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How to write an effective project plan in 6 simple steps

Contributing writer

If you’re a Type A personality, project planning might sound like music to your ears. Setting deadlines, organizing tasks, and creating order out of chaos — what’s not to love?

The reality is that project planning isn’t for everyone. In one survey by Association for Project Management, 76% of project professionals said their main project was a source of stress . Poor planning, unclear responsibilities, and overallocation are often the culprits behind the stress. 

An effective project plan helps teams stay within budget, scope, and schedule, while delivering quality work. In short, it gets you to the finish line without the stress.  

What is a project plan?

A project plan, also known as a work plan, is a blueprint of your project lifecycle. It’s like a roadmap — it clearly outlines how to get from where you are now (the beginning of the project) to where you want to go (the successful completion of the project). 

“A project plan is an action plan outlining how…[to] accomplish project goals,” says Jami Yazdani , certified Project Management Professional (PMP), project coach, project management consultant, and founder of Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation . 

A comprehensive project plan includes the project schedule, project scope, due dates, and deliverables. Writing a good project plan is key for any new, complex project in the pipeline.

Why Are Project Plans Important?

Project plans allow you to visualize your entire project, from beginning to end—and develop a clear strategy to get from point A to point B. Project plans steer stakeholders in the right direction and keep team members accountable with a common baseline.  

Project plans help you stay agile

Projects are bound by what is traditionally called the “iron triangle” of project management . It means that project managers have to work within the three constraints of scope, resources (project budget and teams), and schedule. You cannot make changes to one without impacting the other two.    

Modern-day project management has shifted to a more agile approach, with a focus on quality. This means that resources and schedules remain unchanged but a fixed number of iterations (flexible scope) helps teams deliver better quality and more value. 

A project plan puts this “agile triangle” in place by mapping out resources, schedules, and the number of iterations — sprints if you’re using a Scrum framework and work in progress (WIP) limits if you’re using the Kanban methodology . 

As Yazdani points out, “Project plans help us strategize a path to project success, allowing us to consider the factors that will impact our project, from stakeholders to budget to schedule delays, and plan how to maximize or mitigate these factors.” 

Project plans provide complete visibility

A project plan, when created with a comprehensive project management software , gives you 360-degree visibility throughout the project lifecycle. 

As a project manager, you need a single source of truth on team members and their project tasks, project scope, project objectives, and project timelines. A detailed project plan gives you this visibility and helps teams stay on track.

Project plans also help to get everyone involved on the same page, setting clear expectations around what needs to be accomplished, when, and by who. 

“Project plans create a framework for measuring project progress and success,” says Yazdani. “Project plans set clear expectations for…stakeholders by outlining exactly what…will [be accomplished] and when it will be delivered.”

Project plans boost engagement and productivity

A well-written project plan clarifies how each individual team member’s contributions play into the larger scope of the project and align with company goals. When employees see how their work directly impacts organizational growth, it generates buy-in and drives engagement , which is critical to a project’s success. 

“Project plans provide…teams with purpose and direction,” says Yazdani. “Transparent project plans show team members how their individual tasks and responsibilities contribute to the overall success of the project, encouraging engagement and collaboration.”

How To Write A Project Plan in 6 Steps

Writing a project plan requires, well, planning. Ideally, the seeds for a project plan need to be sowed before internal project sign-off begins. Before that sign-off, conduct capacity planning to estimate the resources you will need and if they’re available for the duration of the project. After all, you want to set your teams up for success with realistic end dates, buffer time to recharge or catch up in case of unexpected delays, and deliver quality work without experiencing burnout .

Based on organizational capacity, you can lay down project timelines and map out scope as well as success metrics, outline tasks, and build a feedback loop into your project plan. Follow these project planning steps to create a winning plan:      

1. Establish Project Scope And Metrics

Defining your project scope is essential to protecting your iron, or agile, triangle from crumbling. Too often, projects are hit with scope creep , causing delays, budget overruns, and anxiety.

“Clearly define your project’s scope or overall purpose,” says Yazdani. “Confirm any project parameters or constraints, like budget, resource availability, and timeline,” says Yazdani.

A project purpose statement is a high-level brief that defines the what, who, and why of the project along with how and when the goal will be accomplished. But just as important as defining your project scope and purpose is defining what metrics you’re going to use to track progress.

“Establish how you will measure success,” says Yazdani. “Are there metrics, performance criteria, or quality standards you need to meet?”

Clearly defining what your project is, the project’s overall purpose, and how you’re going to measure success lays the foundation for the rest of your project plan—so make sure you take the time to define each of these elements from the get-go.

2. Identify Key Project Stakeholders 

Get clarity on the team members you need to bring the project to life. In other words, identify the key stakeholders of the project. 

“List individuals or groups who will be impacted by the project,” says Yazdani. 

In addition to identifying who needs to be involved in the project, think about how they’ll need to be involved—and at what level. Use a tool like Confluence to run a virtual session to clarify roles and responsibilities, and find gaps that need to be filled. 

Let’s say you’re managing a cross-functional project to launch a new marketing campaign that includes team members from your marketing, design, and sales departments. 

When identifying your key stakeholders, you might create different lists based on the responsibility or level of involvement with the project:

• Decision-makers (who will need to provide input at each step of the project)
• Managers (who will be overseeing employees within their department) 
• Creative talent (who will be actually creating the project deliverables for the campaign) from each department. 

Give your project plan an edge by using a Confluence template like the one below to outline roles and responsibilities.

Define roles, discuss responsibilities, and clarify which tasks fall under each teammate’s purview using this Confluence template. 

Getting clarity on who needs to be involved in the project—and how they’re going to be involved—will help guide the rest of the project plan writing process (particularly when it comes to creating and assigning tasks).

3. Outline Deliverables

Now is the time to get granular.

Each project milestone comprises a series of smaller, tangible tasks that your teams need to produce. While a big-picture view keeps teams aligned, you need signposts along the way to guide them on a day-to-day or weekly basis. Create a list of deliverables that will help you achieve the greater vision of the project. 

“What will you create, build, design, produce, accomplish or deliver?” says Yazdani. “Clearly outline your project’s concrete and tangible deliverables or outcomes.” Centralize these deliverables in a Trello board with designated cards for each one, like in the example below, so you keep work moving forward.

Each card on a board represents tasks and ideas and you can move cards across lists to show progress.

Defining the concrete items you need your project to deliver will help you reverse-engineer the things that need to happen to bring those items to life—which is a must before moving on to the next step.

4. Develop Actionable Tasks

Task management is an important component of any project plan because they help employees see what exactly they need to accomplish. Drill down those deliverables into actionable tasks to assign to your team. 

You can use either Confluence or Jira for different task management needs. If you want to track tasks alongside your work, like action items from a meeting or small team projects, it’s best to use Confluence. But if a project has multiple teams and you need insight into workflows, task history, and reporting, Jira makes it easy.      

“Let your deliverables guide the work of the project,” says Yazdani. “Break down each deliverable into smaller and smaller components until you get to an actionable task.” If a major deliverable is a set of content pieces, the smaller actionable tasks would be to create topic ideas, conduct research, and create outlines for each topic.  

Once you’ve broken down all of your deliverables into manageable, assignable subtasks, analyze how each of those tasks interacts with each other. That way, you can plan, prioritize, assign, and add deadlines accordingly.  

“Highlight any dependencies between tasks, such as tasks that can’t be started until another task is complete,” says Yazdani. “List any resources you will need to accomplish these tasks.”

When a task has multiple assignees, you need to streamline the workflow in your project plan. Say the content pieces you outlined need to be edited or peer-reviewed. A couple of articles may need an interview with a subject matter expert. Lay down a stage-by-stage process of each piece of content and pinpoint when each team member comes into play so you prevent bottlenecks and adjust timeframes.     

5. Assign Tasks And Deadlines

Assign tasks to your team and collaborate with employees to set deadlines for each task. When you involve employees in setting workloads and deadlines , you increase ownership and boost the chances of delivering quality work on time.  

After all, you want to move projects forward at a steady pace, but you also want to make sure your teams stay motivated and engaged. So, when writing your project plan, make sure to “set realistic and achievable deadlines for completing tasks and deliverables,” says Yazdani. “Highlight dates that are inflexible and factor in task dependencies. Add in milestones or checkpoints to monitor progress and celebrate successes .”

Use Jira and Confluence to create tasks that live alongside your project plan or meeting agendas.

Once you map out all of your tasks and deadlines, you should have a clear picture of how and when your project is going to come together—and the initial writing process is just about finished.

But that doesn’t mean your project plan is complete! There’s one more key step to the process.

6. Share, Gather Feedback, And Adjust The Project Plan As Necessary

While steps 1 through 5 may make up your initial writing process, if you want your project plan to be as strong and complete as it can be, it’s important to share it with your team—and get their input on how they think it can be improved.

“Share the plan with your project team and key stakeholders, gathering feedback to make adjustments and improvements,” says Yazdani. 

A tool like Confluence helps knowledge flow freely within teams and departments, leading to better teamwork, higher collaboration, and a shared understanding of priorities. Coworkers can use comments, mentions, notifications, and co-editing capabilities to provide and discuss feedback. 

After you gather your team’s feedback —and make any necessary adjustments based on that feedback—you can consider your project plan complete. Hooray! 

But as your project progresses, things may change or evolve—so it’s important to stay flexible and make changes and adjustments as needed.

“Expect to update your plan as you gather more information, encounter changing requirements and delays, and learn from feedback and mistakes,” says Yazdani. “By using your project plan to guide your activities and measure progress, you’ll be able to refine and improve your plan as you move through the project, tweaking tasks and deadlines as deliverables are developed.”

Download a  template to create your project plan and customize it based on your needs.

Example of a simple project plan 

A project plan doesn’t have to be a complicated spreadsheet with multiple tabs and drop-down menus. It’s best to use a project planning tool like Confluence — or at least a project plan template — to make sure you cover every aspect of the project. A simple project plan includes these elements:

• Project name, brief summary, and objective.
• Project players or team members who will drive the project, along with their roles and responsibilities.
• Key outcomes and due dates.
• Project elements, ideally divided into must-have, nice-to-have and not-in-scope categories.
• Milestones, milestone owners, and a project end date.
• Reference material relevant to the project.

Best Practices For Writing Effective Project Plans

A project planning process can quickly turn into a mishmash of goals and tasks that end up in chaos but these best practices can give you a framework to create a project plan that leads to success.

Use Other Project Plans For Inspiration

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel for every new project! Instead, look to other successful project plans for inspiration—and use them as a guide when writing the plan for your project.

“Review templates and plans for similar projects, or for other projects within your organization or industry, to get ideas for structuring and drafting your own plan,” says Yazdani.

To get started, use a Trello project management template and customize it for your project plan by creating unique lists and adding cards under each list.

Build your team’s ideal workflow and mark each stage of the project plan as a list, with cards for each task. 

Get Your Team Involved In The Process

You may be in charge of spearheading the project. But that doesn’t mean that you have to—or even that you should—write the project plan alone. 

“Collaborate with your project team and key stakeholders on crafting a project plan,” says Yazdani. “Input into the project plan supports buy-in to project goals and encourages continued engagement throughout the project.”

With Confluence , you can organize project details in a centralized space and build a project plan collaboratively.

Don’t Let Perfect Be The Enemy Of The Good

You may be tempted to write (and rewrite) your project plan until you’ve got every detail mapped out perfectly. But spending too much time trying to get everything “perfect” can actually hold up the project. So don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good—and instead of getting caught up in getting everything perfect from the get-go, stay willing and flexible to adjust your project plan as you move forward.

“Focus on outcomes, not plan perfection,” says Yazdani. “While it would be awesome for the first draft of our plan to require no changes while also inspiring our team and ensuring project success, our goal shouldn’t be a perfect plan. Our goal is a plan that allows us to successfully deliver on project goals. Responsiveness to changing needs and a shifting environment is more important than plan perfection.”

Use the right tools to succeed with your project plan

Writing a project plan, especially if you’re new to the process, can feel overwhelming. But now that you know the exact steps to write one, make sure you have the tools you need to create a strong, cohesive plan from the ground up—and watch your project thrive as a result. 

Atlassian Together can help with project planning and management with a powerful combination of tools that make work flow across teams.

Guide your team to project success with Atlassian Together’s suite of products.

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• Project planning |
• What is project planning? (Plus, 7 ste ...

What is project planning? (Plus, 7 steps to write a successful project plan)

Organize your projects with project plans to keep things on track—before you even start. A project plan houses all the necessary details of your project, such as goals, tasks, scope, deadlines, and deliverables. This shows stakeholders a clear roadmap of your project, ensures you have the resources for it, and holds everyone accountable from the start. In this article, we teach you the seven steps to create your own project plan.

Project plans are essential to keeping your project organized and on track. A great project plan will help you kick off your work with all the necessary pieces—from goals and budgets to milestones and communication plans—in one place. Save yourself time (and a few headaches) by creating a work plan that will make your project a success.

What is a project planning?

Project planning is the second stage in the project management process, following project initiation and preceding project execution. During the project planning stage, the project manager creates a project plan, which maps out project requirements. The project planning phase typically includes setting project goals, designating project resources, and mapping out the project schedule.

What is a project plan?

If you're still unsure about what a project plan is, here's how it differs from other project elements:

Project plan vs. work plan: A project plan and a work plan are the same thing. Different teams or departments might prefer one term or another—but they both ultimately describe the same thing: a list of big-picture action steps you need to take to hit your  project objectives .

Project plan vs. project charter: A project charter is an outline of your project. Mostly, you use project charters to get signoff from key stakeholders before you start. Which means your project charter comes before your project plan. A project charter is an outline of a simple project plan—it should only include your project objectives, scope, and responsibilities. Then, once your charter has been approved, you can create a project plan to provide a more in-depth blueprint of the key elements of your project.

Project plan vs. project scope: Your project scope defines the size and boundaries of your project. As part of your project plan, you should outline and share the scope of your project with all project stakeholders. If you’re ever worried about scope creep , you can refer back to your pre-defined scope within your project plan to get back on track.

Project plan vs. agile project: Agile project management is a framework to help teams break work into iterative, collaborative components . Agile frameworks are often run in conjunction with scrum and sprint methodologies. Like any project, an Agile project team can benefit from having a project plan in place before getting started with their work.

Project plan vs. work breakdown structure: Similar to a project plan, your work breakdown structure (WBS) helps you with project execution. While the project plan focuses on every aspect of your project, the WBS is focused on deliverables—breaking them down into sub-deliverables and project tasks. This helps you visualize the whole project in simple steps. Because it’s a visual format, your WBS is best viewed as a Gantt chart (or timeline), Kanban board , or calendar—especially if you’re using project management software .

Why are project plans important?

Project plans set the stage for the entire project. Without one, you’re missing a critical step in the overall project management process . When you launch into a project without defined goals or objectives, it can lead to disorganized work, frustration, and even scope creep. A clear, written project management plan provides a baseline direction to all stakeholders, while also keeping everyone accountable. It confirms that you have the resources you need for the project before it actually begins.

A project plan also allows you, as the person in charge of leading execution, to forecast any potential challenges you could run into while the project is still in the planning stages. That way, you can ensure the project will be achievable—or course-correct if necessary. According to a study conducted by the  Project Management Institute , there is a strong correlation between project planning and project success—the better your plan, the better your outcome. So, conquering the planning phase also makes for better project efficiency and results.

7 steps to write a project plan to keep you on track

To create a clear project management plan, you need a way to track all of your moving parts . No matter what type of project you’re planning, every work plan should have:

Goals and project objectives

Success metrics

Stakeholders and roles

Scope and budget

Milestones , deliverables , and project dependencies

Timeline and schedule

Communication plan.

Not sure what each of these mean or should look like? Let’s dive into the details:

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

You’re working on this project plan for a reason—likely to get you, your team, or your company to an end goal. But how will you know if you’ve reached that goal if you have no way of measuring success?

Every successful project plan should have a clear, desired outcome. Identifying your goals provides a rationale for your project plan. It also keeps everyone on the same page and focused on the results they want to achieve. Moreover, research shows that employees who know how their work is contributing to company objectives are 2X as motivated . Yet only 26% of employees have that clarity. That’s because most goal-setting happens separate from the actual work. By defining your goals within your work plan, you can connect the work your team is doing directly to the project objectives in real-time.

What's the difference between project goals and project objectives?

In general, your project goals should be higher-level than your project objectives. Your project goals should be SMART goals that help you measure project success and show how your project aligns with business objectives . The purpose of drafting project objectives, on the other hand, is to focus on the actual, specific deliverables you're going to achieve at the end of your project. Your project plan provides the direction your team needs to hit your goals, so you can create a workflow that hits project objectives.

Your project  plan  provides the direction your team needs to hit your goals, by way of your project objectives. By incorporating your goals directly into your planning documentation, you can keep your project’s North Star on hand. When you’re defining your project scope, or outlining your project schedule, check back on your goals to make sure that work is in favor of your main objectives.

Step 2: Set success metrics

Once you’ve defined your goals, make sure they’re measurable by setting key success metrics. While your goal serves as the intended result, you need success metrics to let you know whether or not you’re performing on track to achieve that result. The best way to do that is to set  SMART goals . With SMART goals, you can make sure your success metrics are clear and measurable, so you can look back at the end of your project and easily tell if you hit them or not.

For example, a goal for an event might be to host an annual 3-day conference for SEO professionals on June 22nd. A success metric for that goal might be having at least 1,000 people attend your conference. It’s both clear and measurable.

Step 3: Clarify stakeholders and roles

Running a project usually means getting  collaborators  involved in the execution of it. In your project management plan, outline which team members will be a part of the project and what each person’s role will be. This will help you decide who is responsible for each task (something we’ll get to shortly) and let stakeholders know how you expect them to be involved.

During this process, make sure to define the various roles and responsibilities your stakeholders might have. For example, who is directly responsible for the project’s success? How is your project team structured (i.e. do you have a project manager, a project sponsor , etc.)? Are there any approvers that should be involved before anything is finalized? What cross-functional stakeholders should be included in the project plan? Are there any  risk management factors  you need to include?

Consider using a system, such as a  RACI chart , to help determine who is driving the project forward, who will approve decisions, who will contribute to the project, and who needs to remain informed as the project progresses.

Then, once you’ve outlined all of your roles and stakeholders, make sure to include that documentation in your project plan. Once you finalize your plan, your work plan will become your cross-functional source of truth.

Step 4: Set your budget

Running a project usually costs money. Whether it’s hiring freelancers for content writing or a catering company for an event, you’ll probably be spending some cash.

Since you’ve already defined your goals and stakeholders as part of your project plan, use that information to establish your budget. For example, if this is a cross-functional project involving multiple departments, will the departments be splitting the project cost? If you have a specific goal metric like event attendees or new users, does your proposed budget support that endeavor?

By establishing your project budget during the project planning phase (and before the spending begins), you can get approval, more easily track progress, and make smart, economical decisions during the implementation phase of your project. Knowing your budget beforehand helps you with resource management , ensuring that you stay within the initial financial scope of the project. Planning helps you determine what parts of your project will cost what—leaving no room for surprises later on.

Step 5: Align on milestones, deliverables, and project dependencies

An important part of planning your project is setting milestones, or specific objectives that represent an achievement. Milestones don’t require a start and end date, but hitting one marks a significant accomplishment during your project. They are used to measure progress. For example, let’s say you’re working to develop a  new product for your company . Setting a milestone on your project timeline for when the prototype is finalized will help you measure the progress you’ve made so far.

A project deliverable , on the other hand, is what is actually produced once you meet a milestone. In our product development example, we hit a milestone when we produced the deliverable, which was the prototype. You can also use project dependencies —tasks that you can’t start until others are finished. Dependencies ensure that work only starts once it’s ready. Continuing the example, you can create a project dependency to require approval from the project lead before prototype testing begins.  

If you’re using our free project plan template , you can easily organize your project around deliverables, dependencies, and milestones. That way, everyone on the team has clear visibility into the work within your project scope, and the milestones your team will be working towards.

Step 6: Outline your timeline and schedule

In order to achieve your project goals, you and your stakeholders need clarity on your overall project timeline and schedule. Aligning on the time frame you have can help you better prioritize during strategic planning sessions.

Not all projects will have clear-cut timelines. If you're working on a large project with a few unknown dates, consider creating a  project roadmap  instead of a full-blown project timeline. That way, you can clarify the order of operations of various tasks without necessarily establishing exact dates.

Once you’ve covered the high-level responsibilities, it’s time to focus some energy on the details. In your  work plan template , start by breaking your project into tasks, ensuring no part of the process is skipped. Bigger tasks can even be broken down into smaller subtasks, making them more manageable.

Then, take each task and subtask, and assign it a start date and end date. You’ll begin to visually see everything come together in a  cohesive project timeline . Be sure to add stakeholders, mapping out who is doing what by when.

Step 7: Share your communication plan

We’ve established that most projects include multiple stakeholders. That means communication styles will vary among them. You have an opportunity to set your expectations up front for this particular project in your project plan. Having a communication plan is essential for making sure everyone understands what’s happening, how the project is progressing, and what’s going on next. And in case a roadblock comes up, you’ll already have a clear communication system in place.

As you’re developing your communication plan, consider the following questions:

How many project-related meetings do you need to have? What are their goals?

How will you manage project status updates ? Where will you share them?

What tool will you use to manage the project and communicate progress and updates?

Like the other elements of your project plan, make sure your communication plan is easily accessible within your project plan. Stakeholders and cross-functional collaborators should be able to easily find these guidelines during the planning and execution phases of your project. Using project planning tools or task management software that integrates with apps like Slack and Gmail can ensure all your communication happens in one easily accessible place. 

Example project plan

Next, to help you understand what your project management plan should look like, here are two example plans for marketing and design projects that will guide you during your own project planning.

Project plan example: annual content calendar

Let’s say you’re the Content Lead for your company, and it’s your responsibility to create and deliver on a content marketing calendar for all the content that will be published next year. You know your first step is to build your work plan. Here’s what it might look like:

Goals and success metrics

You establish that your goal for creating and executing against your content calendar is to increase engagement by 10%. Your success metrics are the open rate and click through rate on emails, your company’s social media followers, and how your pieces of content rank on search engines.

Stakeholders and each person’s role

There will be five people involved in this project.

You, Content Lead: Develop and maintain the calendar

Brandon and Jamie, Writers: Provide outlines and copy for each piece of content

Nate, Editor: Edit and give feedback on content

Paula, Producer: Publish the content once it’s written and edited

Your budget for the project plan and a year’s worth of content is $50,000.

Milestones and deliverables

Your first milestone is to finish the content calendar, which shows all topics for the year. The deliverable is a sharable version of the calendar. Both the milestone and the deliverables should be clearly marked on your project schedule.

You’ve determined that your schedule for your content calendar project plan will go as follows:

October 15 - November 1: The research phase to find ideas for topics for content

November 2 - November 30: Establish the topics you’ll write about

December 1 - January 1: Build the calendar

January 1 - December 31: Content will be written by Brandon and Jamie, and edited by Nate, throughout the year

January 16 - December 31: Paula will begin publishing and continue to do so on a rolling basis throughout the year.

You’ll have a kick-off meeting and then monthly update meetings as part of your communication plan. Weekly status updates will be sent on Friday afternoons. All project-related communication will occur within a  project management tool .

How ClassPass manages project plans from start to finish

Kerry Hoffman, Senior Project Manager of Marketing Operations at  ClassPass , oversees all marketing projects undertaken by the creative, growth, and content teams. Here are her top three strategies for managing project plans:

Identify stakeholders up front: No matter the size of the project, it’s critical to know who the stakeholders are and their role in the project so you ensure you involve the right people at each stage. This will also make the review and approval process clear before the team gets to work.

Agree on how you want to communicate about your project: Establish where and when communication should take place for your project to ensure that key information is captured in the right place so everyone stays aligned.

Be adaptable and learn other people’s working styles: Projects don’t always go according to plan, but by implementing proper integration management you can keep projects running smoothly. Also, find out how project members like to work so you take that into account as you create your plan. It will help things run smoother once you begin executing.

Write your next project plan like a pro

Congratulations—you’re officially a work planning pro. With a few steps, a little bit of time, and a whole lot of organization, you’ve successfully written a project plan.

Keep yourself and your team on track, and address challenges early by using project planning software like Asana . Work through each of the steps of your project plan with confidence, and streamline your communications with the team.

Related resources

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How Asana uses work management to drive product development

How Asana uses work management to streamline project intake processes

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Track event details and to-dos.

Scope out roadmaps and manage backlogs.

Manage design, copy, and video work.

Learn all about gantt charts and how to use them to manage projects more easily.

Hear real testimonials from real TeamGantt customers.

How to Create a Realistic Project Plan with Templates & Examples

As a project manager, a huge part of your role is to write project plans that help you keep projects on track. But that’s not all a project plan should do. 

A project plan is arguably the most important document you’ll create for a project. At its core, a plan should communicate your project approach and the process your team will use to manage the project according to scope.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can develop a rock-solid planning process that guides your team and projects to success.

What is a project plan?

Project plan example: what to include, why you should always write a project plan, 5 steps to an effective project planning process, how to create a project plan in teamgantt, free project plan templates.

A project plan is a document that maps out the tasks, effort, timing, and resources needed to meet project goals within a predefined scope. It’s often presented in the form of a gantt chart because it’s easy to visualize the project timeline and ensure work stays on track.

Any solid project management plan should answer the following questions:

• What are the major deliverables?
• How will we get to those deliverables and the deadline?
• Who’s on the project team, and what role will they play in those deliverables?
• Which stakeholders need to provide feedback on deliverables, and when?
• When will the team meet milestones?

A project plan communicates this information in a simple, straightforward way so everyone clearly understands the objectives and how they contribute to project success. It may also be accompanied by other planning documents, such as a project charter , risk assessment , or communication plan .

While no two project plans are alike, they all share the same common building blocks. Be sure to include the following components in any project plan you create:

• Project tasks : A detailed list of work to be done organized by project phase, process step, or work group
• Project schedule : A visual timeline of task start dates, durations, and deadlines, with clear progress indicators
• Key milestones : Major events, dates, decisions, and deliverables used for tracking forward progress
• Dependencies : A line connecting tasks that need to happen in a certain order
• Resources : Assignments that indicate the person or team responsible for completing a task

Here’s a simple example of what a project plan looks like with these basic elements highlighted:

Some people don’t understand the power of a good project plan. If you feel pressured to skip the plan and jump right into the work, remind your team and stakeholders that having a plan benefits everyone by making it easier to:

• Build consensus before work begins : A detailed project plan ensures everyone has a clear understanding of—and agrees on—the overall process, scope, staffing, and even communications from the outset. That goes a long way in keeping project confusion and pop-up requests from gumming up the works.
• Avoid scheduling conflicts : Project plans enable you to organize tasks so it’s clear who's responsible for what and when. If your team is juggling multiple projects, you can cross-reference other plans to see who’s available to take on new work before committing to a timeline.
• Monitor project goals and scope : When new tasks creep in, it’s easy to lose sight of the original objectives. Spelling out the work you need to complete in a time-based plan keeps project goals front and center so you can ensure project scope stays intact.  ‍
• Hold your team and stakeholders accountable : A good project plan sets expectations around the process and pacing you'll follow each step of the way. When plans are shared with teams and stakeholders, it keeps folks honest about what is—or isn’t—happening and forces you to resolve issues in a timely way.

Poor planning can lead to some pretty ugly consequences—from missed deadlines and budget overages to team burnout and client frustration. That’s why it’s important to establish a solid process you can use to plan any project. 

Planning a project doesn’t have to be difficult. These basic project planning steps can help you write a plan that’s both realistic and on target.

• Start with project discovery & definition
• Draft a rough outline of your plan
• Formalize your project management plan
• Present & confirm your plan
• Execute your plan & adjust as needed

Step 1: Start with project discovery and definition

A project plan is more than a dry document with dates. It’s the story of your project, and you don’t want it to be a tall tale! So make sure you know all the facts before you start creating a project plan.

Understand the project scope and value

Understanding the ins and outs of the project will help you determine the best process and identify any snags that might get in the way of success. Conduct your own research to dig deeper on:

• Project goals and outcomes
• Partnerships and outlying dependencies
• Potential issues and risks

Review the scope of work , and dive into any documents or communications relevant to the project (maybe an RFP or notes from sales calls or client meetings). Be thorough in your research to uncover critical project details, and ask thoughtful questions before you commit to anything. 

Interview key stakeholders

If you want to dazzle stakeholders with a stellar project delivery, you’ve got to know how they work and what they expect. Schedule time with your main project contact, and ask them some tough questions about process, organizational politics, and general risks before creating a project plan. 

This will give project stakeholders confidence that your team has the experience to handle any difficult personality or situation. It also shows you care about the success of the project from the start.

Be sure to discuss these things with your stakeholders:

• Product ownership and the decision-making process
• Stakeholder interest/involvement levels
• Key outages, meetings, deadlines, and driving factors
• Related or similar projects, goals, and outcomes
• The best way to communicate with partners and stakeholders

See a list of sample interview questions to ask stakeholders so you can develop better project plans.

Get to know your team

The last step in the research phase is to take time to learn more about the people who’ll be responsible for the work. Sit down with your team and get to know their:

• Collaboration and communication styles
• Availability and workload

Understanding these basics about your team will help you craft a thoughtful plan that takes their work styles and bandwidth into consideration. After all, a happy team delivers better projects.

Step 2: Draft a rough outline of your plan

Now that you’ve gathered the basic project details, the next step is to knock out a rough draft of your plan. Take some time to think about the discussions you had in the pre-planning phase and the approach your team might take to meet the project goals.

Sketch out the main components of your project plan

Sit down with a pen and paper (or a whiteboard), and outline how the project should work at a high level. Be sure you have a calendar close by to check dates.

If you’re at a loss for where to begin, start with the who, what, when, and how of the project. A first outline can be very rough and might look something like a work breakdown structure . Make sure your project outline includes the following components:

• Deliverables and the tasks required to create them
• Your client’s approval process
• Timeframes associated with tasks/deliverables
• Ideas on resources needed for tasks/deliverables
• A list of the assumptions you’re making in the plan
• A list of absolutes as they relate to the project budget and/or deadlines

Considering these elements will help you avoid surprises—or at least minimize them. And remember, you’re doing this as a draft so you can use it as a conversation-starter for your team. It’s not final yet!

Get input from your team on process, effort, and timing

You don’t want to put yourself or your team in an awkward position by not coming to a consensus on the approach before presenting it to your client. That's why a project manager can’t be the only one writing a project plan.

Once you’ve created a basic project outline, take those rough ideas and considerations to your team. This enables you to invite discussion about what might work rather than simply dictating a process. After all, every project must begin with clear communication of the project goals and the effort required to meet them. 

Be sure to get input from your team on how they can complete the tasks at hand without killing the budget and the team’s morale. As a project manager, you can decide on Agile vs. Waterfall approaches , but when it comes down to it, you need to know that the team can realistically execute the plan.

You can also use this review time to question your own thinking and push the team to take a new approach to the work. For example, if you’re working on a digital product, could designers start creating visual concepts while the wireframes are being developed? Or can you have two resources working on the same task at once?

Running ideas by the team and having an open dialogue about the approach not only helps you build a more accurate project plan. It gets everyone thinking about the project in the same terms. This type of buy-in and communication builds trust and gets people excited about working together to solve a goal. It can work wonders for the greater good of your team and project.

Step 3: Formalize your project management plan

You should feel comfortable enough at this point to put together a rock-solid project schedule using whatever tool works for you. 

Build out a detailed project schedule that’s easy to read

Any good online project planning tool will help you formalize your thoughts and lay them out in a consistent, visual format that’s easy to follow and track. (Ahem, TeamGantt works nicely for a lot of happy customers. ) 

Make sure tasks have clear start and end dates so there’s no question when work needs to happen to hit project deadlines. Organize work into phases, and use labels and/or color-coding to improve scannability. The easier your project plan is to understand at a glance, the better!

See how to create a project plan in TeamGantt

Consider how your team likes to work

Be as flexible as possible when it comes to how your project plan is presented. There's no absolute when it comes to how to format your plan as long as you and your team understand what goes into one.

Remember, people absorb information differently. While you might be partial to a gantt chart, others might prefer to view tasks in a list, calendar, or even a kanban board. You can make all of those variations work if you’ve taken the steps to create a solid plan.

For example, here’s an Agile project plan we built that lists each sprint as its own task group with milestones for sprint planning and deployment.

And here’s what that same project plan looks like if you turn it into a kanban board in TeamGantt. Simply click the Board tab and set up your columns so your team can manage their daily workflows more easily.

If your team currently prefers spreadsheets and isn’t quite ready to use TeamGantt yet, try our free Excel gantt chart template .

Step 4: Present and confirm your plan

You’re almost finished! Now it’s time to do your due diligence. It’s easy to throw stuff in a plan, but you have to make sure you get it right.

Run your final plan by your internal team

Your team needs to know the reality of your plan as it stands after you’ve built it out in TeamGantt. And you want to be sure they’re comfortable committing to the details. If they don’t, things will quickly fall apart!

Always review your final plan with your team before delivering it to stakeholders. Why? Because things like dates and tasks—and even assignments—will shift as you formalize the rough sketch of your plan. 

Here are a few things you’ll want to discuss with your team as you review the final plan together:

• Review times
• Team work times
• Dependencies
• Time off, meetings, and milestones
• The final deadline
• Any assumptions you’ve made
• Major changes since your last talk

There’s nothing more embarrassing than delivering a plan with an error or a promise you can’t keep. Taking a few minutes to get buy-in from your team will give everyone peace of mind about your plan.

Review your project plan with stakeholders

Once you’ve confirmed the plan with your team and have their full sign-off, you’re ready to share your project plan with stakeholders . 

When delivering your project plan, make sure you provide an executive summary. This might come in the form of a project brief . A short recap of the overall methodology, resources, assumptions, deadlines, and related review times will help you convey what the plan means to the project and everyone involved.

Project plans can be daunting, so schedule time to present your project plan to stakeholders at a high level. Here are some things you’ll want to point out about your plan during this review:

• Overall process and pacing
• Major deliverables and timing
• The time they’ll have to review deliverables
• Overall timing for task groups or phases
• How far off you are from the deadline
• Wiggle room on the final deadline

If a stakeholder is interested in the day-to-day details, feel free to walk them through the plan line by line. Otherwise, start by explaining overall sections or phases, and be sure to come back to your plan at intervals throughout the project to remind them of tasks, next steps, and overall progress.

Step 5: Execute your plan and adjust as needed

Some projects are smooth and easy to manage, and others are a complete nightmare that wake you up at 3 a.m. every other night. Thankfully, having a solid project plan is your best defense against project chaos once work gets underway.

Keep in mind that project plans are living documents. Projects change constantly, and someone has to stay on top of—and document—that change. Remember to:

• Update your plan regularly as work progresses and things change
• Communicate changes to your team, partners, and stakeholders
• Monitor and communicate risks as your project evolves

Ready to plan your project in TeamGantt? Follow these easy steps to build a plan that’s structured well and includes the elements you need for project success.

1. Enter your basic project details.

To create a new project plan in TeamGantt, click the New Project button in the upper right corner of the My Projects screen. Then enter your project name and start date, and select the days of the week you want to include in your plan. Click Create New Project to move on to the next step.

2. List out your project tasks and milestones.

Now the real planning fun begins! Enter all the different tasks it will take to get the job done. If there are any key meetings, deliverable deadlines, or approvals, add those as milestones in your project plan.

3. Organize tasks into subgroups. 

Scrolling through one long list of tasks can be mind-numbing, even to the best of us. Break tasks down into phases or sections to ensure your project plan is easy to read and understand. 

4. Add task durations and milestone dates to the project timeline.

A visual project plan makes it easy to see exactly what needs to get done by when. Make sure every task has a start and end date so nothing falls through the cracks. TeamGantt’s drag and drop feature makes this planning step quick and easy.

5. Connect related tasks with dependencies.

Adding dependencies between tasks ensures work gets done in the right order and also helps you plan for delay risks. If your plan shifts and you need to move tasks around, dependencies speed up the process.

6. Assign responsible team members to tasks.

That way there’s no confusion about who’s doing what, and your team can update and manage their daily tasks . Don’t forget to check team availability along the way to avoid overloading anyone with too much work.

7. Use the RACI chart to define task roles more clearly.

This feature takes accountability one step further by letting you assign more specific roles to each task: Responsible , Accountable , Consulted , and Informed . Learn how RACI charts work and what each role means.

8. Add hourly estimates and/or points to each task. 

This makes it easy to see the lift each task involves at a glance. Including hourly estimates in your project plan also enables you to manage workloads and track overages more accurately.

9. Color-code tasks for better scannability.

You can use colors to categorize tasks by project phase, priority, department, or team member—whatever makes visual sense to you and your team.

10. Add notes to clarify tasks or spell out important details.

There’s no such thing as too much information if it means your team has what they need to deliver quality work on time. Use the Notes section of your Discussion tab to enter any pertinent details your team will find helpful.

11. Upload important documents to the project.

This ensures project files are accessible to everyone in a centralized hub.  For example, you might attach your creative brief to the project so your content and design teams have clear direction for completing their deliverables.

If you’re planning a project for the first time or taking on a totally new type of project, you might be struggling to get your plan off the ground. We created a simple project management plan template to help you get started.

TeamGantt gives you the ability to quickly and easily build and adjust your plan using drag and drop scheduling. Plus, it comes with customizable views to fit every team member’s work style. 

Try our basic project plan template for free!

Looking for more specific project plan examples to jumpstart your process? Use these project planning templates to generate ideas and save time building out your plan:

• Construction project plan template
• Event planning template
• Strategic marketing plan template
• Tactical marketing plan template
• Software development plan template
• Video production schedule template
• Website project plan template

Plan your next project in minutes

Discover just how easy project planning can be with TeamGantt. Create your first gantt chart for free!

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What is a Project Management Plan and How to Create One

By Midori Nediger , Dec 11, 2023

Have you ever been part of a project that didn’t go as planned?

It doesn’t feel good.

Wasted time, wasted resources. It’s pretty frustrating for everyone involved.

That’s why it’s so important to create a comprehensive project management plan   before your project gets off the ground.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to create and design a successful project management plan.

We’ll also showcase easy-to-customize project plan templates you can create today with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. Let’s get started!

  Click to jump ahead:

What is a project management plan?

5 things you need to know before creating a project management plan, what should a project management plan include, how do you write a project plan, project plan best practices, project management plan templates and examples, common mistakes to avoid when creating a project management plan.

A project management plan is a formal document that defines how a project is going to be carried out by outlining the scope, goals, budget, timeline and deliverables of a project. Its crucial role lies in ensuring the project stays on course.

You write a project plan  during the project planning stage of the  project life cycle , and it must be approved by stakeholders before a project can move on the execution stage.

If some of these terms are new to you, you can get up to speed with this post on project management terms . 

This means your project plan must be engaging, organized, and thorough enough to gain the support of your stakeholders.

Further Reading : New to project management? Read our blog post on the 4 stages of the project life cycle .

The importance of a project management plan

A well-developed project management plan sets the foundation for a successful project by providing a roadmap that guides the project team toward successful project completion. A good project management plan can ensure that:

• Project objectives and goals are clearly defined and understood
• Project scope is effectively managed
• Resources are allocated efficiently to maximize productivity and minimize waste
• Risks are identified, assessed and mitigated
• Project tasks and activities are well-organized and executed in a timely manner.
• Communication among team members , stakeholders and project sponsors is effective and transparent
• Changes to the project are properly evaluated, approved and implemented
• Lessons learned and best practices are documented for future reference and improvement
• Stakeholders are engaged and satisfied with the project outcomes
• The project is delivered within the specified timeline, budget and quality standards

Before diving into creating a project management plan, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the project objectives and the expectations of stakeholders involved.

Without a firm grasp of these fundamental elements, your project may face significant challenges or fail to deliver the desired outcomes.

Here are key points to consider when creating a project management plan:

• Project Objectives: Clearly understand the project objectives and what you want to achieve. Identify the desired outcomes, deliverables and the purpose of the project.
• Scope of the Project: Determine the boundaries and extent of the project. Define what is included and excluded to ensure clarity and prevent scope creep .
• Stakeholders: Identify all stakeholders who will be impacted by or have an interest in the project. Understand their needs, expectations and level of involvement.
• Resources: Assess the resources required to execute the project successfully. This includes human resources, budget, equipment and materials. Determine their availability and allocation.
• Risks and Constraints: Identify potential risks, uncertainties and constraints that may affect the project. Understand the challenges, limitations and potential obstacles that need to be addressed.

Now that you have these key areas identified, let’s get started with creating your project plan.

Before you start assembling your own plan, you should be familiar with the main components of a typical project plan .

A project management plan should include the following sections:

• Executive summary: A short description of the contents of the report
• Project scope & deliverables: An outline of the boundaries of the project, and a description of how the project will be broken down into measurable deliverables
• Project schedule: A high-level view of project tasks and milestones ( Gantt charts are handy for this)
• Project resources: The budget, personnel, and other resources required to meet project goals
• Risk and issue management plan: A list of factors that could derail the project and a plan for how issues will be identified, addressed, and controlled
• Communication management plan: A plan for how team and stakeholder communication will be handled over the course of the project
• Cost and quality management plan: This section encompasses the project’s budget, cost estimation,and cost control mechanisms. It also includes quality assurance and control measures as well as any testing or verification activities to be performed.

Basically, a project plan should tell stakeholders what needs to get done, how it will get done, and when it will get done.

That said, one size doesn’t fit all. Every project management plan must be tailored to the specific industry and circumstances of the project. You can use a project management app for smoother project planning.

For example, this marketing plan looks client facing. It is tailored to sell the client on the agency:

Whereas this commercial development plan focuses on specific objectives and a detailed timeline:

With those basics out of the way, let’s get into how to write a project management plan that’s as engaging as it is professional.

Further Reading : If you’re looking to create a proposal, read our in-depth business proposal guide. Then try our job proposal templates or business proposal templates .

To write a successful project plan, follow these 5 steps below to create an effective project plan that serves as a valuable tool for project management:

1. Highlight the key elements of your project plan in an executive summary  

An executive summary is a brief description of the key contents of a project plan .

I t’s usually the first thing stakeholders will read, and it should act like a Cliff’s-notes version of the whole plan.

It might touch on a project’s value proposition, goals, deliverables, and important milestones, but it has to be concise (it is a summary, after all). First, make sure you develop a proof of concept .

In this example, an executive summary can be broken into columns to contrast the existing problem with the project solution:

The two-column format with clear headers helps break up the information, making it extremely easy to read at a glance.

Here’s another example of a project management plan executive summary. This one visually highlights key takeaways with big fonts and helpful icons:

In this case, the highlighted facts and figures are particularly easy to scan (which is sure to make your stakeholders happy).

But your executive summary won’t always be so simple.

For larger projects, your executive summary will be longer and more detailed.

This project management plan template has a text-heavy executive summary, though the bold headers and different background colors keep it from looking overwhelming:

It’s also a good idea to divide it up into sections, with a dedicated header for each section:

Regardless of how you organize your executive summary, it should give your stakeholders a preview of what’s to come in the rest of the project management plan.

2. Plot your project schedule visually with a Gantt chart

A carefully planned project schedule is key to the success of any project. Without one, your project will likely crumble into a mess of missed deadlines, poor team management, and scope creep.

Luckily, project planning tools like Gantt charts and project timelines make creating your project schedule easy. You can visually plot each project task, add major milestones, then look for any dependencies or conflicts that you haven’t accounted for.

For example, this Gantt chart template outlines high-level project activities over the course of an entire quarter, with tasks color-coded by team:

A high-level roadmap like the one above is probably sufficient for your project management plan. Every team will be able to refer back to this timeline throughout the project to make sure they’re on track.

But before project kickoff, you’ll need to dig in and break down project responsibilities by individual team member, like in this Gantt chart example:

In the later execution and monitoring phases of the project, you’ll thank yourself for creating a detailed visual roadmap that you can track and adjust as things change.

You can also use a project management tool to keep your team organized.

Further Reading:   Our post featuring  Gantt chart examples  and more tips on how to use them for project management.

3. Clarify the structure of your project team with a team org chart

One of the hardest aspects of project planning is assembling a team and aligning them to the project vision.

And aligning your team is all about communication–communicating the project goals, communicating stakeholder requests, communicating the rationale behind big decisions…the list goes on.

This is where good project documentation is crucial! You need to create documents that your team and your stakeholders can access when they have questions or need guidance.

One easy thing to document visually is the structure of your team, with an organizational chart like this one:

In an organizational chart you should include some basic information like team hierarchy and team member contact information. That way your stakeholders have all of the information they need at their fingertips.

But in addition to that, you can indicate the high-level responsibilities of each team member and the channels of communication within the team (so your team knows exactly what they’re accountable for).

Here’s another simple organizational structure template that you can use as a starting point:

Create an organizational chart with our organizational chart maker .

4. Organize project risk factors in a risk breakdown structure

A big part of project planning is identifying the factors that are likely to derail your project, and coming up with plans and process to deal with those factors. This is generally referred to as risk management .

The first step in coming up with a risk management plan is to list all of the factors at play, which is where a risk breakdown structure comes in handy. A risk breakdown structure is a hierarchical representation of project risks, organized by category.

This risk breakdown structure template, for example, shows project risk broken down into technical risk, management risk, and external risk:

Once you’ve constructed your risk breakdown structure, you’ll be ready to do a deep dive into each risk (to assess and plan for any triggers and outcomes).

Streamline your workflow with business process management software .

5. Plan ahead: create project status reports to communicate progress to stakeholders

As I mentioned earlier, communication is fundamental in any project.

But even so, something that’s often overlooked by project managers is a communication management plan–a plan for how the project team is going to communicate with project stakeholders . Too often, project communication defaults to ad-hoc emails or last-minute meetings.

You can avoid this by planning ahead. Start with a project kickoff meeting and include a project status report template as part of your communication plan.

Here’s an example of a simple project status report that you might send to stakeholders on a weekly basis:

This type of report is invaluable for communicating updates on project progress. It shows what you’ve accomplished in a clear, consistent format, which can help flag issues before they arise, build trust with your stakeholders , and makes it easy to reflect on project performance once you’ve reached your goals.

You might also want to include a broader status report for bigger updates on a monthly or quarterly basis, like this one:

The above template allows you to inform stakeholders of more major updates like new budget requirements, revised completion dates, and project performance ratings.

You can even include visualization of up-to-date project milestones, like this example below:

Want more tips on creating visuals to enhance your communications? Read our visual communication guide for businesses . 

Before you dive in, remember: a clear and adaptable plan is crucial for project success. Here are some best practices to keep your project plan on track:

• Use headers, columns and highlights to make your executive summary easy to read
• Plot your project schedule with a Gantt chart (with tasks color-coded by department or team member)
• Use visuals like organizational charts and risk breakdown structures to communicate across your team and with stakeholders
• Pick a flexible template that you can update to align with stakeholder requests

A project management plan is probably the most important deliverable your stakeholders will receive from you (besides the project itself).

It holds all of the information that stakeholders will use to determine whether your project moves forward or gets kicked to the curb.

That’s why it’s a good idea to start with a project management plan template. Using a template can help you organize your information logically and ensure it’s engaging enough to hold your stakeholders’ attention.

Construction project management plan template

Time is money, especially with construction projects. Having a construction plan template brings order to the chaos.

Instead of staring at a messy pile of construction stuff, you’ve got a plan that breaks everything down into bite-sized pieces.

And let’s not forget the paperwork. Construction projects have rules and regulations to follow. Your project plan helps you stay on the right side of the law with all the necessary documentation and compliance measures.

Start with a meticulous project overview, like in the second page of this template:

Though you may think this project will be similar to others you’ve done in the past, it’s important to nail the details.

This will also help you understand the scope of work so you can estimate costs properly and arrive at a quote that’s neither too high or low. Ontario Construction News has great advice on this process.

Simple project management plan template

This simple project management plan template that clearly lays out all of the information your stakeholders will need:

Simple project management communication plan template

A key part of project management is making sure everyone’s in the loop. A project communication plan ensures everyone knows how, where, who and when the team will communicate during the course of the project. Also construction scheduling is a critical aspect of the project management plan as it helps to ensure that all necessary tasks are completed within the allocated time frame and budget.

The key is to figure out what kind of communications is valuable to stakeholders and what is simply overwhelming and won’t lead to better decisions.

This template clearly outlines all of these factors to help manage expectations and eliminate confusion about what will get communicated and when:

Commercial development project plan template

The below project management plan template is simple and minimal, but still uses a unique layout and simple visuals to create an easy-to-read, scannable project overview.

This template is perfect for building or construction management , or any technical projects:

When picking a project plan template, look for one that’s flexible enough to accommodate any changes your stakeholders might request before they’ll approve the project. You never know what might change in the early planning stages of the project! You can also use project management tools to help you with your planning !

Creating a solid project management plan is crucial for setting your project up for success. Here are some common mistakes to avoid:

• Lack of clear goals: Don’t just have a vague idea of what you want to achieve. Define clear, SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) for your project. That way, everyone will be on the same page and it’ll be easier to measure progress effectively.
• Unrealistic timelines: Be optimistic, but also realistic. Don’t underestimate the time required for tasks. Factor in potential delays and buffer time when creating your project schedule.
• Scope creep: New requirements mid-project can affect deadlines and budgets. Plan the project clearly upfront, and take into consideration any changes that might come up.
• Poor communication: Communication is key throughout the project lifecycle. Regularly update stakeholders, team members and clients on progress, roadblocks and changes.
• Ignoring risks: Things don’t always go according to plan. Identify potential risks upfront and have a mitigation strategy in place for each one.
• Not involving stakeholders: Get key stakeholders involved early on. This helps manage everyone’s expectations and that you have the buy-in you need for success.
• Neglecting resource constraints: Don’t overload your team or underestimate the resources needed. Carefully consider the skills, time and budget available when planning your project.
• Micromanaging: Trust your team! Delegate tasks effectively and give them the autonomy they need to do their jobs.
• Failing to document: Keep good records. Document project decisions, plans and communication. This helps maintain transparency and ensures everyone has access to the latest information.
• Not adapting to change: Be prepared to adapt your plan as needed. Projects are rarely static, so be flexible and willing to adjust your approach based on new information or developments.

So, that’s the scoop on project management plans! I hope this piece will help you to avoid confusion, keep expectations in check and be ready to tackle any bumps for your upcoming projects.

If you ever need a revision, just follow the steps we talked about, use those best practices and you’ll have a plan that sets your project up for a win. Just remember, even the best plans need some tweaking sometimes. Be flexible and adjust as needed and you’re good to go!

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A guide to project planning (with template and examples)

“Hi, Aniket, good to see you again!” My manager greeted me after I came back from my two-month annual vacation to India. Back then, I was working as a product manager at Zalando, one of Europe’s biggest fashion e-commerce companies.

After coming back, I asked my manager if she knew what I would be working on next. We had a one-hour meeting and I learned that I’d be leading one of the most complex products — a completely new version of our in-house content management system. I was elated, to say the least.

At the end of the day, I was assigned the task of coming up with a rough project plan for this product. Even though I had worked on creating multiple project plans back then, I was nervous. This product was complicated and had hundreds of use cases. I didn’t know where to start. This was the first taste of building a project plan for a highly complex product.

In this blog, we’ll cover the importance of project planning and its key elements. We’ll look at a project plan template, walk through a realistic example, and cover tips for efficient project planning in your organization. Let’s get started!

Background information: The project management lifecycle

Before we get into project planning, it’s important to understand the lifecycle of a project:

• Initiation — this is the start of the project. Ideally, this is where the need of the project is identified and the project is defined
• Planning — this includes the end-to-end planning of the project. The main parts of the planning are defining project goals, scope, complexity, effort, timeline, budget, and risk management
• Execution — this phase is where all the relevant teams come together and execute their part of the project
• Continuous monitoring — throughout the project, progress is monitored and controlled. Any deviations or blockers are clarified for a smooth delivery
• Closing — this is the last phase of the project where the work is reviewed and, depending on the feedback, the project closes

Since we are focusing on project planning, we’ll deep-dive into its different elements. However, to do that, we first need to understand why project planning is important.

The importance of project planning

The project that I was given to lead at Zalando was a highly complex one. The estimated timeline for completing the project was one year — this is fairly high in the software development world.

There were three engineering teams involved each with 7–8 team members. When it comes to complex projects, it’s essential to have a strong project plan in place.

Here are a few reasons why project planning is important:

Clarifies goals and objectives at the beginning

As they say “without a goal, you can’t score.”

Every project needs a goal or outcome for the team to understand what they are supposed to do. Project planning helps achieve that.

Helps with timeline and budget

Initial project planning helps to understand how much estimated time the team will take and how much money the project requires. The latter includes salaries of employees, hardware costs, training, etc.

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Identifies risks early on

This is an extremely important part of a project plan. Project planning helps identify potential blockers or risks , thereby enabling the project manager and teams to create a risk mitigation strategy.

Increases collaboration

A strong project plan helps everyone understand their responsibilities. This, in turn, helps the teams collaborate effectively and finish the project within the timeframe.

Key elements of project planning

Next, let’s review the key elements of project planning:

This is pretty self-explanatory, it’s what the project is going to hopefully achieve by the end. It’s important to have SMART goals so they’re as specific and unambiguous as possible.

This is the very first element of a project plan that the team decides on. Scope helps the teams understand what they need to achieve and gives direction to the product. Scope typically includes objectives, goals, expected deliveries, and project limitations.

This helps teams understand when they need to deliver the project and how to divide the project into small, executable milestones that fit into the total timeline. It also includes the allocation of resources, personnel equipment, and necessary training.

The budget details the financial part of the project. Questions like how much total money needs to be spent to finish the project, what are the funding sources, what are the revenue projects, etc. are answered via budgeting. This also includes the salaries of team members, training costs, equipment costs, etc.

Every project comes with its own risks. Risks are factors that could impact the project’s successful completion. These could be the availability of resources, legal and/or regulatory compliance, or technology limitations.

Assessing risks early on helps detail how they can be mitigated to successfully deliver the project. One point to note is that it’s not possible to identify all the risks early on. For example, no companies could predict the magnitude of the outbreak of COVID-19. This proves that some risks are beyond the control of the company and teams.

Communication plan

A project requires effective collaboration between different team members, such as designers, engineers, marketers, sales personnel, etc. To achieve this, a project needs to have a strong communication plan. This includes meeting schedules, modes of communication, and reporting requirements.

Change management plan

As mentioned in the risks section, there are times when the project needs to change because of unidentified or unplanned risks. These changes might affect the scope, timeline, budget, resources, or any other part of a project.

This is why a change management plan needs to be discussed. This plan outlines how a project can be changed, how to communicate changes to stakeholders, and how to address concerns or conflicts.

Stakeholder management plan

Every project has stakeholders. Stakeholders can either play an active role in finishing projects, such as engineering and designers, or simply may just be interested in the status of the project, such as higher management.

Having a stakeholder management plan will keep the stakeholders educated and engaged, thereby removing any blockers or concerns.

Team roles and responsibilities

As mentioned earlier, a project requires active collaboration between different teams and team members. This is why a clear definition of who will work on what is extremely important. It also helps to outline the responsibilities of every team member, project manager, project sponsor, etc.

Project plan template

Here is a free project plan template that I created. Feel free to use it at your convenience. This highlights all the points that are mentioned above in the key elements of the project planning section.

You can make a copy of this template to customize for your projects by going to File > Make a copy .

Project plan example

Let’s go through an example to create a project plan using the above template.

Project goal

We’ll start with the project goal. As mentioned earlier, the first part of a project plan is to understand the needs of the project. The outcome of this is to have a specific goal and outcome. This is the most critical part since it will drive the entire project.

For example, let’s say we work for an established e-commerce company that’s doing well in selling fashion products and we’ve already identified a need of selling second-hand products. In this case, the goal is to “enable sellers to sell second-hand products at their desired price.”

Once the goal is identified, the next step is to define the scope. This helps to deliver results faster. Here’s an example: to enable sellers to sell second-hand products at their desired price on an e-commerce shop, we need to: enable a new categorization “second-hand” on the website for the users to discover; build systems to enable sellers to sell the second product at their desired rates; and define return and exchange policies.

These are just a few of the things that the team will need to work on. And hence, it’s important to scope the project so that it’s easier for the team to deliver. For example, enable sellers to sell second-hand t-shirts at their desired price. This will help the team only focus on one category as compared to tens of other categories, thereby having a clear scope to work on.

Next, we have timeline. As mentioned previously, this helps the team know how soon they need to deliver the project. For our example, we could say that our goal to enable sellers to sell second-hand t-shirts at their desired price should be finished in three months. Every month, there will be a smaller release related to the project goal.

Next up is the budget. This falls in the bucket of the sponsor. Usually, that’s someone from higher management. We need to know what physical resources, human resources, and physical locations are necessary

For example:

• Six sets of hardware for six team members with the associated software
• Six team members: three backend, two frontend, and one project manager
• Office space for seating six

Risks are an extremely critical part of a project that helps identify potential risks early on and create a contingency plan. We can ask ourselves things like, “What if the project is not delivered within the timeline?” “What if the project requires more budget?” or “What if the company doesn’t find sellers to sell second-hand products?”

For the first question, we could de-scope the project depending on what needs to be finished. For the second, evaluate the reasons and find funding opportunities, And for the third question, we could understand the reasoning and iterate the product (or close it, depending on the feedback).

This is the backbone of the project and keeps the project audience together.

Here’s an example of a communication plan:

• A weekly check-in between all the stakeholders
• A bi-weekly newsletter to keep all the stakeholders informed
• A Google chat for the stakeholders to communicate daily

Questions such as “What happens if something goes wrong?” are taken care of in this section.

I nform the primary stakeholders, who, in this case, are higher management (including the CEO, CTO, and CPO) ASAP in case of changes. Also, evaluate the cost of the change and communicate the same.

This part talks about who are the relevant stakeholders, how should they be informed, and how often. In this case, the stakeholders are the higher management, engineering team, operations team, and design team. They should be informed via email once every two weeks.

Lastly, every project requires active collaboration between different teams. And hence why it’s necessary to understand who is involved in the project and what their roles are.

For example, engineering will work to build the software, the design team will design the features and the end-to-end flow, and the project manager will lead the project.

Here is the template with all the filled answers.

5 tips for effective project planning

The following are some lessons learned and advice I’d give for effective project planning:

• Involve all the relevant stakeholders from day one . Sometimes, engineering or design is included later, which impacts not only the timeline but even the scope of the project
• Create a realistic timeline . Include buffers, vacation days of team members, sick leaves, and holidays. Unexpected incidents happen and its best is to consider them in project planning right at the start
• Maintain active communication . It’s better to over-communicate than under-communicate. Also, having active regular communication can help identify the roadblock or risks earlier
• Identify the right stakeholders and prioritize them . Some stakeholders will be the sponsors or participants, and hence will be very active during the entire project. Others will be passive. Classify the stakeholders and communicate with them regularly according to priority
• Be agile . Always prepare for the worst case and keep the team agile. This includes creating a strong change management plan and determining the potential risks early on.

A good project plan can help the team sail the winds smoothly. It forms the backbone of the project. A project plan can give clear visibility to all stakeholders, thereby helping everyone accomplish the desired goal.

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One Reply to "A guide to project planning (with template and examples)"

Thanks a lot for your hard work and great samples! Really appreciate. I think project planning also requires digital tools for planning. Kanbantool.com seems to be a great match here. I bet you have heard about kanban 🙂 Thanks once again and wish you luck, and all smooth i professional life 🙂

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Project Management

How to create a project plan in 5 steps (with examples & templates.

Erica Golightly

Senior Writer

March 21, 2024

Project management documentation are non-negotiable resources that directly influence a project’s final outcome. To achieve a high success rate, the project plan serves as a dependable and effective roadmap that teams rely on throughout the entire project lifecycle, from initiation to completion. 📍

This guide is packed with the resources you need to send a project on the right path. We’ll break down the steps to build effective project plans, optimize resources, and coordinate communication efforts.

We know you’re a busy bee, so here’s a resource to jumpstart your project planning process right now: The ClickUp Example Project Plan Template . The List and Board views are already set up with key requirement fields, so all you have to do is add your project tasks! 

Check out more project roadmap templates !

Before we dive in, let’s explain what a project plan is. Because it gets chaotic with a revolving door of project documentation…

Ok if we’re honest, we like a little chaos. But only if Organized comes before Chaos. 😊

What is a Project Plan?

Benefits of writing a project plan, step 1: specify the expected deliverables and end results of the project, step 2: identify the key stakeholders and estimate budget expenses, step 3: create a work breakdown structure (wbs), step 4: add key milestones into a detailed project schedule, step 5: set expectations for communication , project plan examples, manage your team with project plans.

The project plan is a living document to provide a clear understanding of the project’s objectives, so stakeholders can align their efforts towards a collective goal. It defines the project’s scope , specifying what is included and what is not, to prevent scope creep and meet target deadlines.

At its best, it equips team members with the context to spend their time on the right things, including: 

• Risk assessment and mitigation strategies
• Individual and team responsibilities
• Resource management strategies
• Task dependencies
• Key milestones

A well-prepared project plan not only serves as a roadmap for project execution but also brings about various advantages that contribute to a project’s all-around success. 

Better Risk Management : A carefully written project plan provides room for risk identification and mitigation strategies right from the inception. By visualizing risks earlier, you can frame proactive measures to tackle them effectively and minimize their impact on the project’s outcome.

Increased Team Efficiency: A project plan outlines the roles and responsibilities of each team member, fostering clarity on what exactly is expected of them. This not only boosts individual productivity but also makes the team more cohesive and efficient.

Effective Resource Allocation and Cost Control: With a concrete project plan at hand, project managers can optimize resource allocation , minimizing wastages and ensuring that costs stay within the budget limit. It serves as a reference point for financial management, allowing managers to track and control expenses effectively.

High Client Satisfaction: A project plan structures the path to desired results, thereby enhancing the quality of the final deliverables. When clients receive value-driven results within the established time frame, they are more likely to be satisfied, leading

How to Create a Project Plan in 5 Steps 

From establishing clear project objectives to building the project timeline, we’ll get into practical insights and best practices to guide you in drafting project plans. 

Basically, here’s the over-caffeinated version of how to create a fail-proof project plan in 2023. 🏆

Not all requests in the queue should be full-scale projects. By prioritizing the right projects, teams can maximize their chances of success and optimize resource utilization for the best possible outcomes.

Do the deliverables and outcomes align with your organization’s growth goals?  When stakeholders see the relevance and alignment of a project with the organization’s KPIs, they are more inclined to actively participate, provide necessary resources, and advocate for project success. (More about project stakeholders in the next step!) 

Who will be the primary users or recipients of the deliverables? Customers or end users may have distinct preferences, expectations, or levels of expertise, and understanding their characteristics allows the project team to create deliverables that effectively meet their unique needs.

Are there any specific requirements, templates, or guidelines for the deliverables? This question upfront saves everyone time by providing a structured framework or starting point, so the project team can focus on the content and value-added aspects of the deliverables rather than spending unnecessary effort on formatting or presentation.

Now that you’re prepped with the project deliverables and goals, it’s time to begin drafting the project plan. 📃

Depending on your preferred project management methodology , the project plan’s format varies. Documents, tables, and Gantt charts are a few popular options. As long as it gives a clear description of each element in a project plan, you’re on the right track!

Here’s what you should have so far: 

• Project Title : Clearly state the name or title to capture the project’s essence. If you’re using an acronym, provide the full term 
• Project Description : Write a concise description of the project’s purpose, objectives, and scope
• Project Manager and Team : Identify the project manager responsible for overseeing the project and list the key members of the project team (e.g. the marketing team )
• Project Start, End, and Delivery Dates : Distinguish between the completion of internal project activities and the delivery of the final results to the stakeholders
• Project Objectives : State the specific goals and outcomes of the project. Give context to its impact on the organization’s KPIs and OKRs

Discover project planning tools to support any type of workflow! 

Project stakeholders typically include individuals or groups directly impacted by or having a vested interest in the project’s outcomes. Part of your project plan in this section should include approaches for stakeholder communication, involvement, and participation. 🧑‍💻

These may include project sponsors, end-users, clients, key project members, and the accounting partner.

Yes, accounting partners are stakeholders. Here’s why:

A small design project for an agency might cost a few thousand dollars, whereas a large infrastructure project for a multinational corporation could involve millions of dollars. 

In recent times of changing market conditions, it’s more important than ever to give stakeholders an idea of expenses related to resources, equipment, materials, and any other relevant costs. The plan also includes processes for tracking and managing costs throughout the project lifecycle.

This brings us to the next productivity resource to have on your radar. There’s a faster way to get out of building a budget report spreadsheet line by line every Friday afternoon: 

Give transparency into project budget utilization where the work is happening. 

Use free tools like Custom Fields in ClickUp to categorize project task resources, like contractors, project management software, and one-off purchases. (For example, purchasing a license for a song in a brand video.)

And this doesn’t take extra effort and, more importantly, email chains on your part. With ClickUp, all your project’s tasks and resources are recorded in one place. @Mention a stakeholder for purchase approval, upload a receipt image, and update the Custom Field to reflect how much funding is left. 💰

When Custom Fields are updated, task watchers (including accounting partners) are notified of the changes. They have the convenience of referring to the digital trail whenever they need to!

Now that we have project stakeholders and the budget added to the project plan let’s move to the next step!

A work breakdown structure (WBS) represents the project’s scope by breaking it down into team and individual tasks or activities. 

Starting with the most important project deliverable, the WBS progressively breaks it down into smaller work packages and subtasks. Each work package represents a distinct task or activity to be assigned, scheduled, and tracked. The hierarchical rundown continues until the work packages are at a level where they can be easily understood and executed. 🤩

The WBS is a collaborative process. Connect with your key project team members to fill in what’s missing for the project’s requirements and deliverables. As a project manager, your focus is on the project as a whole, including strategic planning , project scheduling , budgeting, and stakeholder communication. 

Here is a general outline of the WBS format if you want to build a simple project plan template:

The project team is the subject matter experts in their fields. Their perspectives on how long a task would take and what they would need from other team members to complete their work are invaluable for a successful project. 

Virtual whiteboards are a great option for a remote or in-person brainstorming session. With real-time editing, it’s a non-intimidating way to encourage participation from everyone. Add to your next project planning session the ClickUp Work Breakdown Structure Template . A beginner-friendly tool with rich text editing, embedding features, and actionable tasks! 🎯

When you’re at a good place with the WBS, it’s ready to be added to a project timeline. 

Bonus: Work Breakdown Structure Software !

The schedule will get updated weekly or monthly as the project progresses. To keep up with the changes, and, most importantly, communicate the changes, using intuitive tools like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and timelines will make managing ongoing changes less tedious. 

Gantt charts 

Offer a visual representation of the project schedule, allowing project managers to easily track task dependencies, durations, and milestones. When updates are required, they can quickly modify the chart, rearranging tasks or adjusting timelines with a simple drag-and-drop action.

Kanban boards

Provide a streamlined workflow view, allowing project managers to visualize tasks in various stages of completion. As changes occur, they can easily move tasks across different columns, reflecting the updated progress and priorities. 

Timelines 

Show a clear chronological view of project events, deadlines, and milestones. This enables stakeholders to stay informed about important dates and ensures that everyone is on the same page regarding project progress.

Check out our guide to creating a project timeline ! It’s packed with more templates and examples to help you build a powerful project visual. 🎨

Bonus: Construction scheduling software !

We’ve arrived at the final step of the project planning process!

Following up on task statuses and answering one-off status emails take up so much time and energy from a project manager’s work week. 

Chances are, everyone is working on multiple projects simultaneously. So replying to DMs is sometimes held off until the very end of the day. Or lost somewhere in the void for days. 

Status reports are essential for decision-making. They provide a digital record of the project’s activities, decisions made, and outcomes, which can be useful for future reference, audits, or lessons learned.

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Replace long email chains with ClickUp tasks for your status reports. With a single ClickUp task, all the weekly updates are stored in one place. This simple shift to task-based communication eliminates the need to search across multiple apps. 🔍

However, if your team relies on messaging platforms like Slack for urgent updates and real-time problem-solving, use the Slack integration with ClickUp . Turn messages into tasks and comments from the Slack app and notifications about tasks to Slack channels of your choice!

Take project communication one step further by providing a project status report template to follow so all updates are organized and uniform for stakeholders: 

• Team Accomplishments : List key milestones or tasks completed during the week
• Current Status : Provide an overview of the project’s progress and any challenges or bottlenecks faced
• Upcoming Tasks and Deadlines : Note any important deadlines approaching in the following week
• Tasks at Risk : Highlight any issues or risks identified and their potential impact
• Resource Updates : Mention any changes or updates related to resource allocation
• Next Steps : Summarize the immediate next steps and priorities
• Assistance Needed : Specify any support or assistance required from team members or stakeholders

Bonus: Create a “Coordination” ClickUp task, which serves as the main channel where teams can expect the latest updates from you! 

Different departments may have unique workflows and requirements, hence different types of project plans are needed. Here are some project plan examples to get you started:

1. Marketing Team Project Plan Example

Goal: Increase website traffic by 30% in the first quarter.

Roles & Responsibilities: SEO manager leads keyword research and content optimization; Social media executive handles promotion; Email marketing manager sets up email drip campaigns; The marketing analyst tracks and reports progress.

Budget: $10,000 for software, content creation, promotion, and analysis.

Deliverables: SEO-optimized blog posts, social media campaigns, email newsletters, and a detailed analytics report.

Schedule: 3 months, with weekly check-ins.

Communication Plan: Weekly meetings for updates and month-end reports; Ad-hoc meetings as necessary; all communication documented in ClickUp.

2. Product Team Project Plan Example

Goal: Develop a new feature for the app within six months.

Roles & Responsibilities: Product manager defines feature requirements; Designer drafts interface; Developer builds feature; QA tester checks for defects; Feedback tracked by product analysts.

Budget: $50,000 for research, design, development, testing, and launch.

Deliverables: A new, tested, and fully-functional app feature.

Schedule: 6 months, with bi-weekly sprint reviews.

Communication Plan: Daily stand-ups for updates; Bi-weekly sprint review meetings; Ad-hoc meetings as necessary ; All communication documented in ClickUp.

3. Design Team Project Plan Example

Goal: Redesign the company’s website for better user experience and increased conversions in four months.

Roles & Responsibilities: UX researcher conducts user research; UI designer creates mockups; Front-end developer codes the design; Quality analyst performs UX tests; Project manager oversees all operations.

Budget: $20,000 for research, design, development, testing, and implementation.

Deliverables: A fully-responsive, tested, and live website offering a superior user experience.

Schedule: 4 months, with monthly iterations.

Communication Plan: Weekly catch-up meetings for updates; Monthly review meetings; Ad-hoc meetings as necessary; All communication documented in ClickUp.

Remember, these are just examples and your actual project plan might vary based on many factors like scope of the project, team size and other specific needs.

Leverage ClickUp to take the administration tasks off your workload so you can do what you do best. You are capable of handling every single request or question that comes your way, but you shouldn’t have to. Your team needs you in your most present self, driving the project toward success. 

Create a free ClickUp Workspace and invite team members to experience better project planning. If you need any support with building project workflows, we’re only a message away. Happy planning! ✍️

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How to Create a Winning Project Plan

By Kate Eby | May 25, 2022

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Creating a project plan can be overwhelming, but that doesn’t always have to be the case. We provide the basics steps for how to write a project plan.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write a project plan . You’ll find helpful tips and a downloadable template starter kit so that you don’t have to worry about formatting and can hit the ground running.

What Is a Project Plan?

A project plan is a document that outlines what’s needed to complete a project. This can cover a project scope overview, a budget breakdown, a detailed schedule of deliverables, and a rundown  of potential risks and stakeholders.

A project plan contains much of the same information as a project charter, but includes finalized details and a more specific schedule and budget. Think of a project charter  as the blueprint for your project plan; the charter lays out your intent before the project begins. A project plan maps out the processes necessary to complete it. Your project plan should always be up to date and serve as a source of truth for a project’s status.

How to Write a Project Plan

Writing a project plan starts with finalizing your project information. Create an overview and a scope statement, determine a deliverables schedule, and define a budget. Include a risk management strategy, a communication plan, and any other documents your project needs.

Project planning is fundamentally about balancing the goals, schedule, and costs in a way that demonstrates that you can control the project’s scope. You may consider adopting the use of project planning templates to maintain consistency between projects and build on them over time. 

A project plan also includes all the supporting documents that walk your stakeholders, clients, and team through the project.

1. Write a Project Overview

The overview is a short introduction to the project, not exceeding a page or so in length. Summarize the high-level details, covering project goals, deliverables, success measurements, and dependencies. Include the project’s sponsors and their titles, and name the project. 

Add links to project portals or dashboards to give stakeholders a place to conveniently check on status and to access more detailed documents in the project plan.

Download Project Overview Statement Template Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

Use this template to provide a high-level summary of a project’s goals, scope, risks, schedule, budget, and success metrics. Add links to your company’s risk management plan , a detailed budget, and your project schedule. This template is fully customizable, so you can add or remove text to include only the information you need.

2. Define the Project’s Scope

Outlining your project’s scope is important for controlling scope creep . Define the project’s deliverables and goals. It is just as crucial to highlight what is within a project’s scope as what is outside of it. 

A project’s scope may shift, but consider the changes against the project as a whole and update them in the project plan when approved.

3. Create a Project Schedule

The project schedule should be visual and easy to read, showing how each task contributes to the project’s main goal. Note the people and resources needed for each task and subtask, how long each will take, and the dependencies between them. 

Depending on your project management strategy, you might consider using Gantt charts , Kanban boards , or shared calendars to create the schedule. Whatever you choose, ensure that your project status is updated on the schedule and that tasks are marked when started, completed, or falling behind.

Leave room in your schedule for roadblocks, emergencies, and tasks that may take more time. Consult with your team about how long each task has required in the past and use their feedback to inform the schedule. Create the schedule based on how long the work takes, not how long you wish it would take.

Download Project Schedule Template Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Use this customizable project schedule template to create a visual map of your project’s tasks and phases. The template will use any dates you add to the matrix to create a Gantt chart. You also have space for project notes.

4. Finalize the Project Budget

Your project plan should have the approved spending plan or time-phased budget that lists all costs by time period. Make sure to itemize the budget and keep it as close to reality as possible. Include room in the budget for unforeseen and emergency expenditures, and account for any additional resources you may need. Plan to update it immediately when emergencies arise or when tasks cost more. It is important to know ahead of time what kind of costs need executive approval and to make a plan to get that approval ahead of time.

Download Project Budget Template Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets

Use this customizable project budget template to create a detailed, line-item budget for the project. Add labor and materials rates or the fixed cost for each task in your project. The template will automatically calculate the costs and compare your actual budget to your estimates, so it’s easy to tell if you’re going over.

5. Identify a Risk Management Strategy

Make a list of the specific risks your project faces, and outline a strategy to manage them . If your company already has a general risk management plan in place, it may not be necessary to reproduce it in your project plan as long as you highlight the individual risks that apply to your project. Talk to other project managers and your team about the obstacles they faced, and ask for tips for addressing similar challenges.

6. Write a Communication Plan

Create a communication plan to establish how and when you’ll share updates with stakeholders. The plan will list your project’s key stakeholders and team members, as well as their contact information and when they should receive project updates. You can use this document to outline the kinds of updates each stakeholder wishes to receive, and map out a schedule for planned meetings and reports.

Download Project Communication Plan Template Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs

Download this project communication plan template to document your key stakeholders’ contact details and their preferred contact style and frequency. Input your communication goals and customize the plan to include scheduled meetings, progress reports, and status reports.

7. Finalize All Documents and Get Sponsor Approval

The final project plan should include all of the information above and any additional documents that might be relevant to your particular project. 

Additional elements you might include in a project plan include the following:

• A link to your project charter
• A quality assurance plan
• Your work breakdown structure
• Your project management methodology or framework
• Links and access to necessary permits and certifications

Present the final plan to your sponsor and get their approval. If they request any changes, take this opportunity to make them.

8. Save and Share Your Plan

Once you’ve approved your project plan, save it in a centralized, easily accessible location, and share it with project stakeholders and your team. Ensure that all schedule and budget documents are updated regularly so that the project plan always accurately reflects your project’s status. Any critical changes to the plan itself should only be adjusted through the approved change control and management process.

Tips for Writing a Good Project Plan

Writing a good project plan begins with good organization. Use templates and software to keep your plan up to date and accessible. 

Follow these tips for writing a good project plan:

• Write Clearly: Don’t complicate the plan with details that your audience already knows, such as your organization’s existing risk management or change control policies . Provide the information that your readers need to know about the specific project, not the entire company.
• Use Formatting and Be Specific: Some people will skim the plan, while others will pore over every detail. To make it consumable for all, use visual charts for schedules and budgets, bullet points for lists, and bold fonts to highlight important details. The skimmers will get the high-level information they need, and the detail-oriented will be able to drill down into the information they want.
• Keep It Updated: Even though the project plan contains a series of documents, don’t let it become something that stakeholders ignore or forget because it no longer has relevant information. Use an updated project plan to maintain support and enthusiasm for the work ahead. 
• Use Your Project Charter: The project charter is the basis for your project plan. A detailed project charter includes similar information. Build off of the speculative schedules and budgets you already created.
• Use Templates and Software: Using project plan templates for your project plan documents is a great way to ensure consistency between teams and projects. Many project management software solutions also provide methods for creating, organizing, and sharing project plan information as well.
• Involve Your Team: Make sure to talk with your team before the project starts. They are the people who ensure the project succeeds, so get their input and buy-in during the planning process. They will likely have insight that you do not, and they will ask questions that will surface important details. Involving your team in the planning process also builds trust, as they feel closer to the project and more invested in its success.

Project Plan Starter Kit

Download Project Plan Starter Kit

We’ve collected the templates above to create a project plan starter kit that makes it easy to write your own project plan. In this kit, you’ll find customizable templates to create a project overview, a project budget, a detailed schedule, and a communication plan. Together, these documents form the foundation of a solid project plan and will help get your project off the ground.

Use Smartsheet Project Management Tools to Create and Implement Your Project Plan

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

Project Management Plan: Samples, Examples & Free Template

Learn how to create a project management plan that actually works and ensures you get your project over the line on time and on budget, with samples and examples

Table of Contents

What is a project management plan, what is a project management plan used for, what are the main elements of a project plan, how to write a project management plan, sample project management plan outline, using our project management plan template to build your project plan, project management plan: faq's.

A project management plan is a comprehensive document that outlines how a project will be executed, monitored, controlled and closed. For project managers and their teams, it's the ultimate toolkit for achieving their objectives while managing day-to-day pressures such as time, cost, scope, resourcing and risk. This guide outlines what a project management plan is used for, why it's important , and offers a step-by-step guide on how to make one that actually works.

Your project plan document is where you go deep on the ins, outs, overs, and unders of your project. It's where you break this vision down into the day-to-day execution of your project, covering everything you need to do to reach your project goals.

A detailed project plan will plot out everything from timelines to budget, resourcing to deliverables, and more, giving you a blueprint of what needs to be done (and when) that you can use to guide — and assess — your project.

The key components of a project management plan are:

Project Objectives

Scope Statement

Schedule Management

Cost Management

Resource Management

Communication Plan

Stakeholder Management

Procurement Management

Closure Criteria

Project Organization

Ready to get down to business? Here are 5 key things you need to do when writing a project plan.

1. Identify the baselines for your project

Before you begin writing a project plan, you need to make sure you have the basics down. Start by identifying the baselines for the project’s scope, schedule and cost, as the rest of your project planning will need to fit in around those constraints.

As mentioned above, these baselines should already be roughly outlined in your project charter — but here’s where you really start to map them out and create accurate estimates. And the more detailed, the better, because these are what you’ll be using for comparison to measure how your project performs.

2. Identify your project dependencies

Or in other words, ask yourself: what needs to happen before this other thing can happen? Identifying your project dependencies at the outset of your project means you can plan your timelines more efficiently, spot potential blockers, and ensure that you avoid unnecessary delays.

3. Identify project stakeholders

You’ll already have done the groundwork for this in your stakeholder analysis, but as you flesh out your project management plan and think through the phases of your project in more detail, you’ll likely start to find more project stakeholders at each phase.

Now is also a good time to go deeper on which stakeholders need to be informed and involved at which stages, for a more comprehensive stakeholder management plan you can use at each phase of your project.

4. Identify project milestones

What are the key markers of your project’s progress? It can be a concrete deliverable, the end of a phase in a stage-gate process — whatever milestones make sense to you, breaking your project down into manageable chunks, each with a defined goal, helps to keep the team motivated, allows you to celebrate each achievement, and signposts how the overall progress is coming along.  Learn more about using Milestones here .

5. Identify who’s responsible for what

Once you start to get a big-picture understanding of the work that’s needed and the resources you have to complete it, you can start deciding who should do what. Giving each item an owner is essential to getting things done. No more “oh, was I supposed to do that?” — once you identify who’s responsible for what, you can ensure accountability and transparency.

The 5 Stages of Team Development

All teams develop according to some natural patterns and using that knowledge, you can offer some guidance to build the kind of team that communicates well and finds better ways to collaborate and achieve the goals you’ve established. Here’s what you need to know.

Now let's go through a sample project plan. In the below example, we highlight the main sections of the plan and what needs to be included in each one to set your project up for success.

Section 1: Executive summary

The executive summary offers a concise overview of the entire project. It includes key highlights such as the project's purpose, objectives, scope, timeline, budget, and major stakeholders. It's often the first section stakeholders read to get a high-level understanding of the project.

Section 2: Project introduction

This section sets the stage by providing context and background information about the project. It explains why the project is being undertaken and introduces the main objectives and scope of the project.

Section 3: Project objectives

Here, the project's specific goals and objectives are outlined in detail. Objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to provide clarity and guidance.

Section 4: Project scope

The scope section defines what is included and excluded from the project. It helps prevent scope creep by establishing clear boundaries and also mentions any assumptions and constraints that may affect the project.

Section 5: Schedule management

This section details the project's timeline, including milestones and deadlines. It breaks down the project into tasks and identifies task dependencies. Often, visual representations like Gantt charts are used for clarity.

Section 6: Cost management

Here, the project budget is presented, including cost estimates for various project components. It may also outline cost control measures to ensure the project stays within budget.

Section 7: Quality management

This section focuses on the quality standards and objectives for the project. It describes quality control and assurance processes, as well as any inspection and testing procedures that will be implemented.

Project management template

Save time on setup without sacrificing attention to detail. With our project management template, you can quickly create project management plans that help you complete your project on time and on budget.

Section 8: Resource management

In this section, the project team is introduced, and roles and responsibilities are defined. It addresses resource allocation, scheduling, and, if applicable, procurement needs.

Section 9: Risk management

The risk management section identifies potential risks and uncertainties that could impact the project. It discusses risk assessment, prioritization, and mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of these risks.

Section 10: Communication plan

The communication plan outlines how project information will be shared with stakeholders and team members. It specifies communication methods, frequency, and reporting channels to ensure effective communication throughout the project.

Section 11: Stakeholder management

This section lists project stakeholders and analyzes their interests, influence, and expectations. It also outlines strategies for engaging and managing these stakeholders to ensure their needs are addressed.

Section 12: Procurement management

If procurement of goods or services is involved, this section explains the procurement strategy, vendor selection criteria, and how contracts will be managed.

Section 13: Change management

Change management procedures are detailed here, including how changes to the project scope, schedule, or other aspects will be requested, evaluated, approved, and communicated.

Section 14: Closure criteria

Criteria for determining when the project is complete and ready for closure are specified in this section. It may also include plans for project handover and post-project evaluation.

Section 15: Project organization

This section describes the project team's structure, roles, and responsibilities, ensuring everyone understands their positions and reporting lines. It may also mention external stakeholders and their roles if applicable.

Once you’ve documented your project management plan, bring it to life with a project management tool that will help you to stay on track, keep your team accountable, and promote transparency.

Here are 3 ways you can use Teamwork.com to supercharge your project management plan.

Add your supporting documentation to Teamwork Spaces

Use the Teamwork.com and Teamwork Spaces integration to link a project in Teamwork.com with a space in Teamwork Spaces, so your important project documents are only ever a click away.

Some documents you might want to add in addition to your project charter and project management plan include:

Scoping documents

Risk assessments

Change management plans

SOPs for important project processes

List of stakeholders and their roles

Outline of approval processes

Communications management plan

Any other best practices documentation or supporting info as necessary

You can even embed task lists into your pages and mark tasks as complete right from Teamwork Spaces, so you can keep work flowing without even needing to switch tabs.

Start adding your Milestones

Break down your work into Milestones and task lists that are going to help you reach them. With Teamwork.com, you can assign an owner to each Milestone, map out your Milestone due dates and see them represented in the project calendar, and even get a full change history for milestones so you can track any edits.

Visualize your task dependencies with a Gantt chart

Gantt chart-style views are a useful way to get a visual representation of your tasks and their dependencies, allowing for better scheduling and resourcing. In Teamwork.com, you can drag and drop to quickly rearrange your project schedule , without throwing everything out of order or straying off-plan.

Remember: software should support the way you work, not dictate it. So regardless of methodology or team type, create a project plan that works for you and your team — and find a tool that helps you put it into action.

Use our project plan template

Now that you know how to create a project management plan that actually works, you’re ready to implement using our team management software . To help you get up and running quickly, we’ve created a ready to use project plan template . Our project template will help you quickly create project plans that ensure all of your projects are completed on time and on budget

What is a project management plan template?

A project management plan template is a pre-designed framework that provides a structured format for creating a project management plan. It serves as a starting point for project managers and teams to develop their specific project plans, saving time and ensuring that key project management components are properly addressed.

How can a template help you build a great project management plan?

A template can help you build a great project management plan by saving time, ensuring comprehensive coverage of project management aspects, and incorporating industry best practices and visual aids for clarity. They also support collaboration, version control, and customization to fit the unique needs of each project, making them a valuable tool for project managers in achieving successful project outcomes.

What is the main purpose of a project management plan?

The main purpose of a project management plan is to provide a comprehensive and structured roadmap for successfully executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing a project. It serves as a central document that outlines project objectives, scope, schedule, budget, quality standards, resource allocation, risk management strategies, and communication approaches.

What tools do I need to help manage a project plan?

To effectively manage a project plan, you'll need a set of tools and software that cover various aspects of project management. These include project management software, communication and collaboration platforms, file and document management solutions, time and task tracking apps, and budgeting and financial management tools.

What steps are involved in the project planning process?

The steps involved in the project planning process include defining specific project objectives and scope, identifying deliverables and key milestones, budgets, risk assessment and quality control measures. It should also include a communication plan and stakeholder engagement strategies.

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What is a project plan and how to write a project plan in 6 steps

A project plan is an essential document for keeping your project on track. It states the purpose of your project and identifies the scope, structure, resources, goals, deliverables, and timelines.

Without a solid plan, projects typically get delayed and run over budget.

In this high-level guide, we’ll show you how to write a project plan in six steps and share five monday.com templates to get you up and running quickly. But first, let’s define a project plan and its various components.

What is a project plan?

A project plan is a formal document that outlines an entire project’s goals and objectives, specific tasks, and what success looks like.

In addition to setting the purpose of your project, it should include other materials and deliverables relevant to the project, such as:

• Timelines and Gantt charts for key milestones — like start and end dates, getting your 200th customer, or launching an event or app.
• Communication plans — to keep everyone informed of progress, achievements, and potential roadblocks.
• Work breakdown structure — especially if you have multiple team members working on different or simultaneous tasks, in which case, you may also need a Project Planner .
• Resources needed to complete the project — like project management tools , cash, freelancers, and more.

In short, your project plan serves as a central hub to define, organize, prioritize, and assign activities and resources throughout your project’s life cycle.

What is project planning?

Project planning is the second phase in the project management lifecycle :

• PHASE 1: Project Initiation  — where you identify a business need or problem and a potential solution.
• PHASE 2: Project Planning  — where you define specific tasks, assign responsibilities, and create the project schedule.
• PHASE 3: Project Execution  — where you touch base with resources, monitor the timeline and budget, and report back to stakeholders.
• PHASE 4: Project Close-out — where you review the success of the project.

During the project planning phase, you extend the project charter document from the initiation phase to create your detailed project plan. Typical tasks within the project planning phase include:

• Setting a budget.
• Defining a project schedule or timeline.
• Creating work breakdown structures.
• Identifying resources and ensuring availability.
• Assessing any potential roadblocks and planning for those scenarios .
• Defining project objectives , roles, deadlines, responsibilities, and project milestones .

Project plan elements

Here’s how a project plan differs from other project planning elements.

Project plan vs. work plan

Although similar, work plans are not as comprehensive as project plans. A work plan focuses on helping project teams achieve smaller objectives, whereas a project plan provides a high-level overview of an entire project’s goals and objectives.

Project plan vs. project charter

A project charter provides an overview of a project. It’s a formal short document that states a project’s existence and authorizes project managers to commence work. The charter describes a project’s goals, objectives, and resource requirements. You create it in the project initiation phase before your project plan and present it to key stakeholders to get the project signed off.

Project plan vs. project scope

Part of your project plan includes the project scope , which clearly defines the size and boundaries of your project. You document the project scope  in three places: a scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), and WBS dictionary. It serves as a reference point to monitor project progress, compare actual versus planned results, and avoid scope creep.

Project plan vs. work breakdown structure

A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a hierarchical outline of the tasks required to complete your project. It breaks down large or complicated goals into more manageable tasks so you can execute the project plan. The WBS breaks down the project scope into phases, subprojects, deliverables, and work packages that lead to your final deliverable.

Project plan vs. agile project

An agile project is the opposite of a traditional project plan. Agile projects use an incremental, iterative approach to deliver a project, whereas traditional projects — also known as a waterfall approach — use a cascading, step-by-step planning process. Agile projects are synonymous with software development teams, but you can use them in any field.

Why are project plans important?

Over a third of all projects experience something called scope creep . This is where the team ends up doing more work than originally planned. Much of this can be avoided by accounting for unexpected hold-ups or changes in circumstances within your project plan. A project plan also makes it easy to pinpoint when problems arose, so you can be better prepared for future projects.

If you look at the numbers related to project management, it’s easy to understand where a project management plan could have a positive impact— 45% of projects aren’t completed on time, and 38% of projects are over budget.

A project plan can help to curtail wily overspending and late turnaround by identifying these issues early. This leaves no room for confusion and delays in the workflow and progress of your projects.

How to create a project plan in 6 steps

There are no hard-and-fast rules for a project plan. However, we recommend you use the following six steps as a springboard for creating one.

1. Start with an executive summary

The executive summary goes at the beginning of your project plan and should summarize the key points of the project plan . It should restate the purpose of the project plan, highlight the major points of the plan, and describe any results, conclusions, or recommendations from the project.

Even though it is at the beginning of your project plan , it’s something you will write last , as you’ll be pulling out the main points from the rest of your plan.

It should be no longer than a page, offering a brief overview of:

• The project objectives and goals
• Your chosen project methodology/framework
• The final deliverables and acceptance criteria
• Key scope risks and countermeasures
• Summary of milestones
• An overview of the project timeline and schedule-based risks
• Resource and spending estimates

This snapshot of your project makes it easy for key stakeholders who aren’t actively involved in the mechanics of the project to understand it. For project managers, the executive summary serves as a quick reminder of the key project goal, scope, expectations, and limitations. Since almost a third of projects don’t meet their original goals, it’s important that project managers review the project plan regularly to stay on track.

2. Define the project scope

There are few things worse than starting on a project only for it to balloon. By defining a project’s scope , you set the boundaries for a project’s start and end dates as well as expectations about deliverables and who approves requests—and what merits approval— throughout a project.

It also involves outlining the potential risks associated with meeting these expectations and providing countermeasures to mitigate these risks. Identifying exactly who’s accountable for tracking these risks is essential.

This step will help you prevent scope creep, or how a project’s requirements tend to increase over a project lifecycle. Organizations complain that 34% of all their projects experience scope creep, yet only 52% of organizations go to the effort of mostly or always creating a scoping document every time.

3. Structure your project

There are several frameworks you could use to guide your project and this will affect your workflow’s organizations and how deliverables are produced and assigned.

For example, if you’re using the waterfall framework , you’ll be planning everything in advance, working through each stage of development sequentially, and specialized task owners executing their work at a defined time.

Remember that creating too many dependencies within your project structure can negatively impact success, so try to work out ways that teams can work autonomously to achieve deliverables in a timely manner. It’s also good to consider how many approvers are needed to maintain order but also to prevent bottlenecks.

Above all else, it’s important to incorporate set times for team knowledge-sharing, so your projects can be more successful. Make a note of the communication structures you’ll use to encourage collaboration .

4. Check what project resources you have available

Define the resources you have available for this project:

• Physical resources

You need to be precise when you’re assessing what you’ll need, otherwise you’re baking a cake with all the wrong ingredients. A resource manager or project manager can lead this.

As an example, when teams have the right highly skilled people, projects are 30% more likely to succeed. Yet, a third of people don’t believe their teams have all the right skills for the project—a recipe for failure.

The quantity of team members is also important—if the ratio of work to available people is off, efficiency and quality will suffer. If you want to effectively allocate your resources to meet expectations, you’ll need to be realistic about resource limitations.

This may, for example, mean adjusting timescales if you’re short on staff or increasing your budget if you need more specialist equipment.

5. Map out your project timeline

Organizations that implement time frames into project plans are more likely to succeed. Despite this, 52% of projects don’t always set baseline schedules. That’s probably why 45% of organizations say they rarely or never complete successful projects on time.

In this sense, it’s wise to add a project schedule section to your project plan. This part of your plan should set expectations on when you’ll deliver and how you’ll stick to your project timeline.

Your project schedule will look a little different depending on which framework you choose.

The tasks that you have a ‘Work in Progress’ (WIP) will depend on your team’s capacity. In this section, you should set your maximum number of WIPs you can have in each column at each time.

6. Manage your project changes

Organizations put change control in their top three project challenges. If you don’t solidify a change management plan , your team will be clueless about what to do when unplanned change hits. A dynamic change management plan will outline the steps to follow and the person to turn to when unforeseen changes occur.

A key part of this is having a change management tool in place. And monday work management is flexible enough to help you manage all parts of the project life cycle — from planning and monitoring to reporting and resource management. Let’s take a look at a few of our templates that can help you get started.

5 project planning templates to help you write a good project plan

monday.com templates can be lifesavers when it comes to visualizing each section of your project plan, and they make it easy to get started. Try these 5 project plan templates to kickstart your project planning process.

1. Project Plan Template

Looking for a general project plan template? Try one of our project plan templates .

Using this highly visual template by monday.com, you can structure your subprojects by set time periods and allocate accountable personnel to each phase.

Prioritize each project and add a timeline to show when deliverables are expected.

2. Resource Utilization Template

Resource management allows teams to focus on executing tasks, projects, and processes efficiently and achieve shared goals at scale.

You can allocate resources to individuals and tack on timescales so your staff knows what resources they’re responsible for in which phase. Adding a location makes it easy for teams to know where to hand over resources as they transition from one phase to the next—and they can check this on our mobile app.

Use the Workload view to manage your team’s time proactively and get an overview of the workload and capacity of each person on the team.

3. Project Cost Management Template

It’s far easier to plan a budget when you can see all your costs in one place.

That’s why this Project Cost Management Template from monday.com is so incredibly handy.

Add each subproject and plan out projected costs, allocating totals to each department. You can use the document to estimate the budget you’ll need and to record your approved project budget. You can then use our dashboards or reports to see the information in a different, more colorful way.

4. Project Timeline Template

Plan out your schedules with this Project Timeline Template .

While this dashboard isn’t really suitable if you’re working with the Kanban framework, it’s ideal for those operating under Waterfall or Scrum frameworks.

For Waterfall projects, add in your milestones, attach a timeline, and allocate a set number of workdays to complete the tasks for each milestone.

Tag the team leader for each phase so project managers know which milestones they’re responsible for.

During project execution, teams can use the status bar to track progress. They can also add updates to each milestone by clicking on each item, which encourages inter-team collaboration.

For Scrum projects, you can organize the dashboard by Sprints, adding in the specific tasks as they’re decided.

5. Program Risk Register Template

Visualize all your project scope and schedule risks in this Program Risk Register Template .

Use color-coded status bars to illustrate risk status, risk probability, and risk impact for your project scope and schedule.

You can even categorize risks, add a risk owner, and suggest mitigation strategies. That way other project team members know what to do if these risks start to blossom into real glitches.

Optimize your project management plan with the right tool

Project plans are an essential part of your team’s success.

While they are detail-oriented and complex, creating one and managing it shouldn’t be a struggle. Use monday.com’s pre-built planning templates to help you break down each section of the plan as you go and monitor everything in real-time.

Try monday work management, and see for yourself how much smoother your next project will run when you can consolidate all your project planning materials in one place.

What Is Project Planning? 7 Steps for Success

November 1, 2023

by Kausikram Krishnasayee

In this post

The importance of project planning, 7 steps for creating an excellent project plan.

• Common project planning techniques
• 6 ways a poorly-planned project might fail

Benefits of using project planning software

A well-planned project is a well-executed project.

Ask any seasoned project manager about the most crucial stage of a project, and you’ll get a unanimous response: before the actual work begins. 

Project planning is often deemed to be the single most important process that determines the success or failure of a project. Your performance indicators, base metrics, and monitoring techniques depend on a solid project plan. Make a mistake at this stage, and you won’t know about it until it's too late.

What is project planning?

Project planning is the most crucial stage of the project management process. It defines the scope, objectives, tasks, timelines, resources, and budget required to successfully complete a project. This stage defines how each phase of the project will be conducted and serves as the reference point for all stakeholders.

Investing in project management software is a must for enhancing the project planning experience. It provides real-time updates that aid quick decision-making and also overlooks resource allocation, budget creation, productivity levels, and progress monitoring.

Project planning is a formal activity that is approved in the beginning and requires considerable documentation. However, the project plan is not always set in stone, as project managers and teams can make some changes based on new developments.

Let's get up to speed on the basics of project planning and learn how to go about it the right way.  

Project planning is a tedious task, and you might be tempted to jump right in and start working. Of course! Who likes to spend their days running back and forth between stakeholders, creating schedules, and documenting processes?

Wouldn’t it be better to start working immediately? Turns out it’s not. Project planning is a wearying process, but it saves time and resources in the long run by streamlining the project and keeping everything on track.

Companies waste a significant portion of their investment due to poor project performance. Failures, delays, and budget overruns can all be avoided with proper planning. No matter how much pressure you face to get started or how simple a project may seem, planning is well worth the time spent on it.

Consider the example of the Airbus A380, the largest commercial airliner today. Producing a behemoth like the A380 was unprecedented, and the manufacturer poured in a lot of resources to make it a reality. However, it is widely rumored that Airbus sustained a loss of $6 billion on the project, and it was close to failure.

An incomplete plan is widely considered to be the biggest reason for this loss. The project did not have a standard CAD tool , and teams working on different parts used what they preferred. Aviation applications require precision, and the tolerance difference between the CAD tools didn’t allow the plane’s components to fit together. This seemingly small gap in the plan caused a 2-year delay and required billions to rectify.

When it comes to creating a successful project plan , there is no one-size-fits-all approach that guarantees results. All project plans are dynamic and require a different approach. However, some essential activities will always be a part of any collaborative project planning process. The following sections will take a brief look at them. 

1. Conduct research and outline the business case

Before you start the planning process, it’s important to take a break and first understand the demands of the project and create a business case for it. If you don’t know the importance of the project, it is impractical to expect that you can get all the stakeholders on the same page.

2. Identify and meet the stakeholders

The Project Management Institute (PMI) describes project stakeholders as anyone who can affect or can be affected by the project. They can be your team members, your company executives, the clients, or even some external groups. Depending on the complexity and scope of a project, stakeholders can range from a small group of people to population segments.

As a project manager, you are responsible for identifying and managing stakeholders throughout the project. You must also understand and manage their expectations and make sure no conflicts arise due to miscommunication.

The best way to ensure effective communication is through proactively establishing a tailored communication plan . This stakeholder register tells you about any particular party’s role, influence, and interest in the project. This is an effective strategy that can help you in managing and dealing with key stakeholders during the project’s lifecycle.

3. Define project scope

This is one of the most important stages of the project planning process. All projects revolve around their scopes because a project scope delivers the most comprehensive picture of what to expect from a project.

All stakeholders need to be involved in scope creation because the scope statement acts as a guideline or point of reference for everyone. A typical scope statement deals with the objectives, assumptions, estimates, and constraints of a project. In many projects, scope statements take considerable time and negotiations before they are finalized.

The project scope statement does not have a specific format per se. However, there are some best practices you must keep in mind while coming up with one.

• Do not use any jargon or technical language
• Keep it short and precise; brevity is your friend
• Never make any sweeping statement or go over the top with commitments
• Ensure that the scope statement clarifies the business case, the benefits, and the novelty of your project

4. Set your goals and objectives

Project goals are an extension of the scope statement and talk about the actual impact of the project. They define the long-term technical benefits, outcomes, and tangible improvements in the existing overall situation because of the project.

Many people use objectives and goals interchangeably. However, project goals and objectives serve different functions in project management. Goals define the high-level targets of a project, while objectives are more tangible, specific, and focus on the immediate impact.

The SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timebound) framework is one of the most effective tools you can use to simplify the goal-setting process. Learn more about what the SMART framework is and how it can help you.

5. Identify risks and create effective mitigation strategies

No matter how ideal the situation around a project is, there will always be some risks that may affect your progress. Risk management  is an important part of any project manager’s job because despite all the risks, finishing a project with little or no cost/schedule overruns is important. 

Some of the most common sources of risks in project management are market volatility, technical failures, legal issues, or any other extreme conditions. Assess all possible risks during the planning phase and develop contingency plans by the order of their likelihood. Through quick thinking and a proactive approach, you can ensure optimal performance even in adverse conditions.

6. Create a timeline

Once you’ve finalized your objectives and know what you plan to do, it’s time to create a schedule. A well-planned schedule has the expected start/end dates of each task, identifies dependencies, effectively delegates tasks , indicates the allocated resources, and states the duration of each activity.

That’s not all! Maintaining your team’s morale is crucial for progress. You can’t expect your team to work on top gear from day one till the end. Try to balance things out by mixing things up in the schedule. Include small breaks after intensive activities, and make sure to set aside some time to celebrate key milestones.

7. Finalize monitoring techniques

The final characteristic of any excellent project plan is that it will have predefined performance indicators and an effective reporting system. Regular reports and updates allow everyone to stay updated on progress. As a manager, efficient reporting and clear KPIs can help you maintain effective quality control on your project and ensure everything stays on track.

Common project planning techniques 

It’s up to you and your team to decide the best approach to planning a particular project. What matters most is that your plan includes all the aforementioned steps. Some of the most commonly used planning techniques are brainstorming, cause and effect diagrams, critical path analysis, and Gantt charts. Let’s explore them in more detail. 

Brainstorming

This one is quite simple. Brainstorming is a perfect activity for any team that works together like a well-oiled machine. Organizations with a matrix structure benefit the most from a brainstorming session. Project teams usually consist of people from different departments, and all of them come with different perspectives and experiences. Brainstorming sessions are a perfect tool to positively leverage the diverse environment in such a team and come up with unique ideas.

Cause and effect diagrams

Cause and effect diagrams or fishbone diagrams are a great visualization tool for projects with a lot of external influences. These diagrams allow your team to learn more about the deeper causes of the problem at hand and effectively categorize them.

Critical path analysis

Even someone only remotely associated with project management is likely to have heard of critical path analysis. This technique is best suited for projects with a lot of dependent tasks. Critical path analysis allows your team to visualize the entire project and identify the most important tasks for success. With critical path management software , t eam members also get to know the exact effect their tasks have on the project, which can be great for motivation.

Gantt charts

A Gantt chart is a simple visualization tool that can encapsulate all the necessary data about a project. What are the current activities, what has been done, and what’s planned next? A Gantt chart will tell you everything you need to know. 

Take a look at this example of project plan template below to understand how gantt charts work:

6 ways a poorly planned project might fail

Despite all the precautions taken, many projects fail. The results might not be what you expect, you might be dealing with cost/time overruns, or your bosses and stakeholders might not be happy with the progress and decide to cut their losses.

There are numerous reasons behind project failure. With proper planning, you can either eliminate project failures or significantly minimize their chances.

Here’s a brief overview of the six main reasons behind project failure.

1. Not focusing on the business value

This is a prevalent problem in the tech industry as teams start focusing on adding technical details rather than on the business case. For example, you often see numerous products in the market that have excellent features but no client base .

Consider a development team working on creating a software tool. Now, if they start focusing on adding advanced features rather than focusing on end-users’ needs, the project will most likely fail because they’ll either run out of budget or face delays.

The best way to avoid this from happening is through making clear objectives. If your team knows exactly what they are trying to achieve and plans accordingly, the chances of success will improve.

2. Inconsistencies in methodologies and execution strategy

Another common cause behind project failure is ineffective communication. Ineffective communication leads to inconsistencies in project management methodologies and causes projects to progress haphazardly. 

Some project managers also have to deal with multiple change requests and cater to stakeholder demands. These deviations can cause issues like scope creep and may require you to drastically change the original plan. As a result, you will be left with a confused team and a chaotic structure.

In most cases, setting up an effective communication plan and keeping everyone on the same page can eliminate these issues. Project managers also make a change management plan beforehand to keep scope creep in check.

3. Inadequate stakeholder engagement and interest

Stakeholder management is among the most important responsibilities of a project manager. You’ll come across two types of key stakeholders that are difficult to manage.

The first type will be too involved in the project. They’ll expect regular reports, will have many suggestions, and might even have some unrealistic expectations from your team. The second type is even more challenging. They won’t even bother to read your updates but will expect timely results.

Some project managers don’t like too much outsider involvement in their projects and discourage stakeholder involvement. This may end up being detrimental to the project and cause failure. 

As a project manager, your responsibility is to deal with both sides of the coin and make an effective strategy that keeps everyone on the same page. You need to involve stakeholders at the critical points and proceed only with their approval to ensure success.

4. Inadequate motivation

Project managers need to ensure that their teams are motivated to finish the project successfully. Your current state of mind can have a huge impact on how you approach a problem. A monotonous work schedule or the feeling of not being heard can negatively impact workplace productivity .

The simplest way to keep your team motivated is through celebrating key milestones and recognizing top performers. This would encourage your team members to perform to their fullest and keep the momentum going. 

5. Lack of transparency

Transparency is underrated as people often don’t understand the relationship between project visibility and success. However, in reality, transparency can have a significant impact on your team’s performance. Teams that trust each other and can see the bigger picture will ultimately be more invested in a project. 

Project teams are diverse, and members can augment one another’s experiences and collaborate effectively in a transparent environment. On top of that, there are virtually no risks involved as there are no disadvantages of sharing data except the obvious exception of employees’ and clients’ personal data with stakeholders.

6. Lack of access to necessary tools

Whether planning an event or a complex industrial project, you’ll have to ensure effective resource allocation . Most beginners make the mistake of only thinking about the financial aspect when they talk about resource allocation, and that creates problems down the line. 

Effective managers know that numerous other resources are just as important. Some of them are as follows.

• Human resources: The people you have are the most important resource. As a manager, your job is to select the best people for the job, keep them engaged, and ensure their availability during the project lifecycle.  
• Facilities: You can have the best plan and the best people, but they won’t be able to do anything without the tools/facilities they need. Managers are responsible for ensuring the availability of such facilities.
• External vendors: In many projects, you might depend on external vendors for key tasks. A big part of project management is dealing with external entities and ensuring that they perform as expected of them.
• Knowledgebase: You don’t always have to go through an experience to learn valuable lessons. Almost all projects are well-documented, and you can use the past experiences of other teams to improve your chances of success.

For the longest time, spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for planning a project. However, they are not as perfect as they are thought to be. Spreadsheets are clunky, boring, and an absolute nightmare to track. If you are still relying on them for project management, it’s time to stop and embrace positive change.

Project management software tools are a viable alternative to spreadsheets as they can potentially revolutionize the way you handle projects. From effective collaboration to report generation and automated tracking algorithms, project management tools are designed to help streamline your projects from cradle to grave. 

Furthermore, the best part about project planning software tools is their scalability. Any market competitive tool will offer enough intuitive features and data-driven approaches to handle the most complex projects with the same efficiency and intuitiveness.

An increasing percentage of projects are starting to meet their original goals while staying on time and within budget. There are numerous reasons behind this increase, but the most important factor is increasing accessibility to quality project management software.

Your roadmap to success

Planning is often the foundation on which a project stands. A strong plan that effectively utilizes all available resources and streamlines project activities can make your life easier down the road. 

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” The same philosophy applies to project management. By having an effective plan, you can always stay ahead of the curve and ensure a successful end to your project regardless of the complexities and risks involved.

Despite the most thought-out strategies and plans, many projects fail due to unseen risks. Make your projects failure-proof by learning about project risk management .

Turn chaos into clarity

Use the best project management software to create and execute project plans successfully.

Kausikram Krishnasayee is the Director of Product Management at Kissflow and heads Kissflow Project . Prior, he co-founded TourMyApp, a user onboarding solution for web apps, and was Lead Architect at ToolsForAgile, an Agile project/portfolio management suite for lean software-development teams.

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Project Planning: A 7-Step Guide To Creating Effective Plans

Nailing the project planning process is a great way to set your project up for success. Here’s a complete guide to delivering projects effectively.

Elise Dopson,   Contributer

• project planning

Project planning is about more than simply meeting deadlines and not going over budget. It provides a roadmap for your team to follow so they can hit essential milestones, optimize their workloads, and deliver awesome results.

With the right project planning system in place, teams can overcome barriers and optimize their workflows. In this guide, we’re going to break down: 

• What project planning is
• The importance of effective project planning

3 project planning methods

How to create a project plan, a project planning example.

Ready to get planning? Let’s begin.

Plan your projects with the #1 rated resource management software

Add project phases, link task dependencies, and create accurate project timelines based on your team’s capacity. Float is the #1 rated resource management software on G2 for planning projects and scheduling your team’s time.

What is project planning?

Project planning is the process of identifying, prioritizing, and delegating the tasks and resources needed to complete a project.

Think of a project plan as a blueprint. It acts as a single source of truth for your team to know when their deadlines are, the milestone dates they should pay close attention to, and what their resource capacity is. Your project plan will guide your team and your decision-making process from the moment a project kicks off until it’s ready to be delivered successfully . 

But it doesn’t stop there. As different needs arise, a project-planning blueprint can change or be updated as you go.

The right software makes this process—which can get a bit complex at times—a breeze to manage. You can create tasks, set deliverables, and track budgets without the messiness of old-school methods like Excel spreadsheets or shared Google Docs. With Float , you can allocate tasks onto your team’s schedule, track how much time they’re spending on them, and set budgets to manage your expenses as you make progress.

You can also check out our 15 downloadable project plan templates to help you throughout the project lifecycle.

"Every project and scheduled resource of our video production team is managed through Float. We needed a system to manage our growing project workflow and more importantly, our expectations of each other. To put it simply, if it’s not in Float, it’s not getting done!"

Why is project planning important?

Project planning is important because it helps you manage necessary resources and anticipate bottlenecks, increasing chances that the project will be completed on time and within budget.

More specifically, here are five benefits of effective project planning:

1. Enable team collaboration

Hands down, your project doesn’t happen without team collaboration. Project team collaboration can be made easier with resource management software. Unless you’re a team of one, putting methods in place to keep everyone in the loop is essential to executing projects on time, without overspending, and without sacrificing quality. 

2. Prevent scope creep

Speaking of overspending, without a proper way to track and document your projects, it’s too easy to become a victim of scope creep. If not tracked and accounted for, any number of tasks or resources can start taking longer than expected and start costing more too. 

In the end, scope creep can derail your project and makes you more likely to miss deadlines and let clients down. The right resource planning software can remedy the lack of proper planning that inevitably brings on scope creep (more on that later). 

3. Stay on budget

The last thing resource and project managers want is to go over budget when executing a project. Not only does it put a strain on the overall company, but it’s also an easy way to overburden your employees with additional constraints that can lead to burnout. 

Effective project planning ensures you don’t go down this route. For instance, Float lets you set project budgets based on either time or fees when managing your project resources.  

It also lets you compare estimated versus actual hours worked with time tracking . This makes it easy to stay on top of overspending in real time—which is invaluable to project execution. 

4. Make your team happier and prevent burnout

Burnout happens when you don’t manage your human resources mindfully. It’s one thing to track budgets and schedules , but it’s another to have a clear view of exactly how much any single team member can take on at once. 

Big-picture calculations like these are hard to make without a comprehensive method in place that lets you take stock of the resources on hand—in this case, your team members—and where their baseline is in terms of what they can contribute. This becomes increasingly important if you’re multi-project planning.  

Why is preventing team burnout paramount to your success? Besides keeping your people happy and fostering a culture of support, you want to avoid the very tangible financial costs that come with burnout. 

According to a Gallup study , employees experiencing burnout are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 23% more likely to end up in the emergency room. 

5. Keep key stakeholders in the loop 

The more informed your stakeholders are on a project, the happier they’ll be. Easy, right? Consider the fact that stakeholders can play a pivotal role in the direction of your project.

Without stakeholder input to help steer the ship, you’re left vulnerable to costly miscommunication and mishaps that could otherwise be prevented.

Thankfully, keeping stakeholders in the loop is easier with the right tools in hand. For instance, resource management software can give them easy access to information on where resources are going, what’s taking up the most resources, and how key tasks are being finalized. 

Keep projects on track with Float

Rated the #1 resource management software on G2, Float gives you an accurate view of your team’s capacity and workload to keep projects on track. Add time tracking to monitor actual project costs in real time, and ensure you deliver work on time and on budget.

There are different ways and methodologies to plan projects . Let's get familiar with three valuable types of project planning methods you can use, according to your needs: 

When you think of a waterfall, images of cascading water come to mind. The waterfall planning method follows the same pattern. To move on to the next step, you must complete each preceding step first.

Just as water can’t flow back up a waterfall, each step in the waterfall method is irreversible. Why is this? The waterfall method comes from a time before planning software existed, meaning it served to execute a more linear project planning process (you can’t lay concrete without leveling the area first, etc.).

This is why you need an ironclad method of documenting tasks and responsibilities. This way, you’re able to distribute that information so everyone on your team knows exactly what needs to be done and when. 

In essence, the waterfall method makes certain projects easier to manage and can save you money by helping avoid the mishaps that disorder can cause. Pairing waterfall planning with software is when the real magic starts to happen. 

Agile planning

Agile planning is iterative and more flexible . When you use agile planning to manage your project, you create detailed yet shuffleable plans on shorter timelines, called sprints. 

Sprints can take anywhere from one to three weeks and make for flexible end dates. These sprints are usually made up of repeatable processes that can help support your team as they work through their designated tasks. 

Agile planning is used a lot in software, but it can also be useful in many different settings. Instead of strongly prioritizing deadlines, agile planning prioritizes iteration and collaboration to arrive at maximum results. 

Kaban project planning takes a less rigid approach to project planning. Instead of setting hard deadlines, it sets project tasks and allocates resources on a flexible timeline, usually within a range of days. It’s also a highly visual way to plan projects, as team members have access to the progress of a project in real time. 

Out of the three planning methods, kanban tends to be the most popular method. Why? Because it lends itself to a variety of projects across many different industries. In other words, it’s a lot more accessible than other planning methods. 

Kanban is best for a simpler project planning approach because of key features like:

• A template for workflow transparency
• Cards and columns to track progress
• Task prioritization 

More than 4,000 of the world’s top teams plan their projects with Float

Rated the #1 resource management software on G2, Float’s powerful project planning features help you to create accurate project timelines and schedule resources with precision.

Creating an effective project plan can be broken down into a straightforward process . Here’s a closer look at what it takes to get through each step.

1. Set your project goals and tasks

Before you dive into plotting your project onto a timeline, you need to outline and allocate tasks and goals for your team.

This starts with talking to your project stakeholders (like the client you’ll be delivering the project to), as well as your team and team leaders who’ll be in charge of making it happen. These discussions should hash out the project’s needs, budget, deliverables, deadlines, etc.

When the project’s stakeholders are all on the same page, you can create a list of tasks and milestones your team needs to execute to deliver the project on time and within budget. Here’s a breakdown of tasks in Float for a rebranding project:

As you can see, the design and UX work must be completed before the team can proceed to their marketing tasks.

To prioritize which tasks should be worked on first, you can use the SMART principle to guide you. Which tasks are the most important and urgent to get the project delivered? Can they be measured, and how? Who will be in charge of getting each task done? When do you need each task delivered to make sure the project is completed on time?

Answering these questions will help you create specific deliverables and plot them on a timeline.

2. Create (realistic) project deliverables

The next step in planning a project is to set deliverables and make sure your team can actually get them done!

According to the Wellingtone study , attempting to run too many projects at once is now the main challenge organizations face. Realistic delivery dates ensure that your team's calendars aren't overwhelmed and that your projects are finished on time.

Plot the tasks you outlined in step one onto a project timeline, add a rough delivery date for each task and milestone, and then consult your team (this one is a biggie). Project manager Wes Jones recommends talking to your team in two steps :

👩‍💻 Approach your team individually. If you have a small team, speak with them individually first to see what they’re thinking. This makes everyone feel involved and gives them ownership over the work they’ll be doing. It also gives you a chance to discover any holes in your project plan and consider different perspectives.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Then meet as a team. After you’ve gathered everyone’s input and crafted an initial plan, you need to take it to the full team so they can see how everything is starting to fit together. During these meetings, you can fine-tune things and make any necessary revisions.

3. Set a work breakdown structure

Now you want to break all your project tasks down into manageable pieces, which is basically what setting a work breakdown structure involves. First, you’ll want to start with the end goal in mind. That is, instead of working from a handful of tasks, work from your deliverables.

What will your finished deliverables be? Remember that your deliverables can also be things like a service or an event. What tasks do you need to complete? What subtasks are needed to complete those tasks? 

You can get as granular or as general as you need to when setting a work breakdown structure. The important thing is that you account for what needs to be done and how it’ll be taken care of. 

Use a resource breakdown structure to match resources to tasks and activities outlined in your WBS.

With Float, it’s easy to visualize your work breakdown structure with a live view of who’s assigned to what tasks. That way, you make sure you aren’t assigning tasks twice, and you’re getting rid of unnecessary steps in the breakdown process. 

4. Plan resources

Resource planning is a crucial part of organizing your team. Here’s where a team lead will allocate tasks and deliverables throughout the team. By doing this, project managers can maximize the use of resources and track resource capacity to ensure they don’t spend more than is necessary. 

Making resource planning a step in your project planning phase lets you:

• Maximize your budget spends
• Streamline your team workflows through resource forecasts and capacity reporting
• Take a more in-depth look at overspent budgets (and figure out what needs to be done differently for the next project lifecycle)

Let’s say one of your team members works part-time for three 10-hour days a week instead of the usual 9 to 5. Using resource planning, you can set their individual hours without changing the overall capacity of the rest of your team. This (along with setting rates for different team members) makes it easy to see when you can schedule tasks for your team and keep track of a project’s budget.

Resource calendars help ensure that your team is only scheduled when they’re available to do the work—which is why it’s a crucial part of any successful project planning.

Take it from Leah Zeis, an associate director at Buzzfeed: “It’s in Float that we start creating and assigning the editing tasks and resources to get the project delivered. We add information like the project due date and budget so that, at a high level, we can see what our resource capacity and availability are to schedule the right team for the job.”

Want to find out more about how resource planning can help you? Check out our guide to resource planning here . 📝

Plan your project resources with the #1 rated resource management software

Rated #1 on G2 for resource management, Float combines powerful project planning and resource scheduling features that ensure your projects are delivered on time, on scope, and on budget.

5. Define task dependencies and bottlenecks

This is the step in the process where you can stop project mishaps before they happen. It’s important to remember that project tasks aren’t an island. In other words, they don’t exist without depending on each other in some way.

Dependencies are influenced by time, scope, and project cost constraints . Defining task dependencies and bottlenecks requires looking through what you have planned so far and identifying what tasks depend on what resources and the potential stalls or hold-ups they can create that could change project outcomes.

There are several different task dependencies worth spotting—like casual, external, or resource dependencies. Not all of them will always apply to every project. 

• Casual dependencies. These are inevitable and will come up throughout your project as your team goes through its workflow. They’re less severe and more manageable and tend to follow a logical workflow. For example, you can’t install sprinklers until the equipment you ordered has arrived. 
• External dependencies. As a resource manager, you need to be as ready as possible to deal with external dependencies. These can be things like depending on third parties to submit deliverables on time or procurement managers depending on third parties to have ample inventory of any given resource needed. 
• Resource dependencies. Resource-based dependencies revolve around the availability of resources. Do you have enough in-house developers to work on a specific project? Is the agency you partnered with ready to take on the outsourced pieces of your project? 

Once you pinpoint your project dependencies, it’s easier to identify and solve bottlenecks. Using project planning methods like Gantt charts make it easier to spot bottlenecks. 

But beyond software, here’s where you can’t forget to communicate with your team—they’re the ones on the ground doing the work, so their feedback is invaluable when you’re trying to understand where in the process work starts becoming unmanageable.

6. Run a risk assessment. What happens if something goes wrong? 

Manage enough projects, and you’re bound to have something at some level of severity go wrong. Such is life. Yet that doesn’t mean you can simply cross your arms and hope for the best.

Risk management prepares you for when projects don’t go as planned. To do this, it takes running a risk assessment. You can break it down into three steps:

• Risk: Take the time to sit down and make a list of all the things that could go wrong with your project. 
• Probability: What are the possible chances each of the risks you’ve listed will go wrong?
• Impact: What outcomes can you expect if any of the identified potential risks go wrong? 

A risk assessment helps you mitigate failure. Say you’re planning for a website redesign and you need branded deliverables by a certain date for developers to modify. 

How can you plan for the scenario where the deliverables aren’t submitted on time? How will you free up your developer’s time at a later date to be able to complete the task? 

A risk assessment safeguards the success of your project by helping you form the right questions and find the best answers to project risks. It’s why it’s so important not to skip this step in your planning process. 

Want to reduce risks in your projects? Read our guide to project baselines to learn how to monitor project progress and spot problems early.

7. Plot your project on a final timeline

Finally, you need to take your rough plan back to your team to consult with them on the final details. While it may seem tedious, your team is worth it!

Before you can schedule your team their project objectives, you need to know:

⏱️ The amount of effort (hours or days) required for completing the task within a given timeframe so you can set project schedules  

📅 Who has the capacity on their calendar to successfully cover the scope of the project

✈️ If there are any availability issues you need to know about (like a vacation or other time off) that may impact your project plan

📝 If they need any more instructions to help them get started and are aware of the communication plan

Once you've collected that information, you can set a concrete delivery date for each task and schedule it onto the assigned team member’s calendar. Using the right tool—like a Gantt chart—makes everything a lot easier at this part of the project planning process.

With Float , you can schedule tasks and deliverables to team members for entire projects in a snap. As your team members’ rates are tied to their individual profiles, assigning tasks also calculates how much of your budget each person will take up.

Once the project kicks off and tasks are completed, Float automatically tracks how much of the project budget is being used, so you can see how many billable hours you have remaining.

We’ve gone through the steps needed to plan your project—and by this point, you know the importance of effectively planning with the right tools. However, let’s dive into real-life examples of effective project planning in action. 

As an architecture firm, Rice Fergus Miller takes full advantage of Float’s project phases feature, which allows it to shift and prioritize tasks easily. The project phases feature also enables it to track individual phase budgets by hours or by fees. “I love how I can drag the phase bar, and all associated bubbles in the schedule shift automatically. It’s a graphic way to shift a timeline,” says architect Jason Ritter.

The co-founder and consulting director of Eshop Guide, Patrick Rosenblatt, always seeks to avoid overbooking and stressing out his team members. With a project planning tool like Float, he’s able to successfully implement a project management plan. 

“We use Float’s tabular view of our resources and planned activities to make sure we are never overbooked, but also to know when we have too little load,” Patrick says.

Project planning software can help your business

There’s no doubt project planning software comes with an endless amount of upside. You can track where all your resources are being used and when, keep your team from burnout, stay within budget, and seamlessly tackle multi-project planning. 

Float was built to fit the needs of your team, whether you’re managing one big project or juggling multiple clients, and you need to know your project status and resource levels. You can ditch missing deadlines and unclear project resource expectations with the tried and true set of tools that Float offers. 

Start project planning with the #1 rated resource management software

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Related reads

What are pert charts and how can project managers use them, the 4 critical factors to planning a successful project, an introduction to remote project management.

• What is a Workflow

A 6-Step Guide to Expert Project Planning [+ Examples & Tools]

November 15, 2023 - Updated on December 13, 2023

Project planning is the answer you need when faced with a project teeming with tasks and a tight deadline. So, before diving into work and confronting the upcoming challenges, set up your course of action through project planning .

Project planning involves crafting a framework for your project, breaking it down into stages and tasks for each phase. This approach eliminates the need for constant concern about the next step.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at project planning, delving into its significance and fundamental elements. From defining project objectives to crafting timelines and efficiently allocating resources, we’ll uncover the essence of project planning.

Key Takeaways

• In project management, project planning is a structured approach that encompasses defining project goals, outlining the scope of work, specifying actions, identifying deliverables, and presenting the plan to stakeholders for effective communication and management of expectations.
• Effective project planning is essential to facilitate communication, ensure timely completion, identify potential issues, enhance resource allocation, and improve stakeholder satisfaction.
• A project plan comprises three critical elements : scope, time, and budget, which define the project’s primary goals, schedule, and financial aspects, ensuring transparency, efficiency, and adherence to objectives.
• To create a good plan, set goals, list what you’ll deliver, decide on a budget, make a timeline, pick your team, and handle risks wisely.
• Think of your project plan like a story with five chapters —start, plan, do, monitor, and finish. Each part has a role in guiding your project to success.
• Use tools like Microsoft Project, Trello, or Asana for an easier journey. They’re like handy companions, helping you stay organized and work better.

What is Project Planning?

Project planning in project management involves a structured approach to overseeing a project , covering all the vital aspects of its execution. This planning is the foundation of every successful initiative, as it sets the fundamental guidelines and expectations for the entire team, client, and all relevant stakeholders.

Within project planning, you’ll incorporate elements like defining the project’s goals, outlining the scope of work, specifying actions, identifying deliverables, and other important components required for a successful outcome. It serves to encapsulate your vision, work structure, and team and leadership roles.

To successfully create and implement the project plan, it’s necessary to present it to stakeholders and address their project ideas, wishes, and expectations.

With this move, you’ll ensure that everyone is well-informed from the outset. As a result, you have everyone understanding the project’s path and dynamics and can concentrate on effectively leading your team, motivating them, devising strategies, and enhancing workflow to ensure project success.

Therefore, start your project with a carefully designed project plan . Let it be your channel through which you communicate and manage project expectations, define project phases, identify milestones, set timeframes, and allocate resources.

Project Plan: Importance and Benefits

The importance of project planning is immense because, without proper planning, projects can easily veer off course, leading to confusion, delays, and unexpected challenges. And you certainly don’t want that to happen to your project.

So, here are some key benefits of effective project planning that will help you understand its significance in every project:

#1. Facilitates Effective Communication

Project planning acts as the bridge of communication among team members and stakeholders. In a complex project, there can be various roles, tasks, and dependencies. Without a clear plan, it’s like trying to have a conversation in different languages.

A well-defined project plan ensures that everyone understands their roles, responsibilities, and the project’s goals. It encourages open dialogue, enabling team members to share insights, updates, and feedback seamlessly.

This communication ensures that everyone is on the same page, which, in turn, promotes better decision-making, conflict resolution , and overall collaboration ingredients for a successful project.

#2. Ensures Projects Are Finished on Time

Project planning is akin to setting a clock for your project. It establishes a realistic timeline, milestones, and deadlines , serving as a time-management tool. With a solid plan, project managers can allocate resources efficiently, preventing bottlenecks and ensuring that tasks are completed on schedule.

Project planning allows for continuous monitoring of progress, enabling timely adjustments when necessary. By adhering to the project schedule, teams can consistently meet deadlines and prevent costly delays.

#3. Helps Identify Potential Issues

Effective project planning is like being equipped with a radar for detecting storms before they hit. It involves thorough risk assessment and early identification of potential issues that might jeopardize the project’s success.

By foreseeing challenges and uncertainties, teams can proactively develop contingency plans and mitigation strategies. This proactive approach minimizes the impact of unexpected issues, ensuring the project stays on course.

Addressing problems in their early stages prevents them from escalating into major roadblocks, saving time and resources in the long run.

#4. Enhance Resource Allocation

Project planning serves as a budgeting and resource management tool . In the absence of a plan, resources such as personnel, materials, and budget can be haphazardly allocated, resulting in inefficiencies and wasted resources.

However, a well-structured project plan outlines resource requirements for each phase of the project, ensuring that resources are utilized efficiently, and no valuable assets are wasted. It facilitates cost control, allowing organizations to stay within budget.

#5. Improves Stakeholders Satisfaction

When projects are meticulously planned and executed according to plan, stakeholders, including clients, team members, and investors, are more likely to be satisfied with the results . Meeting or even surpassing their expectations builds trust and confidence in the project’s management and delivery.

This high level of satisfaction fosters better working relationships, encourages ongoing support, and can lead to future collaborations. Ultimately, happy stakeholders are more likely to endorse and invest in future projects, enhancing an organization’s reputation and competitiveness.

Therefore, project planning plays a pivotal role in not only achieving immediate project goals but also in building long-term stakeholders’ loyalty and success.

3 Key Elements of a Project Plan

Let’s explore the structure of a project plan, which comprises three essential elements: scope, time, and budget. These key components define a project plan and highlight their significance in successful project management. Let’s take a look!

Scope is essential in project planning, as it defines the project’s primary goal and all its expected tasks . It tells us the project’s purpose and the necessary steps to achieve it.

Besides the tasks, the scope lists the specific responsibilities of the project team. The idea is to establish clear accountabilities for each task and reduce the risk of misunderstanding. In this way, you promote transparency and collaboration.

One of the vital reasons for defining the scope is to prevent scope creep and unauthorized changes . The defined scope ensures the project remains on track and keeps everyone focused on the established work roadmap.

Therefore, define your scope and provide a view of the required resources to optimize the utilization of personnel, time, materials, and finances.

#2. Timeline

As a project planning component, the project timeline sets up the project’s schedule, highlighting its key goals and marking the beginning and end dates of the project journey. In simple terms, it gives a clear view of the project, showing its schedule, tasks, important milestones, and deadlines .

This representation brings clarity and facilitates effective communication between team members, project managers, stakeholders, and clients, ensuring everyone is well-informed about the project’s progression and expectations.

Furthermore, a well-structured project timeline, highlighting the organization, task durations, and project phases, empowers efficient resource allocation and improves overall productivity.

The budget component of a project plan outlines the financial aspects of the project . It includes estimates for costs associated with labor, materials, equipment, and other resources. A properly defined budget plan allows you to track and manage project expenses, preventing situations where spending exceeds the initial allocation.

As a result, you can control project expenses, prevent cost overruns, and ensure that the project remains financially viable.

6 Steps to Creating the Best Project Plan

Starting a successful project journey begins with a well-defined project plan.

Below are the steps to guide you in creating an effective project plan:

#1. Identify Your Goals/Objectives

The initial step involves setting project goals— clarifying what you intend to accomplish and what defines project success for you . To do this, ask yourself and your team what you want to achieve with the project.

Apply the SMART technique to navigate through a multitude of ideas, suggestions, and desires. This approach implies that your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, ensuring clearness and effectiveness.

Identifying your objectives serves as a compass, providing purpose and direction for your project . Without well-defined goals, your project can quickly lose its way, leading to inefficiencies and misunderstandings among team members and stakeholders.

Therefore, in goal-setting, involve project participants—key stakeholders and decision-makers—and avoid potential conflict on time. This engagement enables you to understand their vision, requirements, and expectations, align your ideas with their demands, and secure their buy-in.

#2. Define Deliverables

Once you set clear project goals, the next step is to define project deliverables— the tangible results of the project activities . Think of deliverables as the concrete outputs that bring your project closer to achieving its objectives.

For example, if your goal is to create a better product than last year’s offerings, the deliverables would encompass the specific features or specifications that make this product an improved one. These deliverables are the direct outcomes of the tasks and efforts put in by your team.

To define deliverables effectively, maintain open and healthy communication with your team . Discuss standards you should implement, methodologies of work, and activities required to reach those deliverables. Keep the dialogue ongoing to address any difficulties your team can encounter and track their progress.

Additionally, sharing the progress of your work with stakeholders allows you to gather feedback, which can be valuable for refining your outcomes. Involving customers in this process can also lead to a better final product by aligning it with their needs and expectations.

#3. Set Your Budget

Setting a budget as the next step of project planning involves determining the financial resources necessary to see your project through to completion . Your budget needs to cover all relevant costs, such as materials, labor, equipment, and allowances for unforeseen expenses.

Begin by analyzing the financial aspect of your project. This analysis helps you estimate the costs of procuring materials, hiring and compensating labor, and acquiring necessary equipment or technology. Additionally, allocate the budget aside for potential unexpected expenses during the project’s life cycle.

Establishing a realistic budget serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it ensures you have the necessary funds to execute the project without running into financial roadblocks. Secondly, it provides a financial framework that guides decision-making throughout the project, helping you prioritize spending and allocate resources efficiently.

An accurately set budget is a valuable tool for managing your project’s finances effectively, maintaining financial transparency, and achieving your project objectives within the allocated financial constraints.

#4. Create a Project Schedule

After defining goals and deliverables, start creating a project schedule. The schedule will ensure your project stays on track and meets its goals .

An effective project schedule follows how well your organization of tasks goes by breaking down the project into smaller, manageable tasks and listing everything that needs to be done in the correct order.

This approach is vital because it allows for accurate estimations of each task’s duration, considering that some tasks can be sequential while others can happen simultaneously.

When creating a project schedule, be realistic and consider factors like resources and dependencies. It’s helpful to use project management software or project management charts to create a visual timeline that showcases task start and end dates and highlights task interdependencies, where one task relies on the completion of another.

Within the project schedule, highlight key milestones or checkpoints so that you can track progress and celebrate achievements. Therefore, with a project schedule, you can monitor your progress and continuously review and update your schedule as the project progresses.

Furthermore, to foster effective collaboration and transparency, share the schedule with your team and stakeholders, informing everyone about progress and any deviations from the original plan.

#5. Assemble Project Team

Assembling your project team ensures you have the right people on board to bring you results . Start by defining the roles and responsibilities needed for your project. Then, choose individuals who possess the required skills and experience. Communicate each team member’s role, tasks, and expectations to reduce confusion and align everyone’s efforts.

Set up regular communication channels for team updates, feedback, and resolution and ensure the team can access the resources, tools, and information to perform their tasks effectively.

Maintain a positive team environment by encouraging trust and open communication among the members. Address any conflicts promptly and constructively to preserve a harmonious working atmosphere.

Furthermore, invest in ongoing training and development opportunities to improve the skills of your team members, which will ultimately lead to better project outcomes.

#6. Assess & Mitigate Risks

In the project planning phase, it is essential to evaluate the potential risks you can expect on the way to the realization of the project.

Properly identifying and addressing these risks is vital, as failure to do so can result in unexpected resource allocation, including time, finances, and personnel, potentially derailing the project’s progress.

By identifying these risks at an early stage, you can proactively develop strategies and action plans to address them when they happen.

Consider bringing in experts who can assess critical factors, such as market conditions, consumer behavior, competition, regulations, or client expectations. These experts can identify potential risks and evaluate their likelihood of occurrence. Utilizing various risk assessment tools can also aid in this process.

Prioritizing identified risks and effectively communicating them to all stakeholders is crucial. This way, you ensure everyone knows potential challenges and the measures to mitigate them. Regular monitoring of risks is also essential to prompt action when needed, safeguarding the project’s success.

5 Phases of a Project

To ensure your project plan serves as a reliable roadmap throughout project execution, break it down into the following five phases:

• Initiation . The initial phase of the project plan involves making the conceptual idea concrete by clearly defining its key aspects and details. Do so by presenting strategies for achieving the desired outcomes, outlining the specific activities, and identifying the stakeholders involved in the project, along with their significance and roles. The initiation phase lays the groundwork for the entire project lifecycle.
• Planning . In the planning phase, you will delve deeper into the project planning. This phase implies communication and sharing specific project details with stakeholders to clarify methodologies, tasks, resources, and timelines. Gathering feedback and incorporating it allows us to establish a clear and realistic execution plan.
• Execution . The execution phase is where teams put the project plan into action, allocate resources, and execute the tasks outlined in the planning phase. During execution, it’s essential to emphasize the importance of collaboration and communication within your team to promptly address and resolve any obstacles encountered.
• Monitoring . This phase goes hand in hand with the execution phase. It entails continuous monitoring and control of project activities. Project managers track progress, compare it to the project plan, identify deviations, and take corrective actions to ensure the project stays on track.
• Closure . The final phase entails the formal closure of the project. It encompasses tasks such as delivering the final product or service, obtaining client or stakeholder approval, releasing project resources, and conducting a post-project evaluation to extract valuable lessons learned.

Project Plan Example

Let’s look at a project planning example to better understand what it entails:

Project Title : Launch of Product X

Project Objective : To successfully introduce product X to the market, achieve a market share of 10% within the first year, and generate $1 million in revenue.

Project Scope : The project scope encompasses the following activities:

• Product development : Designing, prototyping, and testing product X to ensure it meets quality standards and customer expectations.
• Marketing : Developing and executing marketing strategies, including branding, advertising, and market research, to create awareness and demand for product X.
• Sales : Establishing sales channels, training sales teams, and setting up customer support for the successful sale and distribution of product X.

Project Team :

• Project manager : Full name
• Product developer : Full name
• Marketing specialist : Full name
• Sales manager : Full name

Project Timeline :

• Initiation phase (Month 1) : Define project objectives, scope, budget, and team roles.
• Planning phase (Months 2-3) : Develop a detailed project plan, create a marketing strategy, and set product development milestones.
• Execution phase (Months 4-9) : Develop the product, execute marketing campaigns, and conduct sales activities.
• Monitoring and control phase (Months 10-11) : Evaluate progress, adjust strategies as needed, and ensure quality control.
• Closing phase (Month 12) : Analyze project results, generate a report, and plan for post-launch support.

Key milestones :

• Complete product development (Month 6)
• Launch marketing campaign (Month 7)
• Achieve 5% market share (Month 9)
• Achieve 10% market share (Month 12)
• Product development : $____
• Market campaigns : $____
• Sales operations : $____
• Other expenses : $____
• Total budget : $____

Risk Assessment :

• Market competition may be higher than anticipated.
• Product development may face delays.
• Marketing campaigns may not resonate with the target audience.

Communication plan :

• Weekly project team meetings.
• Monthly progress reports for stakeholders.
• Quarterly reviews with the executive team.

Project Planning: Tools and Software to Use

Project planning tools and software play a crucial role in streamlining the project management process and bringing efficiency, collaboration, and organization to your projects. Here are some of the best and most commonly used project planning software:

• Microsoft Project : Microsoft Project is a robust project management software that provides comprehensive planning and scheduling capabilities. It allows users to create Gantt charts, set dependencies, allocate resources, and track progress. It allows integration with other Microsoft Office tools and makes it a popular choice for many organizations.
• Trello : Trello is a simple yet effective visual project management tool based on the Kanban method. It uses boards, lists, and cards to help teams organize tasks and workflows. Trello is known for its user-friendly interface and is suitable for small to medium-sized projects.
• Asana : Asana is a versatile project management tool that focuses on task and project tracking. It offers features like task assignments, due dates, project timelines, and integrations with various other tools. Asana is popular among teams looking for a flexible and customizable project planning solution.
• Jira : Jira is an agile project management tool often used in software development projects. It supports Kanban and Scrum methodologies and offers features like issue tracking, backlog management, and release planning. Jira is favored by development teams for its specialized features.
• Smartsheet : Smartsheet combines the simplicity of a spreadsheet with project management capabilities. It allows users to create interactive sheets, calendars, and Gantt charts. Smartsheet is suitable for a wide range of project types and industries.
• Monday.com : Monday.com is a work operating system that offers a visual project management platform. It facilitates collaboration through customizable workflows, task tracking, and automation. Monday.com is known for its user-friendly interface and adaptability to various project needs.
• Basecamp : Basecamp is a project management and team collaboration tool that emphasizes communication and file sharing. It provides message boards, to-do lists, and document storage to keep teams organized. Basecamp is favored by smaller teams and those seeking a straightforward project planning solution.

Final Thoughts

A well-crafted project plan is the compass that guides your project to success. That is its most crucial role, deserving special attention when you approach its creation.

When you have clear objectives, a defined scope, a timeline, and a budget on the table , it becomes easier to assign roles to each team member and distribute resources wisely and systematically.

This undoubtedly leads to significantly higher chances of meeting the expectations of stakeholders, clients, and the entire company and fulfilling the project’s purpose.

So, it’s up to you and your team to start planning, create and maintain optimal organization, and watch how your project progresses.

Project Planning FAQ

#1. who is involved in project planning.

Project planning involves a cross-functional team consisting of key stakeholders, a project manager, subject matter experts, and team members responsible for executing various project tasks.

#2. What are the 5 stages of Project planning?

The five stages of project planning are initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closing . These stages cover defining project objectives, creating a detailed project plan, implementing the plan, overseeing progress, and wrapping up the project.

#3. What is the difference between project planning and creating a strategy?

Project planning is about outlining how to achieve specific project objectives while creating a strategy involves setting broader organizational or departmental goals and the approach to achieve them.

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12 Free Project Planning Templates for Excel and Word

Without a plan, projects are in trouble. Project planning is one of the first and most important aspects of project management. Using project planning templates can help you schedule tasks, estimate budgets and allocate resources.

Project management software does more than a static Excel or Word template, but using these free 12 project planning templates for Excel and Word is a decent substitute. Download one or all to start your next project on the right foot.

Why Use Project Planning Templates?

Project planning templates are an important part of project management. They organize your tasks, help you write a project charter, come up with an accurate budget and so much more. Even if you’re using project management software, project planning templates can help you with everything from decision making, such as with our free RACI matrix template, to identifying project deliverables, with our free work breakdown structure template.

You can even use project planning templates to help you manage your project and track progress and risks. They provide a consistent project documentation process, which can then be archived and retrieved to inform future planning. Project planning templates help reduce work as they’re preformatted so you don’t always have to start from scratch.

But using project planning templates is, at best, only a starting point. To ensure your plans are well-managed during project execution, you’ll want to upgrade to project management software.

ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that helps you plan projects and manage and track them in real time. We have multiple project views, from kanban boards to tasks lists, sheet and calendar views, but project managers typically plan their projects on our powerful Gantt charts.

Unlike templates, our Gantt charts organize your tasks, add resources and costs and link all four types of task dependencies to avoid costly delays. Gantts can filter for the critical path to identify essential tasks and set a baseline to track your planned progress against actual progress in real time. That’s how you deliver on time and within budget. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

12 Best Project Planning Templates

If you’re not ready to use project management software, these 12 project planning templates for Excel and Word can help you get your project planned properly. They cover all the bases, from creating a timeline to chart your tasks to having a risk register to prepare your team for issues that inevitably arise in every project.

1. Project Plan Template

A project plan is a big endeavor. Our free project plan template for Word helps you organize the various project management documentation needed to prepare your project for success. You get to address the planning basics, such as defining your project scope, identifying milestones and breaking the project down into manageable phases and tasks.

Then you can create a project schedule, including task dependencies, project assumptions and constraints. There’s also a section that addresses the project budget, risk and change management, which is essential to stay on track. Included is a risk log and the process you’ll use for change management to avoid delays.

2. Project Charter Template

A project charter is an important project planning document. It provides high-level information on the project to ensure stakeholders are aware of the project deliverables, milestones and the roles and responsibilities of the project team. It also explains the reason for the project, including how the project plan and project team will be structured to meet the project goals.

Using our free project charter template for Word will define the project vision and scope for everyone involved. It’s presented to the project sponsor in a neat, organized and easy-to-digest fashion. From the executive summary to the appendix, everything is collected to show how to achieve the project’s goals. The project charter template defines the project and shows the plan that will outline the milestones, tasks, dependencies and resource management plan .

3. Project Budget Template

All projects cost money. Being able to accurately estimate those costs and make a realistic project budget can make the difference between a healthy profit margin and losing money on the project. That’s why using our free project budget template for Excel is such a vital part of any project planning template offering. It can help you monitor project expenses and avoid cost overruns.

The free project planning template lets you list all your tasks and subtasks, including who’s assigned to each. Then you can estimate the labor, materials and other costs , such as travel, equipment, food and more. There’s also a column to track the actual costs for each of these categories to monitor the budgeted versus actual costs. A final balance column shows if you’re in the red.

4. Work Breakdown Structure Template

A work breakdown structure is a hierarchical chart that incrementally breaks down the project into deliverables and the tasks that are needed to complete those deliverables. Our free work breakdown structure template for Excel is a customizable project planning template made up of two sheets, one that has a task list and the other a tree diagram to help you identify not only deliverables and tasks but dependencies, resources and more.

5. Project Timeline Template

Another powerful project planning template is a timeline. It’s a visual representation of your schedule laid out from start to finish. On the project timeline , you can plot your project tasks, due dates, milestones and more. Use our free project timeline template for Excel to start your project scheduling process.

When you open our free project planning template for making timelines, you’ll see that it’s divided in half. On the left is a spreadsheet where you can list all the project tasks in one column, their start date in another and the end date in yet another. The last column notes the duration of the task in days. As you’re doing this, a timeline on the right will automatically populate to show you the entire project in one place.

6. Project Scope Template

The project scope outlines your project, so this project planning template is extensive. It’s a detailed document that shows the project’s activities, resources, timelines and deliverables. It lists your key stakeholders, the processes you’ll be using in the project, assumptions and constraints, all so you can understand what’s in and out of scope for the project.

Our free project scope template for Word is very thorough, though you can add to it as suits your project needs. We have space for project managers to explain the need for the project, what’s in and out of scope, its business objectives, deliverables and cost estimates and much more.

7. RACI Matrix Template

RACI is an acronym for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. A RACI matrix , often referred to as a diagram or chart, is a tool that ensures that all project stakeholders are on the same page and working together, making it an important project planning template.

Our free RACI matrix template for Excel helps you identify and define everyone involved with the project. The template lists all the project stakeholders across the top row and tasks down the left side of the template. Then just add R, A, C or I to define who is responsible for what.

8. Resource Plan Template

Resources are part of any planning process and, therefore creating a resource plan is an essential part of the project planning phase. You need to identify and plan everything needed to execute your project, and the most important resource is your team. Our free resource plan template for Excel helps you align resources with your project schedule and budget.

Our free resource plan template helps you organize tasks by team members and the department in which they work. You can also estimate the planned effort for each task, the team member’s rate of pay and the total cost for the duration of that work. There’s also a calendar to schedule the team’s work.

9. Risk Register Template

Risks, whether good or bad, are unexpected events in a project. Regardless, you need to plan for them. A risk register allows you to list all your project risks, their potential impact, priority level and more. You can use it throughout the project life cycle to track any risks that might occur.

The template allows you to add an ID number to each risk to track it. Then you can describe the risk and note the potential impact on the project. Following that, you’ll add the response if that risk becomes an issue in the project. You can also note the risk level to prioritize it and who on the team is responsible for dealing with that issue if it arises in the project.

10. Project Calendar Template

Calendars are one of many ways to plan a project. As a project planning template, calendars can provide a monthly overview of the assignments and deadlines of the project. Use our free project calendar template for Excel to plan your project on a calendar grid.

When you open our free project calendar template, you’ll find 12 sheets, one for each month of the year. The calendar has color coding to indicate the task and which phase it belongs to. We’ve created some examples, which you can use or change to suit your project, as the template is customizable.

11. Action Plan Template

An action plan is a plan. It charts the steps necessary to achieve whatever goals you have in mind. It’s a project planning template that can help you define your project timeline and resources.

Using our free action plan template for Excel gives you space to list your tasks ad note the phase in which they’ll take place and who’s assigned to that task. There’s a column to mark its status to help you track the task, as well as a place to add start and end dates, resources and their associated costs.

12. Project Milestone Template

You can collect project planning templates without touching on milestones , which are part of the project planning phase. They’re used to indicate important dates on a project timeline, often showing the end of one phase and the beginning of the next, which helps with tracking progress.

You can open our free project milestone template in our software and import your project plan from Excel or create your own in the free template. The milestones are represented on the Gantt chart timeline as diamond icons. Our software gives you access to the Gantt chart and multiple project views, but more on that in the next section.

ProjectManager Helps With Project Planning

If you’ve used the milestone template in ProjectManager, then you can see the advantages of project management software over static project planning templates. Templates must be manually updated and aren’t great for collaboration.

ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that helps you plan, manage and track your projects in real time. Everything you can do with the above project planning templates you can do better in our software. We’ve already shown how our powerful Gantt chart helps you organize tasks, resources and cost when building a project plan, schedule and budget. Here’s what else our tool can do.

Manage Resource and Labor Costs

Resources are part of any project planning process. Our software makes it easy to assign team members to tasks by allowing you to set up their availability in advance. You can note each team member’s vacation time, PTO and even global holidays for those with remote teams.

Once everyone has been assigned, toggle to the color-coded workload chart, which makes it easy to see team allocation at a glance. If some are overallocated, you can re-allocate those resources to balance the team’s workload and keep them working at capacity and productivity without eroding morale. During project execution, our secure timesheets streamline payroll and help you track labor costs to stay on budget.

Track Project Progress, Time and Costs

There’s more than one way to track project costs once the project has moved into its execution, monitoring and controlling phases. For a high-level view, project managers can use real-time dashboards , which automatically collect data and display it on easy-to-read graphs and charts. You can see how the project is progressing against your plan, compare costs against your budget and much more. If you’re managing multiple projects, use our portfolio dashboards.

For more details, use our reporting features. Customizable status and portfolio reports capture your project in time, but there are also reports on variance, timesheets, workload and more, all of which can be filtered to show only the data you want to see. Then share them with stakeholders to keep them updated.

Related Project Planning Content

Project planning is a big subject and we have many more articles that discuss all aspects of it from making a project plan to explaining what an implementation plan is. Check out a sample of our project planning content below.

• Project Planning: How to Make a Project Plan
• The Ultimate Guide to Resource Planning
• How to Execute a Plan Successfully
• What Is a Work Plan? How to Make a Work Plan In 7 Steps
• What Is an Implementation Plan?

ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office, out in the field or anywhere in between. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our software to plan and deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

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• Project Management

What is Project Planning? Steps, Process, Importance, Tools

Home Blog Project Management What is Project Planning? Steps, Process, Importance, Tools

There is a golden adage that says - "you don't plan to fail but you fail to plan"; well, it holds pretty much the same importance in project management as it does in all aspects of life. Project planning is quintessential to the project and projects that are not planned well result in unwanted overheads or at times sunk costs which result in pressures on the execution of the project and often escalate situations out of control for the project manager. 

What is Project Planning in Project Management?   

Project planning or project management planning is the foundation and most important stage of the project management life-cycle. The project planning activity sets the project foundations by base-lining the project scope, schedule, quality standards, objectives, and goals. Planning typically involves creating a document with all project information that comprises the respective tasks, assignee's, and areas of responsibility.

A project plan usually includes management plans for all areas of the project viz - integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholders. Creating a consolidated project plan can be done manually or with the help of automated project management software such as Agile Central, Jira, Asana, Wrike, nTask, etc. Creating a comprehensive project plan and envisioning a concrete project execution strategy can streamline and strengthen the project process and ensure successful project execution and delivery. 

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Why is Project Planning Important?   

In a formal project management life cycle, projects begin with the project charter providing authority to the project manager to utilize organizational resources and assets for the project. A lot of novice professionals may at this point question - what is project planning & why is it important? Here is where the importance of the project planning phase comes into the picture as planning goes a few steps ahead and guides the project manager in strategising: 

• How the project will move ahead i.e. how to plan a project’s activities,
• What kind of resources will be engaged at what duration,
• How unforeseen situations will be handled, and finally,
• What will be the baselines against which progress will be measured and reported 

The planning process in project management forms the basis of the next project phases i.e. execution, monitoring & controlling closure, and also stipulates how the project team will pursue the goals outlined in the business case and project charter. Project planning in project management is also important from a cost-saving perspective as any project can easily run into unknowns, environmental challenges, and scope creep that haunt the completion and delivery of any/all types of projects. It is only effective project planning that provides the required structure and foresight, thereby helping eliminate wasteful tasks and patterns to optimize efficiency and execution. 

Types of Project Planning   

Project planning can be of various types depending on the objective, scope, and purview of the activity in consideration. The 3 broad categories of planning include: 

• Vertical Planning  - involves creating a detailed hourly plan to roll up to the day and is also known as daily planning as it is done on that particular day; 
• Horizontal Planning - involves creating a plan for the day as a whole instead of focusing on every hour and can be done weekly or monthly as well; 
• Joint Planning - as the name suggests, involves both horizontal and vertical planning i.e. planning the tasks for the day as well as the week to have a bird's eye view and also a detailed plan at the same time. Joint planning requires careful consideration of the task duration and order of items, to sequence activities and complete them. 

What are the Components of a Project Plan?   

• Scope - Project scope includes the stakeholder requirements, deliverables, and goals that attribute to the project's success and completion. 
• Budget - Budget allocations define which resources will be aligned to the particular project activities based on their priority and requirements. Budget planning involves the allocation of people, processes, and technology per project needs.
• Timeline - Project planning involves defining timelines to the scope and aligning project tasks and activities, creating schedules with milestones, and tracking progress. 

Together, these 3 components viz, scope, budget, and timeline determine what the project will accomplish, how much will be spent on the project and when will the project be delivered and completed and form the foundation for an effective project planning process. 

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Project Management Planning Techniques   

Project management planning techniques are what put the whole project planning process in project management into real and practical action. They help formulate the roadmap with milestones, deliverables, and task-level action plan to create the project deliverables and complete the project successfully. While there may be many different techniques that project managers may use, each of them has its impact on the project outcomes and may be used at different times during the project. 

1.  SMART Goals 

Goal setting is the first step in the project planning methodology and entails creating an outline of the project outcome to define what steps need to be completed and what activities need to be performed to achieve the desired outcome. In this process, the goals that are defined should have the following attributes: 

• Specific - should be clear and concise to be achieved 
• Measurable - should be quantifiable and not open to interpretation 
• Attainable - should be realistic and feasible 
• Relevant - should align with the overall business objectives 
• Time-bound - should have a deadline or time-limit

2. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 

WBS is what defines how the overall project goals will be broken down into unit-level tasks/activities that will help create project deliverables to achieve project outcomes. It is essentially a visual representation of project tasks and activities presented in a hierarchical format. Creating a WBS involves breaking up high-level goal statements into doable tasks and activities to their respective unit level and allocating resources to the WBS items to create the outlined deliverables. There is also a WBS dictionary that augments the definition, break-up, and scope of work packages i.e. items in the WBS chart.

3. Cost Breakdown Structure 

This is an extension of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and is a hierarchical representation of costs at various levels of the WBS. CBS represents the cost of components in the WBS. It is a useful tool for structuring project financial management and the application of cost controls to track and manage project costs. 

4. Action Priority Matrix 

This is a prioritization tool that determines the sequence of tasks to balance between time and resources to optimize efficiencies. An action priority matrix is most useful in critical situations or time-crunch scenarios in the project. It has 4 quadrants - resulting in 4 possibilities, that are: 

• Quick Wins/urgent
• Major projects/not urgent 
• Fill-ins/delegate 
• Hard slogs/Postpone or ignore 

5. Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA）  

This is an important project scheduling and control tool which helps project teams determine whether the project is ahead of schedule or behind schedule and applies techniques or corrective actions to avoid variance. MTA involves creating a chart with the planning line vs the implementation line along with the respective milestones to represent trends and analyze the same. With the help of MTA, project managers can easily identify the bottlenecks and any constraints that may derail the project from its planned course of action. Want to get a project management certification? Understand the nitty-gritties of the real world project management life cycle easily in our PRINCE2 course ! 

10 Steps to Successful Project Planning   

Step 1: Define stakeholders  

Identifying and defining stakeholders is the first step to successful project planning as any stakeholder identified late will cause scope-creep or unwarranted changes which may be too expensive for the project. 

Step 2:  Define roles & responsibilities  

Outlining clear roles and responsibilities is an important next step; not all stakeholders will have the same level of interest in the project and hence it is important to establish the responsibility, accountability, and role expectations in the project.

Step 3:  Introduce stakeholders   

Bringing the stakeholders together and introducing them to the project as well as each other in a formal setup helps build trust and alignment with the overall project and organizational goals. This step helps ensure everyone's voices are heard and also secures commitment from stakeholders for the project. 

Step 4:  Set goals  

Goal setting is the key step in planning, without which it will be impossible to assess project success and mark the project closed upon completion i.e. meeting the defined goals. 

Step 5:  Prioritize tasks   

Task prioritization is the key to understanding what kind of resources will be aligned to the project at what durations. Not having a prioritized list of tasks will only confuse overlapping activities and also cost overruns in the project execution. 

Step 6:  Create a schedule   

Once the goals are established and prioritized, creating a roadmap with the project milestones helps understand dependencies, constraints, and sequencing of activities for the project. Project scheduling helps outline which activities will be completed in what order, how and when they will start, what will be their outcomes and how will the project manager track and measure progress. 

Step 7:  Assess risks   

Risks are uncertain events that may affect the project and planning involves understanding the risk and assessing its probability i.e. the chance of occurrence as well as its impact i.e. the effect on the project 

Step 8:  Communicate   

Communication plays a key role in project management and according to the PM role, a project manager spends about 90% of the time communicating. Communication of plans, timely reviews, and change management are all important aspects of the project that need attention at regular intervals. 

Step 9:  Reassess   

Reviewing and adjusting planning activity is as important as planning itself. An outdated plan can be as dangerous as having no plan at all and will give false direction to the project team and stakeholders. 

Step 10:  Final evaluation   

Project plans need to be evaluated and signed off by those accountable; every planning activity must inculcate the practice of inspection and adaptation post which the adjusted planning decisions must go through final evaluation and approval.  

How can Project Planning Software Help to Plan Projects?   

Project planning and implementation of planned activities involve handling a lot of concurrencies and managing a lot of conflicting tasks, priorities, and resources. This activity often entails a thorough understanding of the current state as well as the proposed state/outcome of the project. In such an intense environment, project management software can be a boon if rightly used to align and sequence project activities.

The project planning software essentially creates a structured framework for collaboration and automation of recurring tasks and processes. Planning software also facilitates the centralization of all information making it easy to retrieve and available on a need basis, especially in hybrid and agile setups where communication is the lifestream of business activities and execution. Project management software provides a transparent overview of completed, in progress, and planned projects to avoid bottlenecks and manage dependencies effectively. A short overview of project planning benefits include: 

• Improved schedule management 
• Facilitate cross-team communication and collaboration 
• Provide visibility to better manage and mitigate risks 
• Effective breakdown and allocation of tasks
• Improved team productivity 
• Easy-to-use reports and dashboards 

Best Project Planning Tools and Software in 2023   

1. gantt chart .

Gantt charts are one of the most essential and effective tools project managers use to track project progress and are used throughout the project lifecycle. They facilitate the creation of a visual project schedule/roadmap, point out milestones, and dependencies, and act as an indispensable information radiator for teams and stakeholders. Gantt charts are quite popular with teams of any size/methodology because they project the most realistic project schedule when correctly maintained and can highlight areas of risk or attention to project managers.

2. Critical Path Method (CPM) 

CPM is one of the most undermined project planning and management techniques. It involves envisaging the longest path or sequence of activities in the project by making use of the Gantt chart, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), and network diagramming techniques. The activities that fall on this sequence or "critical path" are termed critical activities and assume the highest priority on the project schedule. The other activities which do not fall on this critical path are activities that have a float and this helps determine the other path i.e. the critical path which represents the shortest time needed to complete the project.

3. Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) Chart 

PERT is an estimation as well as scheduling technique that uses probabilities and simple statistical calculations to create a visual PERT diagram and identify independent activities. It is represented in the form of nodes and arrows sketched based on the order of activities in the project. Once the activity diagram is created, the earliest time (ET), latest time (TL), and slack time are determined for each activity. 

4. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 

WBS is a technique that comes in handy to organize and track project tasks sequentially and hierarchically. It is a visual representation of every task in the project and involves the decomposition of work into a smaller and more manageable set of tasks/activities. It is often used by project managers in conjunction with CPM and PERT. 

5. Project Documentation  

Project documentation is the beginning point that provides a glimpse of the project details, status, and open items. Every project should have a knowledge base or repository which aids newcomers to ramp up quickly on the project know-how and also address their concerns effectively.

Tips for Project Planning   

• Always start with the end in mind. 
• Understand project objectives, benefits, success metrics 
• Identify stakeholders and their interests 
• Understand the current state/problem statement 
• Understand the proposed state/solution statement 
• Define roles and responsibilities 
• Review risks and communicate about them 
• Create a unit-level roadmap with milestones
• Ensure to be considerate of environmental challenges 
• Revisit and review the plans drafted frequently along with tracking changes 

Apart from the above tips for project planning professionals, it is very vital to understand when to quit or pull the plug in certain unfortunate circumstances where projects drag and go on the downside - in which case, absorbing the sunk costs and shutting down the projects is only the feasible and economical resort. 

Simple Project Plan Example  

A traditional or simple project plan primarily has the following components: 

• Project purpose 
• Project stakeholders information 
• Executive summary 
• Business Objectives 
• Work Breakdown Structure 
• Deployment and Change Control Process 
• Schedule Management 
• Milestones and Dependencies 
• Project Schedule Representation 
• Cost Management and Budgeting 
• Quality Management 
• Resource Management 
• Communication Management 
• Risk Management 
• Procurement Management 
• Project KPIs and Metrics

Agile Project Plan Example   

An agile project plan follows the same structure as a traditional project plan with the only difference being that the project scheduling and activities are iterative and move in a continuous feedback loop. 

Free Project Planning Templates   

• project plan template - IC-Agile-Project-Plan-Template_Google_Doc  
• Gantt chart template - Gantt Chart Template Google Sheet  
• Multiple project roadmap template - IC-Multiple-Project-Roadmap-Template_Google_Doc  
• PM timeline template - IC-Multiple-Project-Roadmap-Template_Google_Doc  
• Project tracking template - Project tracking  

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How Project Planning Can Improve Your Organization and Career?   

Project planning is a non-negotiable ingredient for the success of any project manager or organization. Its importance in the project lifecycle cannot be overstated. When performed rightly, planning helps every other function and part of the organization perform smoothly. Structured planning not only aids the project manager in daily execution but also frees up the project progress from distractions due to off-track tasks, budgets, and controls. Regular planning and review help the project manager optimize efficiency, align only required resources, and save costs for the project and organization. 

In reality, projects tend to go on and on without a firm end unless planned appropriately and reviewed frequently. It is planning that defines what activities should be sequenced in what order to create project deliverables and complete projects as expected. In short, better project planning results in better project execution and controls as it addresses a lot of key aspects such as: 

• Improve overall business processes
• Provides opportunities to bring in economies of scale 
• Reduces rework and waste 
• Obtaining stakeholder alignment from the start 
• Helps in outlining a clear project scope 
• Creates transparency in roles and responsibilities 
• Provides opportunities to flag risks in advance and chalk out mitigation plans 

Apart from the above benefits, project planning also upholds the integrity of the project manager and organization in meeting their commitments to clients, third parties, and other stakeholders. 

Conclusion  

Project planning is an integral part of any project life cycle especially when projects operate in non-traditional and VUCA environments that have so many components requiring attention. Planning is not just another stage of the project lifecycle but it is the most crucial and defining factor with far-reaching impacts and consequences. Developing a concrete project plan can be simple and easy for any project manager, but also complex and drawn out depending on the nature of the project. Not having a project plan will only lead to failure because there would be no clarity on business objectives or roles and responsibilities which form the crux of any project execution, monitoring, and control. 

Drafting a project plan involves exhaustive mapping and categorization of project objectives, schedules, activities, and resources to ensure things fall in the right place while executing the project. It is also imperative to note that projects have a larger impact on the organization as a whole. When planned thoroughly, projects engage efficiencies, save resources, reduce costs, improve ethos, and contribute to a positive environment. Project management in any organization always commences with project planning - if planning is focused and precise, the organization stands to gain wins with the project's success. Ace your career with world class courses and training from the experts - find out from our catalogue of KnowledgeHut’s courses for Project Managers today. 

Frequently Asked Questions

The project manager is responsible for the project. They are the key personnel who plan the project, gather resources, align and manage activities, resources, and tasks throughout the project lifecycle. 

Project planning in project management helps identify activities, sequence them, create schedules, align milestones and most importantly identify and assess risks thereby helping in flagging items early in the cycle and minimize impact of risks or driving mitigation strategies to address risks. 

Project cost is an important component in the iron triangle of project management and project cost planning involves estimating, allocating and controlling project costs. Budgets planned and approved in project cost planning only can be used during project execution. 

Rohit Arjun Sambhwani

Rohit Arjun Sambhwani is an IT professional having over a decade and half of experience in various roles, domains & organizations, currently playing a leading role with a premier IT services organization. He is a post graduate in Information Technology and enjoys his free time learning new topics, project management, agile coaching, and writing apart from playing with his naughty little one Aryan

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