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CHAPTER 1
Planning a Project
Letâs be clear. This book is about project planning. Planning is used in many other circumstancesâoperational management, strategy development, work packages, defect fixing, product development, and even personal to-dos, but projects are special management endeavors. Many techniques from general management are relevant and can be adapted readily enough, but there are differences. These differences can trap the unsuspecting, inexperienced project manager, who will often confuse the scheduling of task and activities with the planning of projects.
So, first things first, letâs address these questions. Whatâs a project? Why do you need to plan?
Planning to Manage Uncertainty
A project is a temporary organization set up to manage the inherent uncertainty caused when resources are assigned to undertake a unique and transient endeavor within a set of constraints and needs to Âintegrate the outputs created into a changed future state that delivers beneficial outcomes.
Projects are often characterized as being unique, or at least ârelatively unique.â They may do what has been done before, but not by this team, or not in this way, and this means project managers must actively Âmanage uncertainty. This is captured in our definition of a project, which is adapted from Turner (1999, 2003).
Project planning is the way we manage uncertainty. A plan is a view of the future, created from the state of knowledge at that time, and Âsupported and extended by the inferences that experience and the underpinning models provide. As knowledge increases that view may change and a new route to the future must be captured by carrying out a re-plan.
A plan that documents exactly what everyone already knows really is a waste of everyoneâs time, no matter how beautifully written. It is the worst form of bureaucracy, with nothing new learned and nothing valuable achieved. A good plan makes clear what is uncertain and why, and what to do about it. What is known and what is not should be reflected in the very structure of the plan.
What is certain is why the project was set up. We also know what the stakeholdersâ regard as a good outcome. What is less certain is what the right tactics to adopt might be. These are uncertain because currently unknown events, events in the future, will influence them; whether it is by time passing, from the impact of risks, or higher than expected levels of productivity of a process.
Planning Connects Conditions of Success to Delivery
The other fundamental characteristic of projects we see reflected in the Turner definition is that projects are conducted within a set of Âconstraints and create a changed future state that delivers beneficial outcomes.
The constraints and beneficial outcomes are an expression by the Âclient and other stakeholders of the conditions of success for the Âprojectâand to plan successfully, you must know what counts as a success. ÂModern Âproject management has replaced the earlier time, cost, and quality Âcriteria with four conditions that have to be satisfied. Shenhar et al. (1997) set them out:
- Project efficiency
- Impact on the customer
- Direct business and organizational success
- Preparing for the future
The first factor neatly bundles up earlier ideas about traditional project management disciplines. The second and third reflect the realization that unless the project returns something of recognized value, its performance in terms of delivering outputs is worthless. The fourth focuses on what it is that the stakeholders have to bring to the party.
These new, tougher conditions for project success lead to the need for two key actions when planning a project. The first is to establish the Ââmissionâ of the projectâwhy itâs being done, and what âgood looks like.â The other is how best to organize people, processes, and products to deliver that mission.
The Goal-Oriented Plan
If you are going on a journey, itâs a good idea to know where you are going and how to recognize when youâve got there. Might sound obvious, but many projects fail even that simple test. You really do need to know:
- Purpose of the project: the problem or opportunity it is addressing
- Value of the project: why is it worth doingâand to whom?
- Objective: what âgood looks likeââhow to know the project has completed successfully
- Scope: what the project is expected to deliver in terms of physical things
- Critical success factors (CSFs): what has to be in place for Âsuccess
- Risks: what the main threats are to the success of the project
These are six distinct and different aspects of the project, and failure is much more likely if one or more of them is not known, or, which is more common, they are conflated and confused with each other. The usual culprit is a statement that purports to be an objective, but which is, in fact, a hotchpotch of scope statements, activities, benefits and other outcomes. Instead of a scalpel, the project manager has a club, with no way to adequately judge whether the project actions link to the projectâs purpose.
CITIâs Project Mission ModelTM (Figure 1.1) was developed to structure the way stakeholders, project managers, and project management offices go about this first part of planning.
The Project Mission ModelTM explicitly distinguishes between the six perspectives. (Impacts and benefits are two ways of setting out the value, and co...
