Project plans for the rest of us

There are very few people I have encountered in my career that have seen project planning as a truly joyful exercise.  Some professional consultants live and breathe projects, and therefore the prospect of a well executed project plan may elicit anticipation of success, or a sense of accomplishment in a plan in a well designed plan.  And there are others that can simply crank plans out in their sleep; having done so many throughout the course of their careers that it becomes second nature.  And perhaps a select few project management professionals eagerly anticipate putting together that next glorious plan, the next chance to show off their skills.

But for the rest of us, project planning is often a necessary evil.  So evil in fact, that I have seen many projects within my own corporation fail or miss project targets because the project champion decided to do as little as humanly possible in planning.  These pseudo-plans contain the bare minimum tasks, responsibilities and due dates, without much else.  And this comes out of successful managers and contributors, even star employees.  Because project planning is only done as a perfunctory step, rather than actually managing the plan.

From what I’ve seen, this is most often due to managers not realizing that an in-between project plan is possible.  That it doesn’t have to be either a list of tasks or a monumental MS Project disaster.  That is the reason most often given when the managers I’ve worked with (and myself included) discuss why a better plan was not created.  “The plan will take longer than the project” or “I don’t know how to use MS Project” or “No one follows those things anyway” are all common excuses given.

So instead of pushing my colleagues towards a full blown project plan, I believe there are a few key additions that could take the basic task list to a true project plan:

1. Add links between tasks & precedents-

Many projects have been postponed or delayed only because the sequence of events was not well defined.

2. Include actual effort estimates in the task, not just calendar days to complete-

Many people don’t actually add up the hours needed to complete a task – they just pick a random calendar day

3. Make more detailed tasks-

Broad tasks that people don’t even remember what they mean two weeks later don’t help anyone

 

These simple additions can go a long way towards taking a task list and making it a reasonable plan.