GUIDELINES FOR WRITING PROJECT PLANS

If you are charged with writing a Project Plan then the following should help to ensure that you make the best possible job of it. (This is presented as an alternative to the one in the Introduction to Part 2.) Your plan should contain the following elements:

Table of contents.
Management summary.
Statement of what is to be done. (The goal of the project.)
Deliverables. (Also part of the goal.) These may come under a number of headings:
- Software
- Hardware
- Documentation
- Services
Completion criteria. How do we know when the project is over? (A key part of the goal.)
Acceptance criteria. How does our customer decide the project is over? (Also a key part of the goal.)

The next nine items are all part of the plan and the backup plan.

Work breakdown structure. A list of all the jobs that have to be done to complete the project together with estimates of their associated effort and any assumptions made.
A Gantt chart. Showing the WBS phased over time, and stating any assumptions made. The Gantt chart should also show clearly the critical path of the project.
A breakdown of the effort and schedule in the project by project phase.
Milestones. A list of key dates extracted from the Gantt chart.
Resources required. Human and otherwise .
Resource loading. How the resources are phased over time and how the availability of people's time has been calculated.
Project budget (optional). Derived from the effort in the WBS and the section on resources.
Project organization chart. Among other things, this serves to identify the project leader.
Backup plan/margin for error. Sometimes called risk analysis. The project plan represents a prediction of how things will go in the future with regard to this project. The intention of this section is to show that the author of the plan has given some thought to what she will do when what happens in reality differs from the project plan.

Part 5: THE REST OF THE WHEREWITHAL

Chapter 15. RESOLVING ISSUES: PROBLEM SOLVING AND DECISION MAKING

INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM-SOLVING METHOD

INTRODUCTION

In Parts 1 and 2 of this book I have presented a general method for leading a project. We have talked about how to plan it, what things to do during the execution of the plan, and how to bring the project to a successful conclusion. The method presented was conceptually very simple and pretty much common sense.

However, life is never that simple. Countless issues, large and small, will arise during your project. Not a day will go by when there won't be problems requiring solutions; every day, you will make decisions which will affect the outcome of the project.

This part of the book presents a general method and a toolbox of techniques that you can use to help resolve these issues, to solve problems and to make decisions. Armed with your commonsense method in one hand and your problem- solving method in the other, you should be the equal of any issue which arises to confront you.

In this chapter I will list these problem-solving techniques and, where useful, give examples of their application. There are no right and wrong situations when one or other technique should be applied. As we have seen, projects are complex organisms, and any issue is likely to be complicated, with numerous factors to be balanced. Several of the techniques which follow may all resolve the issue. Only you can decide which resolution is right for your project. If this chapter had a subtitle it would be "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

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