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Project Planning Activities

*******WIll be covered in this Document***********

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6. Acceptance Plan
7. Communications Plan
8. Procurement Plan
9. Tender Management Process
10.Statement of Work
11.Request for Information
12.Request for Proposal
13.Supplier Contract
14.Planning Phase Review

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What : A Project Plan sets out the phases, activities and tasks needed to deliver a project. The
timeframes required to deliver the project, along with the resources and milestones are also
shown in the Project Plan. Using this Project Plan Template, you can quickly and easily create a
comprehensive Project Management Plan for your project, as it already lists the commonly used
tasks needed to complete projects from start to finish.

The Project Plan is the most important document in the project, as it

provides the Project Manager with a roadmap ahead, and it tells them

during the journey whether they are on-track.

When : A Project Plan is created every time you wish to embark on a new project. A summarized
Project Plan is usually created early in the life cycle, with a detailed Project Plan being created
later the planning phase. The Project Plan is referred to constantly throughout the project. Every
day, the Project Manager will review actual progress against that stated in the Project Plan, to
ensure they are still on track. The Project Plan is therefore the most critical tool a Manager can
have to successfully deliver projects.
Project Plan should cover

 Identification of all of the phases, activities and tasks

 Summing up the effort needed to complete those tasks
 Documentation all of the project inter-dependencies
 Dist of all planning assumptions and constraints
 Detailed project planning schedule

Project Plan will also help you to:

 Define the project scope & milestones

 Identify the Work Breakdown Structure
 Set and agree the target delivery dates
 Monitor and control the allocation of resource
 Report on the progress of the project, to the sponsor

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What : A Resource Plan summarizes the level of resources needed to complete a project. A
properly documented Resource Plan will specify the exact quantities of labor, equipment and
materials needed to complete your project. Resource Planning document also helps you gain
approval from your Sponsor, ensuring their buy-in.

When : A Resource Plan is created during the Resource Planning phase of the project. Anyone
responsible for Project Resource Management will need to create a comprehensive Resource
Plan, to ensure that all of the resources needed to complete the project are identified. By
implementing proper Resource Planning practices, it also helps you with budgeting and
forecasting project expenditure.

This Resource Planning document should identify the:

 Types of labor required for the project

 Roles and key responsibilities for each labor type
  umber of people required to fill each role
 Items of equipment to be used and their purposes
 Types and quantities of equipment needed
 Total amount of materials needed

Resource Plan document will also help you to:

 Plan the dates for using or consuming these resources

 Identify the amount of resource required per project activity
 Create a detailed resource utilization schedule

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 What : A Financial Plan identifies the Project Finance (i.e. money) needed to meet specific
objectives. The Financial Plan defines all of the various types of expenses that a project will
incur (labor, equipment, materials and administration costs) along with an estimation of the value
of each expense. The Financial Plan also summarizes the total expense to be incurred across the
project and this total expense becomes the project budget. As part of the Financial Planning
exercise, a schedule is provided which states the amount of money needed during each stage of
the project.

A Financial Plan enables you to set a "budget", against which you measure your expenditure. To
deliver you project "within budget", you need to produce the project deliverables at a total cost
which does not exceed that stated in the budget.

When : Whenever you need to ask for money, you need a sound Financial Plan showing how it
will be consumed. For a Project Manager, getting Project Finance is one of the most critical tasks
in the project. Therefore, sound Financial Planning principles must be followed to ensure a
positive outcome. A detailed Financial Plan for your project will help you get the Project Finance
needed to successfully deliver your project on time.

In Financial Plan you must identify the:

 Types of labor costs to be incurred during the project

 Items of equipment needed to deliver the project
 üarious materials needed by the project
 Unit costs for labor, equipment and materials
 ther costs types such as administration
 Amount of contingency needed

You can then use the Financial Plan to create a budget by:

 Calculating the total cost involved in completing the project

 Identifying the total cost of each project activity
 Creating a schedule of expenses

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What : A Quality Plan helps you schedule all of the tasks needed to make sure that your project
meets the needs of your customer. It comprises two parts; the Quality Assurance Plan lists the
independent reviews needed and the Quality Control Plan lists the internal reviews needed to
meet your quality targets. By using Quality Assurance and Quality Control techniques, you can
create a comprehensive Quality Management Plan for your project.

It will help you to set quality targets for your project to ensure that the deliverables produced,
meet the needs of your customer.

When : Creating a Quality Plan is essential if you want to provide the customer with confidence
that you will produce a solution that meets their needs. The Quality Plan states everything you¶re
going to do, to ensure the quality of your solution. The first section defines the Quality targets.
The second section sets out a Quality Assurance Plan. And the third section defines a Quality
Control Plan. By using Quality Planning document, you can create a Quality Management Plan
that gives your customer a high degree of confidence that you will succeed.

You can use Quality Plan to set quality targets by:

 Identifying the customers requirements

 Disting the project deliverables to be produced
 Setting quality criteria for these deliverables
 Defining quality standards for the deliverables
 oaining your customers agreement with the targets set

You can then use Quality Plan to monitor and control quality by:

 Identifying the quality control tasks needed to control quality

 Creating a Quality Control Plan, by scheduling the control activities
 Disting the quality assurance activities required to assure quality
 Building a Quality Assurance Plan, by creating an activity schedule

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What : A Risk Plan helps you to foresee risks, identify actions to prevent them from occurring
and reduce their impact should they eventuate. The Risk Management Plan is created as part of
the Risk Planning process. It lists of all foreseeable risks, their ranking and priority, the
preventative and contingent actions, along with a process for tracking them. This Risk Plan
template will help you perform these steps quickly and easily.

It helps you do this, by giving you a complete risk management plan, showing you how to take
action to reduce risk in your project.

When : A Risk Plan should be used anytime that risks need to be carefully managed. For
instance, during the start up of a project a Risk Plan is created to identify and manage the risk
involved with the project delivery. The Risk Plan is referred to frequently throughout the project,
to ensure that all risks are mitigated as quickly as possible. The Risk Plan template helps you
identify and manage your risks, boosting your chances of success.

While creating Risk Plan, you should :

 Identify risks within your project

 Categorize and prioritize each risk
 Determine the likelihood of the risks occurring
 Identify the impact on the project if risk does occur

You can then use this Risk Plan to:

  Identify preventative actions to prevent the risk from occurring
 Dist contingent actions to reduce the impact, should the risk occur
 Schedule these actions within an acceptable timeframe
 Monitor the status of each risk throughout the project

When software developers are responsible for 




, you always end up with
complications in resource planning. This is not just the case when you let developers perform
maintenance on previous projects. Similar problems arise when they are required to do some
other activities, like spending time on 

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for projects that haven't yet
been signed into contracts. Dikewise, believe it or not, many developers actually need regular
  , or they like to do some    
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Therefore, maintenance work on old projects is a challenge, but it's just one of many types of
work that can take people's attention away from their current projects. This requires a
professional approach to resource planning...




 

 
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This is how we have implemented these principles in our company:

 We maintain a 1-on-1 relationship between project managers and teams. This means that
our project managers can do the resource planning for the members in their (multi-
functional) team.
 The project managers are, of course, responsible for managing the projects in their teams.
In these cases they act as ScrumMasters, as all our projects are using 0 . These
projects typically cover about 75% of our people's agenda's. There can be multiple
projects going on in one team, but any conflicts of interest are taken care of by the project
manager, as he is (by definition) responsible for all of them.
 Team members stick to their own teams. We don't continuously reassign people across
teams. (And if someone tries again, I'll kill him.)
 Every month, a specific number of days are reserved for maintenance work. We call them


. The number of issue days needed is estimated from our maintenance
contracts. Management of maintenance issues is done by
   
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project/resource managers. Explicitly allocating time for maintenance work in people's
 agendas has been a big help in improving both our service levels 
the reliability of our
project estimates.
 Every week a number of hours are set aside for doing 
 

(for fixed price
projects) and consultancy work by some of our lead developers. This pipeline of work is
managed by someone who is neither a project manager nor a service manager.
 Software developers themselves are allowed to reserve a number of 
.
These are days for self-development and training. It works similar to requesting time off
for vacations. As long as people request these days well in advance, this should usually
not be a problem. The things our people do and learn on those academy days are
monitored by their own functional managers.
 Dast but not least, I am now considering the introduction of  
. These should
be days where software developers work on improving our own tools, techniques and
processes, in ways that cannot be directly translated to billable hours in our projects. As a
quality manager I would personally be responsible for the way those days are spent by
our people.

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The key to a successful project is in the planning. Creating a project plan is the first thing you
should do when undertaking any kind of project.

ften project planning is ignored in favour of getting on with the work. However, many people
fail to realise the value of a project plan in saving time, money and many problems.

This article looks at a simple, practical approach to project planning. n completion of this
guide, you should have a sound project planning approach that you can use for future projects.

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A project is successful when the needs of the stakeholders have been met. A stakeholder is
anybody directly, or indirectly impacted by the project.

As a first step, it is important to identify the stakeholders in your project. It is not always easy to
identify the stakeholders of a project, particularly those impacted indirectly. Examples of
stakeholders are:

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nce you understand who the stakeholders are, the next step is to find out their needs. The best
way to do this is by conducting stakeholder interviews. Take time during the interviews to draw
out the true needs that create real benefits. ften stakeholders will talk about needs that aren't
relevant and don't deliver benefits. These can be recorded and set as a low priority.

The next step, once you have conducted all the interviews, and have a comprehensive list of
needs is to prioritise them. From the prioritised list, create a set of goals that can be easily
measured. A technique for doing this is to review them against the SMART principle. This way
it will be easy to know when a goal has been achieved.

nce you have established a clear set of goals, they should be recorded in the project plan. It can
be useful to also include the needs and expectations of your stakeholders.

This is the most difficult part of the planning process completed. It's time to move on and look at
the project deliverables.

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Using the goals you have defined in step 1, create a list of things the project needs to deliver in
order to meet those goals. Specify when and how each item must be delivered.
Add the deliverables to the project plan with an estimated delivery date. More accurate delivery
dates will be established during the scheduling phase, which is next.

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Create a list of tasks that need to be carried out for each deliverable identified in step 2. For each
task identify the following:

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nce you have established the amount of effort for each task, you can workout the effort
required for each deliverable, and an accurate delivery date. Update your deliverables section
with the more accurate delivery dates.

At this point in the planning, you could choose to use a software package such as Microsoft
Project to create your project schedule. Alternatively, use one of the many free templates
available. Input all of the deliverables, tasks, durations and the resources who will complete each
task.

A common problem discovered at this point, is when a project has an imposed delivery deadline
from the sponsor that is not realistic based on your estimates. If you discover that this is the case,
you must contact the sponsor immediately. The options you have in this situation are:

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Use the project schedule to justify pursuing one of these options.

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This section deals with plans you should create as part of the planning process. These can be
included directly in the plan.

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Identify by name, the individuals and organisations with a leading role in the project. For each,
describe their roles and responsibilities on the project.

 ext, describe the number and type of people needed to carryout the project. For each resource
detail start dates, estimated duration and the method you will use for obtaining them.

Create a single sheet containing this information.

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Create a document showing who needs to be kept informed about the project and how they will
receive the information. The most common mechanism is a weekly or monthly progress report,
describing how the project is performing, milestones achieved and work planned for the next
period.

 


Risk management is an important part of project management. Although often overlooked, it is

important to identify as many risks to your project as possible, and be prepared if something bad
happens.

Here are some examples of common project risks:

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Risks can be tracked using a simple risk log. Add each risk you have identified to your risk log;
write down what you will do in the event it occurs, and what you will do to prevent it from
occurring. Review your risk log on a regular basis, adding new risks as they occur during the life
of the project. Remember, when risks are ignored they don't go away.

  
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 ? c? streamlines the business processes of a manufacturing and
distribution enterprise. The software cleanly integrates different areas within an organization to
improve the delivery of critical information to users and improves data consistency to help
manufacturers respond quickly to their customer demands. Further, the information is accurate
and updated in real time by the users and accessible when critical decisions need to be made.

MRP tends to be used as a generic term to describe manufacturing systems with much broader
capabilities, typically including financial, purchasing, sales, distribution, inventory and
production modules in addition to the traditional MRP planning modules. As manufacturing has
become globalized and computer technology has developed to enable cost effective desktop
access to information, most MRP vendors have further extended their products (e.g. adding
human resource modules etc.) and rebranded them as ERP solutions to emphasise their objective
of addressing the total needs of large enterprises.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can sometimes be thought of as an advanced MRP II system
with capabilities in three core areas: Customer Service, Manufacturing and Finance.

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 Customer Management - Tracks all activity and information on customers. Maintain

extensive detail about customer contacts, pricing, addresses, and credit information.

 Sales rder Processing - Manages all aspects of contact with customers. Support high-
volume order processing or complex configurable orders.
 Product Configurator - Capabilities for configure-to-order manufacturers. Set up in a
rules-based environment, the software makes it possible to handle multiple configurations
through a selection of options through the interface. This module may be used separately
or called to the screen while entering sales orders, work orders, jobs or estimating the
cost of a product.
 EDI - Enables electronic transmission of routine business documents between computer
systems and business partners. Documents such as purchase orders, invoices, credit
notices, and shipping notices can be sent without generation of any paperwork.

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 Inventory - Provides control over the parts in a system by improving access to inventory
information. ffers visibility to plan and react in today's multi-plant environment, as well
as added sophistication in allocating, moving and manipulating inventory.

 Costing - Designed to match a variety of costing approaches including activity-based

costing. Unlimited cost "sets" can be created, each containing an unlimited number of
cost elements. verhead absorption is supported, as well as traditional functions such as
variance and historical cost reporting.
 Purchasing - Designed to help organizations dynamically respond to changing markets
and maintain a constant flow of inventory to enhance cash flow and shorten delivery
times.
 Master Production Scheduling (MPS) - Provides the master schedule for production.
 Engineering - Provides the ability to integrate at the engineering level to ensure accurate
updated information to any changes within a product.
 Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) - Creates the production schedule based on
inventory and other critical resources necessary for generation.
 Capacity Resource Planning - Enables forecasting of production capacity with the ability
to look at best/worse case scenarios before MRP generation.
 Rough Cut Resource Planning (RCRP) - Simulates forecasting of critical resources (i.e.,
material, labor) based on current information in a multitude of scenarios to find best fit
for production.
  Shop Floor - Provides complete control over the production process. Monitors a work
order from inception to fulfillment of the order, and tracks all production costs. Supports
processes such as backflushing and backflushing by operation.
 Repetitive - Enables a repetitive shop with the ability to generate daily schedules and
calculate available-to-promise values against a schedule. It also enables companies to run
discrete and repetitive operations simultaneously.
 Dot Control - Provides industries that demand comprehensive tracking capabilities a way
to handle every detail in a manner that simplifies and automates the entire process. From
supplier lot numbers on purchased parts to finished goods serial numbers, complete on-
line reporting will illustrate an entire "cradle-to-grave" lifecycle.

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 oeneral Dedger - Supports all aspects of the business accounting process. User-defined
hierarchical account types allow an unlimited number of account groupings for
consolidation and ease of reporting. Account aliases such as "cash" provide users with
reminders of account numbers. Further, "drill-down" inquiries provide detailed
summaries of all postings.

 Accounts Receivable - Delivers the latest tools to control and expedite the receipt of
monies from the entry of sales order to posting payments received. Managing cash flow,
generation of invoices, cash receipts, customer statements and adjustments are all easily
managed.
 Accounts Payable - Provides full functionality and integration to other areas such as
customer service, purchasing and other manufacturing functions. All payable transactions
are automatically posted to the oeneral Dedger, maintaining a full audit of activity.
 Financial Consolidation - Individual business units may view their financial information,
or parent companies can roll up all business subsidiaries and view the consolidated
information.

 

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Is a company-wide computer software system used to manage and coordinate all the resources,
information, and functions of a business from shared data stores. An ERP system has a service-
oriented architecture with modular hardware and software units or "services" that communicate
on a local area network. The modular design allows a business to add or reconfigure modules
while preserving data integrity in one shared database that may be centralized or distributed.
 eesa Tech provides its clients with a diverse range of products which include  
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 (MMS), Production Process Management System (PPMS), Human
Resource Management System (c0) and Financial Account System (FAS). All of these
ERP's are meant for different proposes and can have different advantages and features; but the
common advantages and the feature of an ERP are as follows.

In the absence of an ERP system, a large manufacturer may find itself with many

 


 

that cannot communicate or interface effectively with one another. Tasks that need
to interface with one another may involve:

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An ERP system is capable of providing large amount of information and data regarding various
items at relatively high speed and accuracy. The system also provides with exceptionally high
levels security. The system is capable of working in a highly diverse environment and can
perform tasks across various companies, is multi lingual and can handle transactions in various
currencies.

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ERPs are cross-functional and enterprise wide. All functional departments that are involved in
operations or production are integrated in one system. In addition to manufacturing,
warehousing, logistics, and Information Technology, this would include accounting, human
resources, marketing, and strategic management.