The project plan explains what the project does and why. It focuses on management and governance of the project.
Executives, team members and other stakeholders will want to follow the project closely, resulting in a steady stream of enquiring emails, questions asked in chats or physical meetings. Address all questions and concerns via the continuously updated project plan.
Start the project plan first thing in the idea phase. It’s helpful in collecting and sharing decision throughout the idea development stage and can quickly be discarded if the idea turns out to be found infeasible.
Most organizations have a standard project plan template, but if not, you can create a project plan with the content suggested here.
Introduction
Situation
Summarize the situation – is the idea still under consideration? Is a project started and underway – and is it going according to plan?
Mission statement
State the current directive – initially, it might be to develop or disprove an idea – later it might be to deliver a suitable solution on budget and schedule.
Revision history
| Version | Completed | Summary |
|---|---|---|
As the project passes major milestones, remove intermediate update revisions to keep the revision history manageable.
Business case
Quantify costs and benefits to demonstrate the feasibility of the investment.
Schedule
List key milestones and target dates, which the business case depends on.
Readiness and health
This chapter tells how well the project is faring.
Readiness checklist
This checklist covers all typical areas of importance for any project to be successful. If a checklist item isn’t fully covered, explain why and what’s being done to address it.
- Costs estimated and covered
- Actionable project mission statement defined, sanctioned and understood
- Enterprise architecture known and understood
- Development process defined, sanctioned and understood
- Team covering relevant disciplines formed, allocated and committed
- Project environment established and well-functioning
- Project administration organized and well-functioning
- Meeting and communication practices defined, sanctioned and understood
- Stakeholders identified, engaged, briefed, allocated and committed
- Risks identified, accepted, analyzed and addressed
- Targeted business processes identified and understood
- Planned business processes identified, defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Information model defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Data management defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Available infrastructure known and understood
- Operations organization and deployment processes known and understood
- Surrounding application landscape known and understood
- Required system integrations identified, analyzed, negotiated, defined, communicated and understood
- Requirements identified, defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Architecture defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Releases defined, communicated, sanctioned and understood
- Go-live plans defined, communicated, sanctioned and rehearsed
- Releases accepted by and handed over to operations and support
- Solution accepted by and handed over to maintenance
Revisit the readiness checklist often to monitor the continued readiness to proceed with the project and expect a successful outcome.
Risks
List identified risks and explain what’s being done to mitigate them.
| # | Risk | Potential impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Remove fully mitigated risks after passing key milestones to keep the open risks list more manageable.
Problems
List identified problems and explain how they’re being solved.
| # | Problem | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Project environment
Facilities
Describe where the project team will work (remotely or in person), and which facilities are available to the team.
Tools
Describe which tools are selected for various tasks like planning, creating work products, developing software, registering and handling bugs and changes etc.
Templates
Provide a list of relevant and sanctioned templated, and refer to their location.
Project processes
Development process
Explain the development process. Which work products will be created, how will they be reviewed and by whom, what’s the approval process, and refer to any available guidance.
Project processes
Explain key project processes and refer to supporting templates and guides.
- Onboard project team member.
- Offboard project team member.
- Onboard stakeholder.
- Manage requirement changes.
- Manage risks.
- Manage problems.
- Hand-over to operations.
- Hand-over to maintenance.
- Close down project.
Add other relevant processes to the list. Either specify each process here or refer to separate process specifications.
Best practices
List and explain relevant best practices.
- Organizing and holding meetings.
- Communication.
Organization
Oversight team
Introduce the oversight team and list their contact information.
| Name | Role | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
Project team
Introduce the project team and list their contact information.
| Name | Role | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
Vendor teams
For each vendor team, explain what they’re delivering and list their contact information.
| Name | Role | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
Stakeholders
For each stakeholder, explain their stakes in the project and list their contact information.
| Name | Role | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|