Chapter 2: Planning the Project

Overview

Picture this: You re an IT professional and your manager informs you that the entire network, from the physical cabling to the network cards in each machine, has to be replaced with something bigger, better, and faster.

After you recover from choking on your coffee, you ask, Something? What exactly did you have in mind?

And what does your boss say? I dunno . Something faster. Just figure it out and let me know what ll work. By the way, we can t spend too much. See ya.

While this may not be a typical way for a project to begin, you can see before any implementation, charter, or budget talks get under way you ve a ton of research and planning to do. Where does that planning begin and how can you formalize your results? This chapter will answer these questions and help you streamline your efforts.