You’ll use the tools and techniques in this book many times during any given project — as you hammer out your initial plan, monitor work in progress and its results, and continue to tweak the details as necessary. Even though you can’t avoid surprises or changes as your project unfolds, you can provide a logical order, like the one in this appendix, for your project’s planning and control activities. Sticking to this order as much as possible discourages bad surprises (and their faithful companions — change and redirection).

Preparing Your Project Plan

Figure A-1 depicts the steps you should follow in project planning and the parts of the plan you need to produce along the way.

When you receive a project assignment, take the following steps to develop a plan for your project:

1. Clarify the reasons for the project and the desired results.

   To complete this step, you need to do two important activities:

   • Identify the stakeholders who will have a say in your project.
   • Get info from all the stakeholders and written sources about any and all expectations.

   See Chapter 3 for details on how you can use a cost-benefit analysis to compare anticipated project outcomes with the resources required to obtain them. In addition, check out Chapter 4 for more on how to identify your project’s stakeholders and the sources you need to check to find out about the reasons and expectations for your project.

   Perform these two activities interactively and iteratively. In other words, use the initial statement of your assignment to suggest additional stakeholders and consult with those stakeholders to identify more issues to address.

   The outcomes from these activities are your stakeholder register and your scope statement (see Chapter 4 for details on putting together a stakeholder register and Chapter 5 for help preparing a scope statement).

2. After you know all the results and deliverables your project is supposed to produce, identify the work required to accomplish them.

   Utilize a work breakdown structure (WBS) to record this information (see Chapter 6 for details on the WBS).

3. Consider the WBS and the stakeholder register together to decide on stakeholder roles and responsibilities for each project activity.

   Use a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) to display this information (see Chapter 12 for tips on how to prepare this matrix).

4. Create and analyze a network diagram that represents the interdependencies among the deliverables and activities from the WBS to develop a schedule that meets your project drivers’ requirements and that your project supporters believe is possible.

   Display your final schedule in a milestone list, an activity list, and/or a Gantt chart (see Chapter 7 for how to prepare a network diagram and display a project schedule).

5. Estimate your resource needs and display them in one or more resource matrices and resource loading charts and in your project budget.

   After you specify the particular resources you need and when you need them and identify people who may satisfy those needs, revise your network diagram and schedule to reflect any differences between the capabilities and availability of the people you requested and those being offered to you. Negotiate for different people, if necessary, and modify your schedule accordingly until you have a schedule and a list of resource assignments that you believe will meet your project’s needs (see Chapters 8 and 9 for preparing and displaying project resource needs).

6. Identify, analyze, and plan for any significant project risks.

   Document your risks in a risks, actions, issues, and decisions (RAID) log or other tool(s), as specified in your risk management plan (see Chapter 10 for suggestions on dealing with project risks).

Continue working on each step in this initial process until all project drivers and supporters agree with and support your project plan.

Controlling Your Project during Performance

Figure A-2 illustrates the steps you routinely perform to monitor and control your project throughout its performance.

To monitor and control your project throughout its life cycle, follow these steps:

1. At the start of each performance period, reconfirm that the necessary people and resources are available and scheduled in accordance with your current project plan (see Chapter 14 for details).
2. At the end of each performance period, do the following:
   • Gather activity start and end dates, milestone dates, resource expenditures, and the results of quality assessments.
   • Compare the actual results with the planned results, identify any issues or problems, and take any necessary corrective actions.

3. Report your progress for the period to your project stakeholders.

   See Chapter 14 for information on tracking and assessing project performance and Chapter 15 for more on keeping your stakeholders informed.