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How To Create A Project Management Plan Online
How To Create A Project Management Plan Online
While it may be tempting to jump right into your project and figure things out as you go
along, you’ll have much better results if you create a project plan first. Without a basic
project plan, you may find your team directionless, or worse heading in multiple directions.
Maybe you’ve been doing this for a while or maybe this is your first big project and you just
googled “how to write a project plan.” Either way, we’re here to help.
Table of contents
What is a Project Plan
Why is Project Planning Important
Components of Project Management Plan
How to Create a Project Plan Online – 9 Steps
How Project Planning Software Can Help Plan Projects
It’s created during the project planning phase and is a compilation of several other
documents. It is more than just a schedule or a task list, though it does include those
things. The project management plan is formally approved at the beginning of the project
and then progressively updated throughout the course of the project.
Activities
What are the things your team will need to do in order to get the project done? Activities in
your project plan include things like
measuring progress
delegating tasks
allocating resources
project time tracking spent on tasks
communicating effectively.
Tasks
For any task management, the project is broken down into tasks. These are smaller jobs
that make up the bigger picture of your project. Having incremental goals makes
measuring success and addressing bottlenecks easier, and identifying these tasks is
essential to crafting your project management plan.
Resources
What are you working with? Your resources include your budget, of course. It’s also
important to understand your human and material resource requirements. How many
people will need to work on this project and will you need to hire temporary workers or
subcontractors? What physical or digital materials are required and where will those things
come from?
9 steps on how to create a project plan online
If you’re thinking, “well, that sounds really formal and serious, don’t be intimidated.
Follow these nine project management steps, and you’re well on your way not just on how
to plan a project online but to execute your project successfully.
Depending on the nature of the project, stakeholders may also include outside
organizations or individual community members that will be affected by the project.
The different project team member roles will vary depending on your project, but be sure
to include a vendor relations role and a customer relations role.
At this stage, the specific details of the project haven’t been determined, so you should
include a discussion on the project scope, budget, timeline, and goals in your meeting
agenda. This is also when roles are announced and a communication plan is explained.
The kickoff meeting sets the tone for the working relationship among stakeholders for the
duration of the project.
Each of these items is worthy of its own in-depth explanation, so we’ll just define them
briefly here.
a. Scope:
Project scope tells you what are we going to do (and not do)? Given the requests of the
customer and the vision discussed by the team, what are the objectives of this project?
b. Budget:
Taking into account the scope and the resources required to meet the project objectives,
what is the expected financial cost of the project?
c. Timeline:
The project timeline itemizes the phases of your project and the length of time you can
reasonably expect them to be completed.
Project deliverables are determined by the project objectives and are an essential part of
the project plan. If the customer’s objective is for end-users to manage their own content,
for example, the deliverables might be a piece of software that enables users to manage
content as well as training materials for employees and end-users on how to use the newly
created software.
The information you compile in this process may reveal necessary adjustments in your
roles, timeline, and/or budget.
This is an important step in writing a simple project plan and a beneficial part of the
process. It’s much better to make these adjustments before the project has begun than
weeks or months later.
Project management software can simplify your project planning from start to finish, giving
you the tools and transparency in the project you need to not only create an excellent
project management plan but to actually manage your project well. Good project
management software allows you to perform administrative tasks more quickly and
efficiently, freeing up time to focus on the actual project.
Project management software can also facilitate effective communication within and
among teams, help you track key performance factors, store all project data in a central
location, and allow you to generate reports on your project along the way.
Many of your project management challenges, particularly with planning, can be overcome
with a capable and efficient project management tool.
Kissflow Project
is simple and intuitive to use,
frees you from constantly tracking teammates,
offers multiple views to visualize projects
provides “Done”, “In-Progress”, and “On Hold” states for clarity on status,
gives you access to powerful reports to make data-driven decisions, and
reminds you when tasks near their deadlines.