Project Management Tips and Techniques:
Understand the Value of Planning Before Starting Your Project
Tom Mochal

Each month, Tom Mochal, President of TenStep, Inc. presents project management tips and techniques for planning and managing a project. TenStep, Inc. has a comprehensive, scalable project management process called TenStep (www.TenStep.com), as well as a project lifecycle process called LifecycleStep (www.LifecycleStep.com). Tom has also published a popular book called Lessons in Project Management that can be purchased at  www.TenStep.com.  Pipeline readers receive 20% off any TenStep or LifecycleStep purchase by entering the coupon code of "Pipeline" in their purchase.

How many times have you heard about or been involved in a project that failed miserably? Or perhaps it just was not as successful as it needed to be. Did you ever spend time looking back to see what caused the project to go wrong? If you did, chances are that you will have said, "You know, we should have spent more time planning."

Most projects have deadlines, and it seems they are getting shorter and shorter. Hitting aggressive deadlines puts pressure on the project manager to start the project as soon as possible. However, before the project work begins, you need to spend time in up-front planning to make sure that the work is properly understood and agreed to. This is not wasted time or 'overhead' time. This is the time the project manager spends ensuring that the project team and the client have common perceptions of what the project is going to deliver, when it will be complete, what it will cost, who will do the work and how the work will be done.

At the end of a difficult project, the benefits of planning might be obvious. But the benefits are known ahead of time as well. At a high-level, these benefits include:

• Understanding and gaining agreement on project objectives, deliverables, scope, risk, cost, approach, etc. (from the Project Definition). This work simply ensures that the project team and sponsor agree on the work that is required.

• Determining if the original business case is still valid. When the project was initially approved, the project cost and duration were probably estimated at a high-level – maybe up to +/- 50%. Now that the project is starting, the estimates should be revalidated to get them closer to +/- 10%. This additional refinement may result in the estimates ending up higher than before, and these higher numbers may make the business case unattractive. For instance, a project that requires 10,000 effort hours might make business sense. If the more detailed planning process results in a more refined estimate of 20,000 hours, the project may not make business sense any more.

• Making sure the resources you need are available when you need them. This is a result of understanding the project organization and creating your schedule with resources assigned.

• Providing a high-level baseline from which progress can be compared. This is a result of creating the milestone schedule based on the more detailed workplan.

• Validating the processes used to manage the project ahead of time with the client. The Project Management Procedures that are used to manage the project should be discussed and explained to the clients and team members.

Proper planning for a project is vital for success. The larger the project, the more formal planning is needed. Conversely, smaller projects may require only a minimal level of planning. However, the time spent planning will be more than offset by reductions in confusion, miscommunication and doing things wrong the first time. It is always time worth spending.

Would you like to receive project management tips every week? Sign up for the weekly TenStep Project Management Tip of the Week at www.TenStep.com. Read about Tom’s new book, Lessons in People Management, at www.tenstepstore.com/detail/2.14LessonsinPeopleMgmt.html.