The Project Plan – another post for the series of effective project management tools essential for getting the job done and delivering a successful outcome. Another very general tool that will work in any project situation to help communication within your team and up to your sponsor.
Yes yes Nick, come on! We all know how to do project planning, tell us something new for goodness sake!
Fair enough, I say, and if you are one of those that do it well then feel free to move on. The thing is, I’ve seen far more examples of bad planning than I have the reverse and usually that’s been because the project manager has missed the point before they even began.
The secret of creating a successful project plan is to realise that it’s not the plan itself that’s the valuable product here, it’s the process you go through to create the plan.
Most plans fail to hit the mark either because the format that’s used is overly complicated with features and dimensions or it’s created in an unfriendly format (sorry Microsoft!) or the creation process meant it was drafted by one person (normally the PM herself) in a darkened room all on their lonesome. Worst case scenario is that it’s a combination of all three.
Think back to previous projects and remember at least one example where you were the one doing the planning and then another when you were a resource being put into the plan.
How did you feel about your plan at the point when you had finished that first draft before you sent it for review? Chuffed to bits? Well it took you a long time, right? There was a lot to consider and the timeline was pretty aggressive.
Now, remember how was it received by your team. Any unhappy people or was everyone over the moon with what you had done? Anything like …
How do you think we’re going to be able to do that in just 4 days? What planet are you on Nick?
We can’t do those activities in that order because Mike needs to be involved in both. What’s he supposed to do? Work 80 hours a week?
That milestone can’t be achieved until we’ve done that one. You have them the wrong way round. Might have been a good idea to come and talk to us don’t you think?
Come on. Be honest. Never has a first draft been right on the money in anything I’ve been involvd in (unless it was only me on the project of course!).
How many revisions did you have to make before people agreed on it? How did you feel when members of your team picked your beautiful plan apart so callously. How did you feel at the end of the process? A little tired? How long did it take overall when you factor in the initial drafting and then all the subsequent conversations and revisions (not to mention the emotional fatigue)? Too long I’d wager.
Most importantly, what happened to the plan after that? The centre of all the action for the duration of the project or a dust collector in the 3rd folder down on your shared drive?
The problem here is not in the plan itself but the process that the team so often goes through to create the plan.
Remember, this is an incredibly important document in a project, arguably the most important, as it holds a lot of the important detail of how the team is going to operate to achieve the objectives that the project is setting out to achieve.
Remember also this is the most emotionally charged document you have (hence the bolding of the letters above) as it holds the immediate personal future of all the people involved. People tend to care quite a lot about their own destiny and most of the time like to have at least some control over it. Some of us even HATE being told exactly what to do, who to do it with and by when (ahem!). That’s just human nature I’m afraid and to change that you’re going to need a bit more than your measly plan!
So what can you do differently?
Two things – keep it simple and create it as a team.
Do those two things well and you not only have a higher quality final product but you have also helped bond your team together even more and saved yourself a heck of a lot of time in the process. You need a solid process though so as a starter for 10 here’s how I go about it.
What is it?
A project plan is a document or tool that maps out the entire implementation of the project – capturing roles, a timeline and activities shown in “swim lanes”.
It highlights all milestones, activities, interfaces, decision points and deliverables along the way.
When would you use it?
Early in the project after you have a team, you’ve developed a shared vision of the objectives (how might you do that? coming soon is a tool for you!) and you have agreed each team member’s role and responsibilities (how? again, coming soon).
A good plan then becomes a living working document that changes shape as the project progresses. It should become the place to look to see what the latest position is and what’s coming up in the future.
Who would you use it with?
Every tool should be used in a team environment if possible as I said with the Stakeholder Map.
This one, though, should ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY and UNQUESTIONABLY be done as a group. Anyone and everyone on the project should be invited along to this workshop as they need to be able to contribute their thoughts and ideas on potential ways forward and hold their hands up to volunteer when it comes to plotting out activities.
Invite other interfacing workstreams and projects along if you can (or at least representatives). Rarely is a project a standalone island and a good way to foster intra-project relationships and collaboration is to get as many people’s fingerprints on this plan as possible. There’s less chance they’ll turn around at a later date and complain if they were part of the planning process in the first place.
Are there any rules?
Don’t plan alone. Have I said that already?
Start with the high-level milestones and work from right to left (i.e. start with the final deliverable first and then plot in subsidiary milestones back to the current day) before you start looking at the activities that will be required to deliver those milestones.
What’s the process?
Step 1 – draw the map
For this tool you need to go big as it needs to be on the wall so your group can crowd around and work comfortably with it. Length depends on how long into the future you’re planning and height depends on how many ‘swim lanes’ you might have. As a guide about 2 metres high and 4 metres long should do it (you can always tap extra paper on to the end or below if needs be.
Before you mark out the paper you need to work out the number of ‘workstreams’ in your project. For convenience, these are ways of dividing up the work for planning purposes. For example, they may reflect the responsibilities of different stakeholders in the project or they may reflect different functions. It’s totally your team’s choice how you do this, go with whatever you feel most comfortable with but make it a group decision.
I’m going to use the generic example of renovating a house for this post and my ‘team and I’ have decided to chunk the project into three workstreams – architectural design, work on the house itself and then landscaping the garden.
The workstreams therefore are called ‘design’, ‘house’ and ‘garden’ and are designated their own swim lanes for the duration of the project which is represented by the ‘timeline’.
Step 2 – plot the milestones
You should then start to populate the plan by identifying ‘key milestones’ first. These are events, deliverables or decision points that symbolise significant achievements at certain points along the timeline. Write one per post-it note (use post-its if you can as you’ll want the flexibility of being able to move them around) and stick them on to your plan starting from the end of the project and working backwards (i.e. right to left).
Your first milestone will probably always be ‘Project Complete’ and this should be stuck at you target date. Working right to left you might have others like ‘house complete’; ‘new kitchen floor down’; ‘loft conversion finished’; ‘sign-off architects drawings’ etc.
If you have a large number of workstreams and enough people in your team working on this then you might want to split into sub-groups to get the first draft up onto the wall quicker.
Use square post-it notes to represent the milestones, twist them 45 degrees and you now have a diamond (the international symbol of a milestone!). Write clearly the identity of each so all can be easily read from a distance.
That should leave you with a diagram that might look a little like this. Take a good look as a team and do a sanity check. Do they look in the right order? Any glaring errors? Does the flow look OK? Are they doable in the timeframe allotted? Are any clustered too tightly together that ‘feels’ like a bit of a stretch?
Don’t be afraid to challenge your initial assumptions (as a team through discussion mind) and move them around to your hearts content. That’s what this about.
If you’re the PM facilitating the process make sure everyone in your team is engaged and inputting. Any who aren’t gently bring them in by giving them the space, time and permission to contribute. It’s quite often the quiet ones that have the best ideas and once they’ve got going you won’t be able to stop them. You also want everyone to get in there to ensure this is a whole team effort.
Step 3 – plot the activities and dependencies
Complete the plan by using post-it notes to represent activities (note that for clarity, each workstream has been assigned a different colour). Activities are the work that must be done in order to meet the planned milestones. By using a string of post-it notes you can represent the planned duration of each activity, from start to finish. Use a marker pen to write on the identity of each activity.
Finally, it is advisable to indicate where the start or finish of one activity is dependent on another, by drawing lines between them.
If different people in the team were assigned to a workstream and have stuck to planning their ‘own’ swim lane, their thinking should then be challenged and informed by the planning of other workstreams on which they are interdependent. This results in a far more rigorous plan and builds ownership of the final product going forward.
That might leave you with something that looks a bit like this.
Now isn’t that just as good as those fancy MS Project plans that you’ve seen so many of? The big difference here is that, apart from the striking colour scheme and the wonderful flexibility that this plan has, it also has the hugely important advantage of being created by your team all at the same time. Finger prints are all over it and as a result it will be much more implementable and therefore have much more chance of success.
Don’t take it down, electronify it and bury the original in a cupboard somewhere. Be proud of your work, give it a central place on the wall by your team and watch it evolve naturally as the project progresses in open view for all to see.
Summary
That’s my take on project planning. When I was first shown this and got the chance to experience the process firsthand I can’t tell you how enlightened I felt (a little sad I know!)
You may feel that it’s a little upfront heavy in terms of resource and you wouldn’t be wrong. It does take your whole team away from what they would normally be doing for a while and therefore the temptation to go back to the usual method of one person creating the first draft and review modify review modify might seem lighter. It’s one of those false economies though as total time spent the old way will outweigh the new in the end and you miss out on theteam-building opportunity and emotional trust building that a productive workshop environment provides.
All those years I felt like I’d wasted watching myself and others create, discuss, struggle, modify, repeat, sign-off and eventually hate the very document that was supposed to bring us all together. All I’d ever heard was people complaining about that ‘the tool wasn’t fit-for-purpose’ when in fact the tool wasn’t really the issue. It’s ‘the process’ that most often needs the attention and to change that all you really need is to change your approach to creation.
I hope get the opportunity to give this a go.
Happy planning!
