Hello everyone,
Suppose you're leading a project aimed at updating the packaging for a product line. You begin the planning phase by estimating your project budget and completion date.when you enter the buildup phase ,you get much more specific in your budget and schedule estimates. Then, during the implementation phase,it turns out that several critical staff members aren't available. This forces you to go back to your project plan and revise it to your account for the need for outside resources to keep the project moving forward.
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. Please share to this discussion your ideas if you agree. How important should a planning phase be for a project to be a success.
I do think that returning to activities of an earlier phase does mean moving backwards/ becoming behind to an extent. There is nothing wrong with revision of tasks or moving tasks around between team members only if it does not affect the overall project and the timeline. If a person did not plan that several staff members will not be available for a reason, it is partially on the person to not take into account of their absence during the project planning phase. The purpose of the planning phase is to outline the potential project, tasks, outcomes, necessities, as well as the people available during the length of the project. No one can plan anything perfectly, which is why risk management exists, and even if everything should technically go to plan, there will be something that will have to go wrong by Murphy's Law. There should be ample planning done during the planning phase, as well as regular meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page and completely tasks by the deadlines set, and if necessary, to change any dates to meet deadlines.
Time is an essential factor in the completion of projects and it is a major criterion in measuring the success of the work management, as every delay has a negative impact on the cost of the project and the quality of the completion, so the accumulation of delays can lead to canceling the works and thus to the project failure.
To set and control time, it must be measured and managed throughout the life of the project. It depends on laying out the works plan, and it acts as a compass for the manager because it enables him to determine the status of the project in the present and gives him a clear view of what will come and he can take the right action to control it.
The planning phase of a project is one of the most critical stages in my opinion, because proper planning can make or break a project. If we take the example of time allotment like you have in your post, if time is not well budgeted or correctly planned for this can quickly cause budget or time overruns, which can kill a project there. While yes you talk about just incorporating new knowledge into the project, but knowing when certain key people will be available is something that should be discussed during the planning phase. Those people who are expected to be a part of the project should definitely have been consulted when the planning phase was occuring so that this issue could have been caught earlier.
The planning phase is important since it is the foundation of a project's progress. Poor planning will cause delays, cancellations, and may not produce a profitable product if development process was poorly executed. Going back to an earlier phase doesn't mean anything negative depending on how it impedes or promotes production later down the line. It is always possible for new outcomes and new possiblities to occur when returning to a different phase.
I agree with this opinion. Going back to earlier stages in the development doesn't always mean a negative thing. In some cases I encountered at work, going back on to previous stages and modifying certain tasks can avoid future problems that would have been encountered if those modifications weren't done.
I think you are moving backwards but that doesn't mean you are doing the wrong thing. If you moved forward with the project it would probably have gone under budget or too slow for the original schedule. It is best to take a step back and reorganize the project based on the available hands you can foresee having because otherwise people who aren't so close to the project but still in the company will question the progress being made based on the original plan the project was supposed to follow.
Hello everyone,
Suppose you're leading a project aimed at updating the packaging for a product line. You begin the planning phase by estimating your project budget and completion date.when you enter the buildup phase ,you get much more specific in your budget and schedule estimates. Then, during the implementation phase,it turns out that several critical staff members aren't available. This forces you to go back to your project plan and revise it to your account for the need for outside resources to keep the project moving forward.
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. Please share to this discussion your ideas if you agree. How important should a planning phase be for a project to be a success.
I think in this situation that this was poorly planned out; during the planning phase, not only should budget and timeline be set, but also the people who should be involved in this project. If the people you wanted were not available to begin with, it is your fault for overlooking their availability and not having other options. Being too specific has its downfall when you lay out every single detail but if one thing does not go right, then it can lead to a domino effect of the project potentially failing.
Going back to earlier phases does not necessarily mean that you're losing ground, but when it comes to issues that should have been addressed in the very beginning, it is hard to see it as not losing time and money. If the team members said they were available, and are no longer available during the implementation phase, it takes effective communication to see what they can do and if the timeline has to be moved back because of their unavailability.
I agree with the statement saying that too much detail and being too specific can sometimes be a pitfall in the planning phase for a project. It is important for all members of a project to understand how tasks that they are assigned to fit into the overall scheme of the project because if they ever have to take leave or the resources need to be modified, they can relay their tasks to another member who will be filling their spot. In my experience, we had issues where a project was delayed because the manager had assigned a task to a specific team member who was no longer on the project. The task comes up during a later phase in the project and is usually assigned to a group of individuals who can do the task. Once the project reaches a certain point, the group assigns that task to any individual within the group. However, since the manager assigned the task to a specific person in the group who happened to leave, no one was notified and the task got delayed. It is important to not take shortcuts and be hasty as this can cause delays.
Overlapping development activities is widely used to reduce project completion times in product development. However, research on the applicability of the concept in different technological environments remains scarce. So far, very few industry-specific studies have statistically confirmed an accelerating effect of overlap.In a project schedule, overlapping tasks are tasks that are BOTH sequential and concurrent. The effective and efficient scheduling of overlapping tasks typically requires the use of time lags and logic relationships that are not Finish-to-Start.
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. A schedule should not be solely constructed based on the idea that everything goes according to plan. There should be some form leeway allowed within the schedule to allow for circling back to the planning phase if something unforeseeable were to occur. Running things in parallel that were not originally planned to be in parallel is one way to still stay on schedule.
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. 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.
I believe the planning phase is often times the most critical phase in project development. Not only is much of the analysis regarding scheduling, order of tasks, and task duration done during this phase, but having to account for any possible complication or setback, such as the one mentioned with critical staff members not being available, also plays a big role and requires an advanced analytical skill set. Although returning to previous phases is nearly inevitable and does not necessarily mean the project is failing or will not be completed on time, it is still important for the project team members, especially the project manager, to do everything in their power to try to account for any possible complications to eliminate, or at least reduce, these minor setbacks in the project's progression.
The planning phase is probably one of the most important parts of project development. In the scenario you discussed above there seems to be a huge lapse in planning and in communication. If the schedule had been planned and then an entire, essential group is unavailable then there is a problem in how the project was planned.
While the problem can be backtracked and mitigated, that requires the spending of unnecessary time and energy that could have been avoided if the project had been planned well from the beginning. In that, I don't think your example provides evidence as to why "project planning" isn't super essential. In fact, I think it does the complete opposite. This scenario is messy. Think about the undue stress, rushing, and back-up plans that needed to be inputted because there had been a major oversight in the planning process. While the end result is the same, these extra steps are certainly unnecessary and could have been avoided.
I do agree with your point that returning to a project plan is not necessarily a step backwards. But, looking at the given example of staff members being unavailable is very much a backwards step because time has been lost due to poor planning. The planning phase is a foundational piece of any project and should be planned as if it is impossible to change. Of course, changes are acceptable if necessary, to keep the project on track but the overall plan must be kept relatively intact. A poorly completed planning phase can be the downfall of a project long before any actual work on the project has begun.
I believe that returning to activities to an earlier phase is not necessarily a bad thing. @srg36 mentioned, changes can happen due to unforeseeable events and I have seen that in the workplace. Returning to a previous state such as the planning phase due to unforeseeable events, can in fact, be an added benefit for a company. To provide a real-life example, we had a project that was initiated to combat a failure we were seeing on one of our products. It was in the verification and effectiveness phase, before we started to see the failure again. As a result, we had to go back to square one to investigate what else could be attributing to the failure. In this case, having to revert to an earlier phase actually worked to our advantage because if we had completed the project and saw the failure re-appear, it would have have been a failed project. But again, if it were due to poor planning, that may not be cost- efficient for the company.
