Project Management Methodology and Planning

When putting a plan in place for delivery of a product it is important to ensure you have adequate resources and a realistic expectation of the timescales you want to deliver within. Consider;

• Outside the plan, have all roles and responsibilities been agreed?
• Was the project properly scoped? e.g. Are you sure you know about, have thought about and have included everything?
• Outside the plan, is there buy in from all interested and affected parties for the plan?
• How long will each task take? e.g. Testing will take 4 weeks
• Are the right resources going to be in place to achieve that time-scale? e.g. Remembered everyone's holiday?, Remembered other things taking peoples time?
• Are there any dependencies? e.g. Build cannot begin until analysis has completed and been signed off.
• What are the milestones for the project? e.g. Completion of the build.
• Is there contingency in the plan, how much flexibility is there in the plan?
• Have you verified with the people doing the work and their managers, in detail for the near term, and at at high level for the longer term that the work can be completed? e.g. There are no other commitments?
• What checkpoints should there be? e.g. To check you are still on target.
• Has the change management process been implemented? See our change management process checklist  for further information, or read more here on the change management process.
• Whilst planning is in progress you with be gathering your initial thoughts on who will be in the project team?

Initial thoughtful and thorough planning and then managed execution against that plan, will provide results you require.

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