What Project Plan Elements Should You Include
The project plan is the project’s road-map that creates the common language that all stakeholders can refer to. The project plan elements help to ensure that the project is on target with regards to time, output and costs.
The project plan elements typically cover:
Project Scope:
The project scope would detail, the Project (Expected work) and Product (Features & Functions). This is the most important component of a plan since it defines what exactly you would need to achieve in the project.
Requirements Management:
Documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders.
Schedule Management:
Project’s milestones, activities, and deliverables, and their expected start and end dates.
Financial Management:
Investment and budgetary details.
Quality Management:
Ensure quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement, and make sure to mitigate the risk of counterfeit components.
Resource Management:
Financial resources, inventory, human resources & skills, production resources, and/or information technology.
Stakeholder management:
Define and manage positive relationships with stakeholders through the appropriate management of their expectations and agreed objectives.
Communications Management:
What information needs to flow in the project, Who needs what information, When is the information needed, What format is the information delivered in, and Who will be responsible for transmitting and providing the information.
Project Change Management:
Change control of project parameters and their impact on the project.
Risk Management:
Identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks.
Procurement Management:
Establishing, maintaining and closing relationships with suppliers of goods and services for the project.
The above project plan elements help ensure that all aspects of the project have been taken into consideration.
In addition to the Project Plan, project managers can create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which is a key project deliverable that organizes the team’s work into manageable sections.
The use of the above steps and charts depend greatly on the complexity and size of your project.
One thing to keep in mind is that good planning leads to a higher success rate.
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