment and Change Control Process 
• Schedule Management 
• Milestones and Dependencies 
• Project Schedule Representation 
• Cost Management and Budgeting 
• Quality Management 
• Resource Management 
• Communication Management 
• Risk Management 
• Procurement Management 
• Project KPIs and Metrics

Agile Project Plan Example   

An agile project plan follows the same structure as a traditional project plan with the only difference being that the project scheduling and activities are iterative and move in a continuous feedback loop. 

Free Project Planning Templates   

• project plan template - IC-Agile-Project-Plan-Template_Google_Doc  
• Gantt chart template - Gantt Chart Template Google Sheet  
• Multiple project roadmap template - IC-Multiple-Project-Roadmap-Template_Google_Doc  
• PM timeline template - IC-Multiple-Project-Roadmap-Template_Google_Doc  
• Project tracking template - Project tracking  

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How Project Planning Can Improve Your Organization and Career?   

Project planning is a non-negotiable ingredient for the success of any project manager or organization. Its importance in the project lifecycle cannot be overstated. When performed rightly, planning helps every other function and part of the organization perform smoothly. Structured planning not only aids the project manager in daily execution but also frees up the project progress from distractions due to off-track tasks, budgets, and controls. Regular planning and review help the project manager optimize efficiency, align only required resources, and save costs for the project and organization. 

In reality, projects tend to go on and on without a firm end unless planned appropriately and reviewed frequently. It is planning that defines what activities should be sequenced in what order to create project deliverables and complete projects as expected. In short, better project planning results in better project execution and controls as it addresses a lot of key aspects such as: 

• Improve overall business processes
• Provides opportunities to bring in economies of scale 
• Reduces rework and waste 
• Obtaining stakeholder alignment from the start 
• Helps in outlining a clear project scope 
• Creates transparency in roles and responsibilities 
• Provides opportunities to flag risks in advance and chalk out mitigation plans 

Apart from the above benefits, project planning also upholds the integrity of the project manager and organization in meeting their commitments to clients, third parties, and other stakeholders. 

Conclusion  

Project planning is an integral part of any project life cycle especially when projects operate in non-traditional and VUCA environments that have so many components requiring attention. Planning is not just another stage of the project lifecycle but it is the most crucial and defining factor with far-reaching impacts and consequences. Developing a concrete project plan can be simple and easy for any project manager, but also complex and drawn out depending on the nature of the project. Not having a project plan will only lead to failure because there would be no clarity on business objectives or roles and responsibilities which form the crux of any project execution, monitoring, and control. 

Drafting a project plan involves exhaustive mapping and categorization of project objectives, schedules, activities, and resources to ensure things fall in the right place while executing the project. It is also imperative to note that projects have a larger impact on the organization as a whole. When planned thoroughly, projects engage efficiencies, save resources, reduce costs, improve ethos, and contribute to a positive environment. Project management in any organization always commences with project planning - if planning is focused and precise, the organization stands to gain wins with the project's success. Ace your career with world class courses and training from the experts - find out from our catalogue of KnowledgeHut’s courses for Project Managers today. 

Frequently Asked Questions

The project manager is responsible for the project. They are the key personnel who plan the project, gather resources, align and manage activities, resources, and tasks throughout the project lifecycle. 

Project planning in project management helps identify activities, sequence them, create schedules, align milestones and most importantly identify and assess risks thereby helping in flagging items early in the cycle and minimize impact of risks or driving mitigation strategies to address risks. 

Project cost is an important component in the iron triangle of project management and project cost planning involves estimating, allocating and controlling project costs. Budgets planned and approved in project cost planning only can be used during project execution. 

Rohit Arjun Sambhwani

Rohit Arjun Sambhwani is an IT professional having over a decade and half of experience in various roles, domains & organizations, currently playing a leading role with a premier IT services organization. He is a post graduate in Information Technology and enjoys his free time learning new topics, project management, agile coaching, and writing apart from playing with his naughty little one Aryan

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What Is A Project Management Plan And How To Create One

Updated: Jun 12, 2024, 11:45am

Table of Contents

What is a project management plan, 6 parts of a project management plan, before you create a plan, how to create a project management plan in 7 steps, bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

A project management plan offers a blueprint to stakeholders and end-users surrounding the execution of an upcoming project. While it takes time to put it together, the process is worth it. It helps to reduce risks, create buy-in, gather your team’s expertise, align communication and ensure resource availability. This guide outlines what a project management plan is and its benefits, and then offers an easy step-by-step guide on how to create one.

A project management plan is a set of documents that outline the how, when and what-ifs of a project’s execution. It overviews the project’s value proposition, execution steps, resources, communication tools and protocols, risks, stakeholders (and their roles) and the deliverables involved in a project’s completion. Its documents include an executive summary, Gantt and team charts, risk assessment and communication- and resource-management subplans.

What Is a Project Management Plan Used For?

A project management plan serves as a blueprint or roadmap to the ultimate success of your project. It does so by aligning talent, buy-in, manpower, resources, risk management and high-quality communication around your plan. It also ensures everyone knows their responsibilities, which tasks are involved and when deadlines are so the project stays on track for quality on-time completion.

Here is a closer look at project management plan use cases:

• Buy-in . Your plan ensures all stakeholders are on board, so that they’re prepared to be productive.
• Expertise. A plan helps to ensure you have enough people to expertly own the activities needed to complete the project.
• Risk management. Putting together your plan helps you to assess the risks that may come up through the trajectory of project execution and how to prevent or mitigate them.
• Communication and collaboration. Your planning process ensures poor communication does not negatively impact the project’s outcome. It does so by getting everyone on the same page regarding communication tools, schedules, preferences and protocols.
• Milestones. As you plan your project, you ensure your team agrees on the necessary milestones to complete it successfully. Doing so ensures your team is ready to be productive instantly come project initiation and that scope creep does not impact the project negatively.
• Resource management. Through your planning process, you assess the resources needed to complete the project and their availability. Resources may include funds and raw materials, for example. Doing so ensures resource availability and that insufficient resources do not derail or stop the project altogether.

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A project management plan should include an executive summary, timeline or Gantt chart, resource management subplan, risk assessment, communication subplan and team chart. Here is an overview of each of these parts:

• Executive summary. An executive summary provides an overview of the project’s value proposition, the problem it addresses and its resolution, budget breakdown, milestones and deliverables.
• Timeline or Gantt chart. Many project management plans include a Gantt chart that shows both the dates the project begins and ends and all start and end dates for the milestones that lead to the completion of the project. It should also point out any dependent and independent activities.
• Risk assessment. A risk assessment should list all of the potential obstacles that could impact the completion of the project or the quality of its deliverables negatively. It also outlines the triggers that could cause these risks and how the risks can be mitigated or avoided altogether.
• Team chart. The team chart shows all the people who will be involved in completing the project, their roles and their communication preferences.
• Communication subplan. This subplan offers an overview of what tools will be used for communication, the communication assets and schedules that will be used to keep the project progressing and on track, communication protocols stakeholders should follow and team members’ communication preferences.
• Resource management subplan. This subplan should list what resources may be needed to complete the project. Essential resources may include raw materials, digital tools and funding. It should then offer a breakdown of what materials will be needed for each milestone, a way to ensure their availability and ways to track resources throughout project execution.

Before you begin writing your plan, take a few minutes to prepare. Doing so may involve defining what is at stake should the project not go well, identifying the milestones needed for successful completion, selecting key talent to complete your project, selecting and signing up for the tools that will make the plan creation process easy and efficient and defining the end beneficiary of your project. Below is a closer look at each of these preparation steps.

Failure Risk Assessment

Defining what would happen if the project were not completed successfully can guide you later as you motivate your execution team and formulate your plan’s and your project’s value proposition. This perspective tells all stakeholders how important their roles are.

Milestone Identification

One way to ensure you select the proper team members for plan creation and execution is to define the milestones for which they will be responsible. Once you have identified the milestones, you can identify the needed expertise and then the talent that holds that expertise.

Talent Selection

As you write your plan, it is essential to gather expertise from the team members who will execute it. Doing so could mean the success or failure of your project. Identifying these stakeholders now means you can get them involved sooner for higher collective knowledge during the planning process.

Tool selection

When planning your project, you will need to use charts, graphics and reports to record the necessary information. Graphic design tools like Canva and project management software like monday.com or Wrike can help.

Beneficiary or End-user Identification

Nothing can set you up for success in project completion like understanding what the end-user or project beneficiary needs in the final deliverable. Understanding this requires an understanding of that end-user or beneficiary. Take some time to listen to their needs, wants and hopes surrounding your project before beginning to plan a project that will impact and, hopefully, delight them ultimately.

To create a project management plan, first put together a high overview of the basics of your project, including the project’s scope, schedule and budget. Next, build on those basics to write an executive summary. Then, add a project timeline, risk assessment, stakeholder chart, communication plan and resource management plan to your executive summary. Lastly, gather and incorporate stakeholders’ insights to perfect and create buy-in for your plan.

1. Identify Baselines for Your Project

Your project’s baselines should first focus on the project’s scope, then the project’s schedule and, finally, its budget. The result should be a high overview that will inform the rest of your planning process. To complete this step, answer the following questions:

• What is a summary of the project’s deliverables, including the expected features in order of priority?
• What important milestones will help us complete this project?
• What should the project not focus on? (set some scope boundaries)
• When is the project scheduled to begin?
• When should the project be complete?
• How much do we have to spend on this project? If it is a project that needs to be completed for a client, what budget do we have to spend on it while still making a set profit margin?

2. Write an Executive Summary

An executive summary should include a definition of your project, your project’s value proposition, including the problem your project addresses and its solution, milestones and their deliverables, scope limits―and the consequences for changing these limits―goals and financial breakdown. Use the answers to the questions posed in step one to put together your executive summary.

As the face of your project before stakeholders, your executive summary should be visually appealing and succinct. Columns and visuals should break it up to make it easy to read quickly. One great tool for creating an attractive and succinct summary is a Canva executive summary template. You can customize a template to match your brand and add your content, then either download your executive summary or share it in link form.

To begin, sign up for Canva for free, then use the search box titled “What will you design?” for “executive summary” and press “enter.” Click the appropriate template for your purposes and brand, then use the tools on the left-hand side of the enlarged template to customize its colors, text and images. Add pages by clicking the plus sign at the top right-hand corner of the template and proceed to add text and customizations to complete your summary.

3. Plot Your Project’s Timeline

The best way to plot your project’s timeline is with a Gantt chart. A Gantt chart is a visual representation of what activities you plan to begin and complete and when. These activities are usually small chunks or milestones of your completed project. They also formulate the scope of your project, helping to reduce scope creep later on. Gantt charts are often the easiest to use to plot your timeline.

It is important to note expected dependencies on your Gantt chart. A dependency happens when one activity on a timeline must be completed before team members can go on to the next one. For example, a prototype needs to be completed before a focus group analysis of the prototype can take place. Thus, these two activities are dependent. Also note independent activities that can be completed even as other activities are underway, thereby saving time.

Pro tip: An easy way to note dependencies and independent activities is via color-coding. Arrows drawn on your Gantt chart can also help to pinpoint dependencies.

While Canva does offer Gantt charts to plot your project’s timeline, there are also platforms that specialize in producing Gantt chart software . Not only can this software help you put together your Gantt chart, but it can then help you stay on track with its timeline and avoid scope creep once your project begins via task descriptions and automations. If paying for such a service isn’t in your project’s budget, you can also create a Gantt chart in Excel or Google Sheets.

Gantt chart from monday.com

4. Define Stakeholder Roles

With your project activities recorded on your timeline, define who will be responsible for each activity. Your plan serves as a guiding star to all stakeholders involved in your project, so it’s best to record responsible parties in an intuitive chart. Create a project team chart to show who will be involved in completing the project and for which activities each is responsible. For collaboration ease, also note who each person is accountable to and their contact information.

Canva offers organizational or team chart templates you can use to customize for the needs of your project. Search “organizational chart” using the search bar in your Canva account. Click the chart that best suits your project and brand needs. Then, use the design menu to upload pictures of your team members, customize colors and replace template text to offer the data your stakeholders need for easy collaboration during the life of your project.

An example of a Canva organizational chart template to be adapted to create a project team chart.

5. Perform a Risk Assessment

Your risk assessment should begin with a list of obstacles that could impact your team’s ability to complete the project on time negatively at all and with the desired quality. It should then create a plan for each risk by addressing what might trigger the risk, steps that lend to risk prevention and how to mitigate a risk should it happen. Finally, it should assign stakeholders to manage risk triggers, prevention and mitigation. Some teams use a SWOT analysis to help identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in this stage.

To dive into each risk, answer the following questions:

• What could happen that would negatively impact the project?
• At what point in the project timeline is this risk most likely to happen?
• How likely is the risk to happen?
• What events or factors would trigger this risk?
• What steps can be taken to reduce the chances of this risk taking place? How can we avoid this trigger or these triggers?
• What would be the expected outcome should the risk happen anyway?
• How could we mitigate a negative outcome should the risk take place?
• Who would be the best person to manage each risk’s triggers, prevention or mitigation?

As you assigned responsible parties for each project activity, you likely selected people who had expertise in the areas in which their assigned activities fall. For example, if you assigned the graphic design of a marketing project to a team member, that person is likely a graphic designer. Their expertise is invaluable in assessing graphic design risks and their prevention and mitigation steps. Lean on your team for this expertise, and then implement their suggestions.

6. Create Key Subplans

Two key subplans you should include in your project management plan are a resource and communications management plan. Your resource sub plan should list what resources are needed to complete your project and their availability. Your communications plan should include how your team will communicate one-on-one and team-wide.

Resource Management Plan

A resource subplan can be completed in project management software. You can create columns for estimated expenses and other needed resources broken down by milestones, such as raw products and talent. Other customizable resource reports are available within the software and automatically kept up to date. Wrike, for example, offers customizable reports where you can track resource availability and export reports to include in your plan.

An example of Wrike’s customizable resource reports

Communications Management Plan

While it may seem inconsequential compared to your risk assessment and resource plan, poor communication is the primary reason most projects experience scope gaps and project failure, according to a PMI study . Poor communication can, therefore, derail all your other planning efforts.

As such, your communications management plan should be detailed and address what, when and how information will be shared during your project. Details should focus on what needs to be communicated and at what intervals during the project execution, stakeholders’ communication preferences, a communication schedule for virtual meetings or phone calls that occur at planned intervals, who will review tasks, to whom task completions should be reported and what platforms or tools should be used for communication purposes.

Pro tip: For best results, look at the communication tools available in your project management software. Alternatively, consider what communication-tool integrations it offers. For example, most project management software offer integrations with Slack. Using available tools within your software will allow ease of collaboration and the communication visibility your team needs to stay on the same page and on track.

7. Gather and Incorporate Feedback From Stakeholders

The team you have chosen to own the activities on your project timeline are uniquely capable of doing so. As such, they are likely to have recommendations you might not think about to make your project more successful. Moreover, if their insights are incorporated into the plan, they are more likely to enthusiastically follow it. So, get your team together and go over the details of your plan. Learn from them and incorporate their insights.

In addition, present your plan to the end-user or client for whom you are executing the project. Make sure they agree to the project scope and its deliverables. Make their preferred changes now so you don’t have to make them later. Discuss what will happen if they change their minds later―extra fees, for example―so that scope creep does not impact your project’s successful execution, on-time completion or quality final deliverable negatively.

Creating a project management plan is the first critical step to ensuring a quality project execution and completion. Without it, you risk project derailment, a blown budget, an unrealized value proposition and a potentially frustrated end-user. With it, you enjoy buy-in, resource availability, budget adherence, a quality and expertly-driven final deliverable and a delighted end-user. We hope this guide sets you on a trajectory to enjoy all of these benefits.

What are the six parts of a project management plan?

At minimum, a project management plan includes an executive summary, timeline or Gantt chart , stakeholder or team chart, risk assessment, communications subplan and resource subplan.

How do I write a project management plan?

To write a project management plan, begin by identifying your project baselines, then write an executive summary, create your timeline and team charts, perform and write a risk assessment and write your communications and resource subplans. Finally, present your plan to all involved stakeholders to gather and incorporate their insights, suggestions and feedback, and then finalize agreement around your plan.

What is the main purpose of a project management plan?

A project management plan lays out the details and steps necessary to reduce confusion, create confidence and prevent obstacles and risks during project execution. It does so by providing a clear outline and value proposition of the project, assigning essential roles, outlining milestones and the final deliverable, identifying and taking steps to prevent risks, ensuring clear communication guidelines and ensuring the availability of essential resources.

What is project management methodology?

A project management methodology is a set of principles, values and processes that determine how a team will complete a project. It dictates factors such as the methods of communication within and outside of the project team—as well as the level of planning, design and documentation—timelines and modes of assessment.

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Center for American Progress

Project 2025 Would Increase Costs, Block Debt Cancellation for Student Loan Borrowers

The radical Project 2025 policy agenda for student loan repayment would multiply costs for borrowers, increase defaults, and end existing programs that allow borrowers to earn cancellation.

Building an Economy for All, College Affordability and Student Debt, Education, Higher Education, Higher Education Accountability and Oversight +2 More

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Part of a Series

Project 2025: Exposing the Far-Right Assault on America

This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.

For decades, far-right lawmakers have pushed ideas that would weaken higher education in the United States, including, blocking efforts to allow student borrowers to earn cancellation, allowing predatory actors to take advantage of students, and even eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. But a sweeping new agenda from the Heritage Foundation called Project 2025 serves as an authoritarian road map to implement destructive new policies, including a new student loan repayment plan that would force student loan borrowers to shell out thousands more each year in payments.

Project 2025 proposes phasing out existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans for student loan borrowers, such as the Biden-Harris administration’s new Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan , and replacing it with a one-size-fits-all IDR plan. The Project 2025 repayment plan offers limited flexibility to account for borrowers’ financial picture and eliminates SAVE’s interest benefit, threatening to bring back ballooning balances even for borrowers who make on-time monthly payments. This would be a devastating blow to the millions of Americans every year who must take out debt in order to obtain a higher education and pursue a path to America’s middle class.

Under Project 2025, borrowers would see an increase in monthly payments

If enacted, Project 2025’s blueprint for student loan payments would eliminate the SAVE plan, the most affordable repayment plan in history . Replacing SAVE with the Project 2025 repayment plan would significantly increase many borrowers’ monthly payments, adding additional financial strain to those who already struggle with their student loan debt.

Additional annual payments for typical earners ages 25–34 under the Project 2025 plan

Additional annual payment for borrowers with some college, but no degree

Additional annual payment for borrowers with an associate degree

Additional annual payment for borrowers with a bachelor's degree

Additional annual payment for borrowers with a master's degree

Figure 1 shows how student borrowers ages 25–34 with earnings around the median among those with their level of educational attainment would be affected by the Project 2025 repayment plan. Those who attended college but did not earn a degree or credential would see their monthly payments almost quadruple, while borrowers with associate degrees would see their payments more than triple. Typical borrowers of all education levels would shell out at least $2,700—and as high as $4,000—more per year in student loan payments on this plan relative to the SAVE plan.

A vast majority of the 8 million borrowers currently enrolled in SAVE would see their monthly payments go up under the Project 2025 repayment plan. In addition, the Project 2025 plan would lower the income threshold at which borrowers are required to make a payment from the current amount under the SAVE plan, $34,000 (225 percent of the federal poverty line ), to $15,000, or the federal poverty line. That means single borrowers making as little as $15,000—or a family of four living on $31,000—would have to begin making monthly student loan payments.

A vast majority of the 8 million borrowers currently enrolled in SAVE would see their monthly payments go up under the Project 2025 repayment plan.

Project 2025 would bring back ballooning balances

This far-right agenda permits runaway interest on student loans, so some borrowers might still see their balance grow even if they make payments. This continues a phenomenon that plagues many borrowers and that is often caused by deferments, forbearances, interest capitalization, or simply because a borrower did not earn enough from their education to afford to repay their debt. Data from 2015–2016 indicate that at 12 years after enrollment, 27 percent of all borrowers owed more than they originally borrowed, with this share being even higher among Black borrowers (52 percent), Pell Grant recipients (33 percent), those from families near or below the poverty line (31 percent to 34 percent), those without a degree or credential (31 percent), and those with an associate degree or certificate (30 percent).

For example, a typical Black K-12 classroom teacher with graduate debt who began repayment in 2024 would see their balance grow for the first eight years of repayment—even as they made payments—under the Project 2025 plan. (see methodology for more information) Starting with a median debt of about $70,000 for their graduate and undergraduate education, but seeing a starting salary of only around $52,000, this teacher’s monthly payment the first year of repayment would be $308: a substantial sum, yet not enough to cover the $325 that accrues in interest every month. Because Project 2025 would also eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and the maximum repayment terms on IDR plans, this teacher would pay for a total of 27 years. Others with higher debts, lower incomes, or both may get caught in a debt trap, in which their monthly payments would never cover the growing interest on a ballooning balance. Project 2025 would force them to pay in perpetuity.

Under Project 2025 policies, this teacher would ultimately pay about $150,000, more than double their original principal. Their monthly payments would begin at $308 and rise to an estimated $678 after 27 years, assuming 3 percent annual wage growth.

By contrast, under the SAVE plan, this K-12 teacher would have a $117 monthly payment, and the additional $150–$200 in interest that accrued each month would be waived to prevent the outstanding balance from growing. A borrower’s payments would increase over time as their income grows and therefore eventually cover higher shares of the interest. If this teacher qualified for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, they would pay $17,000 over 10 years. If they did not, they would pay a total of $56,000 over 25 years under the SAVE plan. In both cases, their monthly loan payments would go entirely to interest, and the remaining original principal of about $70,000 would be canceled.

The SAVE plan and existing debt cancellation pathways help reduce the burden on individuals, including many teachers, whose incomes are too low to service their debt without extreme hardship. Project 2025 policies, by contrast, would impose burdensome monthly costs on these essential public service workers and close off pathways to earned relief.

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Under Project 2025, millions of borrowers would be denied earned debt relief

In addition, existing programs for teachers and public service workers, such as law enforcement officers and nurses, would eliminate the remainder of this K-12 teacher’s debt after a defined period of employment. Depending on the subject they teach and the type of school they teach at, they may be eligible for the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program, which cancels $17,500 in debt after five years of service. After 10 years, they would be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which would cancel the remaining balance. (A teacher may be eligible for both but cannot receive credit for both for the same period of service.)

Project 2025, however, seeks to eliminate any “time-based and occupation-based student loan forgiveness” programs such as these. In combination, eliminating these programs promises to entangle many public service workers with high debt-to-income ratios in a lifelong debt trap.

For all other borrowers, the Project 2025 IDR plan would eliminate earned cancellation for people who have already been paying off their loans for many years. Such a change would require congressional action; in the absence of legislative change, Project 2025 proposes extending the cancellation timeline to the current statutory maximum of 25 years. Under current policies, undergraduate student loan borrowers on all IDR plans who make their required payments will see their remaining balances forgiven after 20 years, while those who hold graduate loans will experience this benefit after 25 years. For borrowers with low balances, the SAVE plan offers a shortened timeline to cancellation in as little as 10 years. There are currently 12.7 million people enrolled in IDR plans, some of whom would lose out on these earned cancellation opportunities after making their maximum number of payments.

Project 2025 would wreak havoc on student loan borrowers’ credit

While the full impact of the SAVE plan on default rates is yet to be determined, in its absence, the student loan system is likely to see default rates similar to those for cohorts of borrowers beginning repayment in 2012 to 2017, when IDR plan monthly payment options were similar to those in Project 2025 and before the pandemic payment pause affected reporting. During that period, the share of borrowers who defaulted within three years of beginning repayment ranged from 10 percent to 12 percent . This means more than 1 in 10 borrowers saw their credit scores lower, with consequences such as higher interest rates or difficulty acquiring new lines of credit, as well as more severe consequences such as wage or Social Security garnishment. Project 2025 threatens to return student loan borrowers to a time when expensive monthly payments both imposed daily burdens on borrowers and harmed their long-term financial well-being.

Since the SAVE plan debuted in August 2023, nearly 8 million borrowers have enrolled , including 4.5 million borrowers with a $0 monthly payment. The other 3.5 million save an estimated $117 per month, or about $1,400 per year, on average. In addition, about 360,000 low-balance borrowers have already received $4.8 billion in relief from the SAVE plan’s shortened timeline to cancellation.

One in 3 borrowers ages 25 to 49 rely upon an IDR plan to afford their student loan payments and would see their repayment plan options severely restricted if the Project 2025 proposal were adopted. This far-right vision for student loan repayment would fail to provide affordable repayment options to those who are most likely to struggle with their loans and experience default . An estimated 85 percent of community college borrowers, who likely have low balances, would still be saddled with their debt , even 10 years later.

Creating affordable repayment options is essential to ensuring student loan borrowers do not have to choose between making on-time payments and meeting their basic needs. Instead of alleviating the burden imposed by student loans, Project 2025 would make monthly loan payments a financial anchor for millions, push more borrowers into default, and force others to pay in perpetuity.

Methodology

The approximate percentages of the student loan borrowers by education level are estimated using data from the Federal Reserve’s 2020–2022 Surveys of Household and Economic Decisionmaking (SHED) and the U.S. Census Bureau . The data from the 2020, 2021, and 2022 survey years were pooled for these estimates. The SHED data showed the proportion of the population that reported currently holding student loans for their own education, by educational attainment level. Those whose education level is high school degree or GED certificate and who reported holding student loan debt (28 percent) were included in those with “some college, no degree” in this figure. Those who hold a “certificate or technical degree” (6 percent) were not included because corresponding income data were not available. Similarly, SHED includes data for “graduate degree” holders, and not master’s degree holders specifically. The share of this group that are master’s degree holders (rather than doctoral degree holders) was estimated from U.S. Census Bureau data on educational attainment, which shows that approximately 80 percent of those with graduate degrees hold master’s degrees, while 20 percent hold doctoral degrees. The 12.85 percent of SHED survey respondents with student loan debt who hold graduate degrees was then adjusted to assume 80 percent of these, or approximately 10.28 percent (rounded to 10 percent) of all graduate degree holders hold master’s degrees.

The financial impact of the Project 2025 repayment plan on workers ages 25–34, by education level, was estimated using 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey (CPS) , which is available at https://www.bls.gov/cps/earnings.htm#education . Median annual earnings by education level were derived from median weekly earnings. Discretionary income under SAVE is defined as the annual income minus 225 percent of the federal poverty guidelines (FPL). The calculations in Figure 1 use the 2023 FPL of $14,580, and the calculations assume a family size of one.

The SAVE plan monthly payment amount is calculated as 5 percent of discretionary income for undergraduate loans and 10 percent of income for graduate loans. The monthly payment projection for master’s degree borrowers assumes an effective discretionary income percentage of 8.5 percent for a borrower whose debt loan comprises 30 percent undergraduate and 70 percent graduate debt, approximated from the average federal student loan debt levels for master’s degree borrowers in 2020 according to the National Center for Education Statistics’ National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (retrieval code “vgdcbk”).

Because the SAVE plan was not introduced until August 2023, and the discretionary income calculation for undergraduate loans will not be reduced to 5 percent until July 1, 2024 , these should be considered estimates based on the latest CPS data available (2023).

The Project 2025 plan monthly payments are calculated as 10 percent of discretionary income, which the plan defines as annual income minus 100 percent of the FPL.

The median annual earnings figures in Figure 1 represent all workers ages 25–34 across the United States, and not necessarily student loan borrowers. Student loan borrowers’ incomes may systematically differ from workers of similar education levels. This figure should be interpreted, therefore, as the theoretical impact on student loan borrowers whose incomes are similar to the median of their age group and education level.

Example: Typical Black K-12 teacher with graduate debt who began repayment in 2024

These data derive from the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics’ Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, 2016/2020, available at https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/b&b/ . The names of the variables used in this analysis are: B2FEDCUM1, B2FEDCUM2, B2FEDCUM3, B2ALLINC4YRS, RACE, B2EVRGRDENR, B2PBENM48, and B2CURREGTCH, and the analysis can be retrieved using the code “ulijah” at https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/ . This analysis uses baseline data found in this survey to project what a Black K-12 teacher with graduate debt who earned their bachelor’s in 2020 and began repaying their debt in 2024 would pay under the SAVE versus Project 2025 plans.

The results indicate that the median undergraduate debt for a Black K-12 teacher who had attended but was not currently enrolled in a graduate program was $30,707, and graduate debt was $36,741, for a total estimated debt of $67,448. These numbers align with findings from a 2021 National Education Association report that found that 26 percent of P-12 teachers who borrowed for their education took out more than $65,000 in debt. Young educators and educators of color also had higher debt loads than their older and white peers. The data indicate that this group of borrowers had a median annual income of $46,263. These numbers were updated to reflect the increased borrowing rates of 1 percent per year for both undergraduate and graduate debt. An average wage increase rate of 3 percent per year was assumed for a 2024 salary of $52,069.

Interest rates were approximated at 4 percent for undergraduate loans and 7 percent for graduate loans based on historical federal student loan interest rates . The weighted interest rate was used for calculating the monthly accrued interest. Student loan interest compounds daily, so the monthly interest rate was found by dividing the annual interest rate by 365 and then multiplying by 30. It should be noted that interest only accrues on the principal and does not capitalize.

The monthly payments under the Project 2025 and SAVE plans from 2024 onward were then found by assuming a 2.8 percent annual increase in the FPL, based on the historical average . Teacher pay was estimated to increase 3 percent per year, a conservative estimate relative to other occupations given that teacher pay has historically risen at lower rates than the pay for other workers.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here . American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Sara Partridge

Senior Policy Analyst

Madison Weiss

Policy Analyst

Higher Education Policy

The Higher Education team works toward building an affordable and high-quality higher education system that supports economic mobility and racial equity.

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Plan to connect L.A. to Bay Area by bullet train gets full environmental approval

by: Travis Schlepp

Posted: Jun 27, 2024 / 12:25 PM PDT

Updated: Jun 27, 2024 / 01:02 PM PDT

California’s massive and ambitious project to connect downtown Los Angeles with the Bay Area via electric trains capable of reaching speeds of over 200 mph has cleared its biggest hurdle to date.

On Thursday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority received complete environmental approval between the two regions, a historic milestone in a state notorious for holding up construction projects for environmental review.

The Authority Board of Directors approved the environmental impact report and selected a route between Palmdale and Burbank , the last segment between San Francisco and L.A. that had yet to be environmentally cleared.

That portion of the proposed total system is considered to be among the most challenging to build because it requires boring out some of the longest tunnels ever constructed through some of the most mountainous terrain along the entire system.

The route approved on Thursday, which was the preferred option by the Authority, features about 30 miles of tunnels, 28 of which will travel through mountains.

The 38-mile segment will run partly along Highway 14, separated from vehicle traffic and will be used exclusively for high-speed rail.

The majority of the approved path will be underground, passing under the town of Acton, through portions of the Angeles National Forest and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The tunnels are projected to limit the overall impact to local communities and nearby wetlands, a major sticking point in the effort to obtain environmental clearance.

The price tag for this portion of the project was estimated to be around $22.55 billion when the plan was originally drafted in 2018. CEO Brian Kelly said those estimates, adjusted for inflation in 2024, come in at around $28.6 billion, although an Authority spokesperson tells KTLA there is not currently an official update on costs.

The Palmdale station will be located at an existing transit center on Clocktower Plaza Drive and the Burbank station will be located underground at the Hollywood Burbank Airport — which is currently undergoing massive renovations and expansion, with tentative plans to open a new terminal in 2026.

CAHSR officials say the travel time between the two stations will be around 20 minutes. Express trains that skip both stops will cover that ground even faster.

With the Palmdale-to-Burbank section officially cleared, the Authority has now obtained environmental approval for 463 of the 494-mile system that comprises “Phase 1” of CAHSR.

The last 30-some miles yet to be approved is Los Angeles to Anaheim , the southernmost portion of Phase 1. Environmental approval for that segment, which will complete the approval process for all of Phase 1, is expected by next year.

When construction will actually begin in  Los Angeles County  remains uncertain as current work is being focused on the “Initial Operating Segment,” which will connect  Merced  to  Bakersfield  in the Central Valley.

Construction is currently underway along 119 miles of that segment, and the Authority is working to extend the current construction zone to 171 miles. That segment is expected to be up and running by the early 2030s.

In the Bay Area, the vast majority of work needed to complete the section between San Francisco and San Jose is already completed, thanks to a partnership with the Authority and Caltrain — a regional passenger rail service. The two entities will operate in that area in what’s being called a “blended system.”

If and when Phase 1 is ever completed, the Authority has previously discussed extending the system to Sacramento in the north and San Diego in the south as part of the  project’s Phase 2 .

If Phase 2 ever becomes a reality, the California High-Speed Rail would have a service area of more than 800 miles.

In a news release issued Thursday afternoon following the environmental approval, Kelly, who is set to retire as the Authority’s CEO later this year, called one of his final accomplishments as the leader of the agency a “major milestone”that is transformative for the state.

“It’s also transformational for Los Angeles County, connecting Palmdale to Burbank in a way that’s never been possible before,” Kelly said.

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The Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec invest $163.5 million to plan a structuring public transit project in Gatineau

From: Infrastructure Canada

News release

The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, the Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Member of Parliament for Gatineau, Geneviève Guilbault, Deputy Premier and Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, and Mathieu Lacombe, Minister of Culture and Communications, Minister responsible for Youth and Minister responsible for the Outaouais region, announced a joint investment of $163.5 million for the planning phase of the structuring electric public transit project between the west of Gatineau and downtown Ottawa.

Gatineau, Quebec, June 27 2024 — The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, the Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Member of Parliament for Gatineau, Geneviève Guilbault, Deputy Premier and Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, and Mathieu Lacombe, Minister of Culture and Communications, Minister responsible for Youth and Minister responsible for the Outaouais region, announced a joint investment of $163.5 million for the planning phase of the structuring electric public transit project between the west of Gatineau and downtown Ottawa.

For the occasion, they were accompanied by the MP for Pontiac, Sophie Chatel, the MNA for Hull, Suzanne Tremblay, the MNA for Gatineau, Robert Bussière, the MNA for Chapleau, Mathieu Lévesque, the Mayor of Gatineau, Maude Marquis-Bissonnette, and the Vice-President of the Société de transport de l'Outaouais, Edmond Leclerc.

The $98.1 million granted by the Government of Quebec and the $65.4 million granted by the Government of Canada will be used to further studies on the Quebec portion of the project. These include the environmental impact assessment, the preliminary design, as well as planning activities related to the engineering of the preparatory work. Their conclusions will be used to determine, among other things, the number and location of stations and the choice of rolling stock, as well as to specify the timetable and potential cost for construction of the project.

This structuring project would meet the present and future mobility needs of residents of the cities of Gatineau and Ottawa by offering a reliable, high-performance public transit service that promotes connectivity to employment, commercial and university hubs.

“This joint investment finances the essential studies for a structuring transportation project in Gatineau, aimed at meeting the present and future mobility needs of Gatineau and Ottawa residents with a reliable, high-performance public transit service. By improving access to jobs, businesses and post-secondary educational institutions, it will also boost the attractiveness of surrounding neighbourhoods, encouraging the creation and densification of housing.” The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities

“Our government continues to invest in structuring projects to support sustainable mobility throughout Quebec. Thanks to this investment, our teams will be able to continue their work to deliver the best project to meet the needs of the population. The eventual implementation of an electric public transit system in the region will enhance sustainable mobility and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Geneviève Guilbault, Deputy Premier and Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility

“Our government has responded to this major project in the Outaouais region. This investment marks an important step in the development of transportation infrastructure aimed at improving urban mobility in the National Capital Region. Gatineau has urgent transportation needs, and this major investment enables us to take action on one of our key issues: the need for public transit in the west. The work continues.” The Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Member of Parliament for Gatineau

“I'm delighted to see this funding come together to produce the studies needed to carry out this project. Once again, we are delivering on our promise to support the City of Gatineau in the development of its public transit system. In addition to contributing to economic development, the project will improve the quality of life of residents, who will benefit from a reliable, low-carbon means of transportation. We are in action to improve mobility in and around Gatineau!” Mathieu Lacombe, Minister of Culture and Communications, Minister responsible for Youth and Minister responsible for the Outaouais region

“On behalf of all Outaouais MPs, and as president of the Outaouais caucus, I would like to express our great satisfaction with this announcement. The tramway represents an immense potential for transforming not only mobility in Gatineau, but also land-use planning. We have invested a great deal of effort in making our city a model of sustainable and prosperous development. The pre-project study is a key milestone. We are committed to working together to secure funding for the Ottawa side of the river as well. Once the study is complete, we'll be ready to put shovels in the ground and turn this ambitious vision of a structuring transportation system for the city of Gatineau into reality.” Sophie Chatel, Member of Parliament for Pontiac 

“I am truly delighted to share with you the news of this funding for the planning phase of the structuring electric public transit project. With an investment of nearly $100 million, our government is taking an important step that I'm sure will excite the citizens of our city's west end. Not only will this project strengthen our public transit network, it will also stimulate our local economy. Most importantly, it will offer everyone a reliable and environmentally-friendly means of transportation. Once again, it demonstrates our commitment to creating a greener, more prosperous and prouder Quebec. It's a major step forward for the future of mobility in our region.” Suzanne Tremblay, Member of National Assembly for Hull  

“This is great news for the people of Gatineau. It's an absolutely essential project for the City of Gatineau, a structuring project for transportation, regional development and the fight against climate change. The investments announced today underline the commitment of all levels of government to this project, and I thank them for it.” Maude Marquis-Bissonnette, Mayor of the City of Gatineau

"We are delighted with today's announcement, which will enable us to continue our studies with a view to equipping the region with a tramway system. The studies have proven it. With strong population growth in western Gatineau, we need a tramway to meet the travel needs of the next 30 to 50 years. Since last summer, the project office has picked up the pace to be ready to start all the processes as soon as the funding is announced. I can confirm that we are ready to move forward. Over the next 12 months, we'll be issuing the first calls for tender, including the one for professional services, in order to begin the technical and environmental studies." Edmond Leclerc, Vice-President of the Board of Directors, Société de transport de l'Outaouais

Quick facts

A structuring electric public transit project is currently being planned to link the west end of the city of Gatineau to its downtown core, as well as to the city of Ottawa.

Two routes are being analyzed for the Quebec portion of the project:

• the northern axis, which includes Chemin Vanier, then du Plateau and Saint-Raymond boulevards.
• the southern axis, which includes des Allumettières and Wilfrid-Lavigne boulevards, then Chemin d’Aylmer.

From the intersection of Saint-Raymond and Alexandre-Taché boulevards, these two axes will share a common section, which will continue on Alexandre-Taché and de Lucerne boulevards, then on Laurier Street. It will cross the Ottawa River via the Portage Bridge and end on the Ottawa side.

The amounts break down as follows:

• the Government of Québec is investing $98,093,646 through the Programme d'aide gouvernementale aux infrastructures de transport collectif (PAGITC).
• The Government of Canada is investing $65,395,764 through the Public Transit Infrastructure Stream of the Canada-Quebec Integrated Bilateral Agreement on the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program.

The Public Transit Infrastructure Stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program supports the planning, building, expansion, and upgrading of urban and rural transit networks.

Including today’s announcement, some thirty infrastructure projects or project bundles under the Public Transit Infrastructure Stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program have been announced in Quebec, with a total federal contribution of more than $2.9 billion and a total provincial contribution of more than $5.5 billion.

Associated links

• Investing in Canada: Canada’s Long-Term Infrastructure Plan
• Public Transit Infrastructure Stream
• Programme d’aide gouvernementale aux infrastructures de transport collectif (only available in French)

For more information (media only), please contact:

Micaal Ahmed Communications Manager Office of the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities 343-598-3920 [email protected]

Geneviève Tremblay Strategic advisor Office of the Deputy Premier and Minister of Transport and Sustrainable mobility 418 654-8246 [email protected]

Media Relations Infrastructure Canada 613-960-9251 Toll free: 1-877-250-7154 Email: [email protected] Follow us on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram and LinkedIn Web: Infrastructure Canada

Media Relations Communications Department Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable Québec : 418 644-4444 Montréal : 514 873-5600 Toll Free : 1 866 341-5724

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