The planning phase is very important because it will set the foundation of how you’re going to tackle this project. If poorly planned out then the project could face delays, cancellation, or might not be profitable in the end for the company because the development process was poorly executed. A well planned out project can have impacts minimized by unforeseen circumstances. I also agree that going back to an earlier phase doesn’t necessary mean a bad thing, depending on the impact to the project. During each phase there should be some leeway factored in, just in case of situations like this where an unexpected problem came up. There may be times where you go back based on new feedback your receiving or team members have found a better optimized method that could be beneficial to the project.

From my experience with working on projects in industry, I would agree with the above posts that often during a project, it is necessary to go back to the planning phase to re-evaluate the project based on the current situation. Although the project management process is broken up into distinct phases, in the real world, some of these phases may blend together. In the project I am working on now, the timeline is changing almost weekly, resulting in the team going from executing on the current tasks to re-evaluation and re-planning based on the revised timeline. When this happens in a project, it makes the project run much less efficiently, because the team spends more time figuring out the timeline than executing. Changes to the timeline can either happen because of poor planning in the initial planning phase or because of unforeseeable events that caused changes, which cannot be avoided.

Planning phase should cover as many pitfalls as possible for the project to complete but however hard you try its not possible to cover all of them since once you actually start doing the work you feel like the deadline is too close or it is not achievable so you will need to go and discuss to project manager and make sure you re-evaluate your planning phase so what this re-evaluation actually shows that you are making progress in your work. As told above to much planning and re-evaluating leads to poor progress of project so it always important to invest some time early on to think and plan the work and than decide a deadline which is not achievable and try and avoid making to many changes in planning phase.

Project planning is very important and critical to the success of a project. Project plans are absolutely living documents that will be updated throughout the course of the project. One way to mitigate the issues you bring up is to have a solid project risk management process. If you can identify these risks up front during planning (staff vacations, leaves, resignations etc.) then you can have a contingency plan in place. So in the case you presented while it is unfortunate that the staff members weren't available if that was presented in the approved risk management plan, when you need to ask for more resources, management should be on board since they should have approved the risk management documents. It may not be possible to forsee every possible situation, but that is why project planning and risk management are carried out throughout the project.

The planning phase of a project is very important. The planning phase states everything that will occur and needs to be done. This is something that everyone involved needs to see so that they know what needs to be done when and remain on the same page. It is also when costs are estimated so everything needs to be stated during project planning. I agree that going back to earlier activities isn't moving backwards but it could cause a slight delay and in the example stated cost more money than what was originally estimated. These things could start a slippery slope that would not have occurred if planning had been extensive in the beginning to make sure that the people you needed would be present when you needed them. It takes time and resources to bring in new people in and bring them up to speed with what needs to be done.

As Dr.Simon mentioned, if you failed to plan so you planning to fail. Planning phase is very important in any Medical Device project. Its important to identify critical interfaces in your project, resources you need, milestones you need to achieve and when you’re going to have design reviews. Its important to have a plan for each task in the project, so during the project you don't have to go back and find out planning pitfalls, the your project will be delayed. I think you have to work with the Project Risk Management before completing the project plan, so you will plan better. Also, before moving backwards in your project plan, you need to make sure that your in the project budget.
Finally, as we learned, you need to include risk management before planning. You will need to ask your project team for a solution before going backward during the project.

I agree with @ks629 that the Project Planning Phase is extremely important and crucial to the project's success. going off what @ks629 mentioned, its necessary during the planning phase to mitigate risk and to have contingency plan in place for as you mentioned, having integral team members not around for the implementation. I however disagree with the notion that not having several critical team members during the implementation phase can just adjusted to go back to the project plan and use outside resources to keep the project moving while they are out. I think this is a huge mistake in the Project planning phase by the PM. As Dr. Simon mentioned in the lecture, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail".

Why would several critical team members not be available during the implementation? I agree that you can mitigate risks and account for vacations and holidays, but these should have come up earlier in the planning phase. As Dr. Simon addressed in lecture you must in the Planning Phase; 1. Assemble your team 2. Meet with your team 3. Solidify the scope 4. Hold a kickoff meeting with stakeholders. If you went through the appropriate steps during the planning phase, I would hope your critical team members would see that during the implementation dates they would plan to be out of the office and would suggest moving the timeline then and that it would not be acceptable for them to not be available during the implementation. If several critical members were all out sick or had emergencies hopefully there would be a contingency plan, but if that required looking externally to contract outside resources to keep this moving while critical team members were out, I think that would be incurring additional costs, expensive costs, which again you would be able to adjust in the Gantt chart but to inform key stakeholders would be a problem. If you informed key stakeholders that you would require additional resources just at the implementation phase would probably result in the project being delayed because management might not approve/provide the additional resources to contract out. This type of oversight might potentially result in some of the critical team members being fired if they weren't available to implement the project or project manager being fired for not effectively planning the project.

The Project Planning Phase is extremely important and crucial to the project's success. Going off what @ks629 mentioned, its necessary during the planning phase to mitigate risk and to have contingency plan in place for as you mentioned, having integral team members not around for the implementation. I however disagree with the notion that not having several critical team members during the implementation phase can just adjusted to go back to the project plan and use outside resources to keep the project moving while they are out. I think this is a huge mistake in the Project planning phase by the PM. As Dr. Simon mentioned in the lecture, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail".

Why would several critical team members not be available during the implementation? I agree that you can mitigate risks and account for vacations and holidays, but these should have come up earlier in the planning phase. As Dr. Simon addressed in lecture you must in the Planning Phase; 1. Assemble your team 2. Meet with your team 3. Solidify the scope 4. Hold a kickoff meeting with stakeholders. If you went through the appropriate steps during the planning phase, I would hope your critical team members would see that during the implementation dates they would plan to be out of the office and would suggest moving the timeline then and that it would not be acceptable for them to not be available during the implementation. If several critical members were all out sick or had emergencies hopefully there would be a contingency plan, but if that required looking externally to contract outside resources to keep this moving while critical team members were out, I think that would be incurring additional costs, expensive costs, which again you would be able to adjust in the Gantt chart but to inform key stakeholders would be a problem. If you informed key stakeholders that you would require additional resources just at the implementation phase would probably result in the project being delayed because management might not approve/provide the additional resources to contract out. This type of oversight might potentially result in some of the critical team members being fired if they weren't available to implement the project or project manager being fired for not effectively planning the project.

I think that it is certainly sometimes crucial to go back to the planning phase in order to ensure the success of a project. Regardless of how well a project is planned out, sometimes obstacles and setbacks are unforeseeable. However, when going back to the planning phase, it is still important to stay as on schedule as possible and to hit necessary deadlines. In my capstone class we use gantt charts for scheduling. My capstone team had to re-evaluate our schedule due to delivery of materials taking longer than expected. We have strict deadlines in April for our demos so in order to stay on time with the critical path of our project, we re-did the Gantt chart to run certain things in parallel. Running things in parallel that were not originally planned to be in parallel is one way to still stay on schedule. Does anyone else have experience with other ways to still stay on schedule when having to go back to the planning stage?

The planning phase sets the foundation of how to complete the project. When this phase is not executed properly, then project could be terminated or not worth the money for funding. It’s a pain to go back and re evaluate what needs to be done, I think it needs to be done at times to make sure the project can come to fruition. Thus I think that you have to re-plan the planning phase to incorporate the new change in “staff” or situation. I think it should all still come together quite easily since the company has already approved it the first time.

The planning phase is crucial in the project life as it sets the tone for the coming stages. You want to plan well so as to avoid any future complications. That is where risk management comes in to play so you can execute the project plan as smoothly as possible. Of course there may be setbacks along the project life but the planning phase should have included some buffer zones in which unforeseen events can be accounted for. The biggest factor is timing, so it's always a good idea to plan for some buffer zones, which allows for extra time in the case that an issue comes up.

I think that the planing phase is one of the most important phases of the lifecycle of the project. In the planning phase, the entire remaining lifecycle of the project is mapped out. It is important that during the planning phase that proper time is allocated for each activities, that enough time is built in the schedule for any unforeseen delays, and that as many risks and roadblocks that may come up are identified. If the planning phase is executed well, it sets the entire project up for success - the closer that the actual project goes compared to the initial plan there likely that that project will succeed. On the other hand the more a project veers off course from the project plan, the more likely that the project doesn't do as well, and possibly gets canceled.

This depends on the financial stability of the company and how important the project you are working on is. If the project is critical and the time restraints are inflexible then going back to a previous phase would allocate resources that would otherwise be used to continue the implementation of the project. With regards to the posters statement " Returning to the activities of an earlier phase doesn’t means you’re moving backwards or losing ground.It is simply means you’re incorporating new knowledge and information into the overall project plan." I do not agree as the weight, cost, and amount of new information on the scope and feasibility of the project given the current understanding of the project can change drastically. If the new packaging that we are making is found to bind to a component on the device housed inside at high temperature, then defective products may increase post sterilization if done at high temperatures and can result in huge changes far beyond the initial assumption, and depending on how important the need for changing the packaging is, the project may be dropped entirely. If the changes are an additional label that needs to be added, then that can easily be incorporated into an existing designated task on the Gantt chart as the cost, both man power and time, is minimal even if the weight(importance) is high. Also if during the time you are going back to a previous phase tasked designated during the previous implementation phases are put on hold then you are definitely going to be behind. Or if tasks done are later deemed unnecessary then that is increased cost.

I definitely agree that the planning phase would have to be revisited and redone. All the factors that are essential to the packaging line must be evaluated and it’s economic needs must be known. In my experience if the budget has very small room for change people will usually get spread a little more thin. I think that in cases like these communication and team works becomes the greatest factor in succeeding. I think it is wise to have individual meetings with all the personnel and give them a complete scope of their part and how it overlaps or how it can be overlapped in the other parts of the project. Mandatory updates and meetings will be needed so we can track all the parts and progress of the project. This way once parts of the project begin to allign we can redeligate how to use all the personnel. Please ensure all staff members are happy if they are going to be doing more work.