The planning phase is one of the most important phases in the project cycle because good planning leads to a successful project. The project management plan describes how the project will be executed, monitored and controlled, and closed. Within the project management plan, there are a series of other components/plans (e.g. scope management plan, requirements management plan, cost management plan, stakeholder engagement plan, etc.). To ensure that the project goes as planned, planning needs to be very detailed. However, documents created in this phase occur before production even initiates. How do project managers and other employees determine when sufficient planning has been completed without knowing what will happen to the project? Are there any steps or techniques that you think always need to be present in the planning phase (i.e. data-gathering techniques)? Whenever I plan on starting a project, I like to break down each task of the project into subtasks and give myself my own deadlines. However, I don’t have any experience doing this in industry. To those that are working for a company, what are some of the more important planning techniques used?
While I personally cannot provide any industry insight I can provide academic laboratory insight and Capstone experiences that I went through when planning a project with several components and steps. In terms of academic laboratory experience I have worked on projects where the goal was to publish a research paper and in order to accomplish this there are several parts that need to be accounted for such as funding, time, resources, etc. For the project that I had worked on I had to create a budget for all the materials I required as well as the help I would need in order to run experiments. On top of that I needed to make sure that certain devices were available to be used when I wanted to use them so there was a scheduling component as well which needed to be accounted for. As you mentioned @gdecarvalho22 it is important to create subtasks for yourself along with deadlines of when each subtask needs to completed and in this case a Gantt chart was extremely useful as it reminded me of where I needed to be in the project given the timeline. In terms of Capstone, we were required to map out the entire project during one semester and then execute whatever we had planned during the following semester. Our team had weekly meetings with assigned tasks that each member had to accomplish and we all were able to keep each other in check. We felt that we did not need the entire semester for planning so we started building the product during the first semester itself. The reason we felt that we were ready to build was because we had planned out what tasks needed to be completed by whom and by when, we had conducted several computer models of our proposed idea and had it checked by other professors as well as our advisor, and we had made sure with our advisor that no customer needs had been overlooked for the product. Once the team felt that we had designed a product that accounted for everything we felt it was appropriate to start building.
When planning a project I have had a similar experience as @ag2265. Although I do work in the industry, it is not a project based but a commercial function so my project experience is mainly during academia. I agree with the post that planning is a key phase in a project. For the project I was involved in was a continuation of a project from the previous semester. With that said the planning stage was imperative to our success. First thing we had to do was to become fully integrated and knowledgeable about the project. We had to know what the previous group did, their methods, and what they were able to accomplish. This in turn gave us information on what we need to accomplish and as well as what we can add or improve on it. Project integration was key here. After we received all resources, information, and knowledge from the previous team, we than planned forward what we had to do. Like the original post state we had a gantt style chart and sub tasks for what we wanted to accomplish.
