Project Management Planning: Planning is the most important phase of project management. Planning involves defining objectives of the project, listing of tasks or jobs that must be performed, determining gross requirements for material, equipment and manpower and preparing estimates of costs and duration for the various jobs or activities to bring out the satisfactory completion of the project.
Why Project Management Planning is Important
Project management planning is important because of the following reasons.
- Project management planning provides direction.
- It provides unifying framework.
- It helps to reveal future opportunities and treats.
- It provides performance standards.
Steps in Project Management Planning
Following 8 steps are generally recognized in the process of a project management planning.
- Define: Define the objectives of the project in definite words.
- Establish: Establish goals and stages intermediate to attain the final target.
- Develop: Develop forecast and means of achieving goals i.e. activities.
- Evaluate: Evaluate organization’s resources. financial, managerial and operational status to carry out activities and to determine what is feasible and what is not.
- Determine: Determine alternatives courses of action that will allow accomplishing goals.
- Test: Test for consistency with company’s policy.
- Choose: Choose an alternative which is not only consistent with its goal and concept but also one that can be accomplished with the evaluate resources.
- Decide: Decide on a plan.
