It may be time to implement a project management strategy if you have ever felt that keeping your project team organized is like herding cats.
A good project management plan will tell you where you are going and when you have arrived.
Establishing a comprehensive project plan is an essential step for agency leaders during the planning phase of a project. This article will explain a project plan and its benefits to you, your team, and your next project.
What exactly is a Project Management Plan
A project management plan outlines everything your team should know about the project. Your written plan should include input from key stakeholders and project managers.
The following is usually included in a project plan document:
The project timeline and schedule
The project’s scope, deliverables, and budget
Human Resources and Cost Management Plan
risk management plan
Plan for the management and communication of stakeholders in the project, the organizational processes involved, and other critical business information that can impact the implementation.
The Project Management Institute ( PMI ) recommends that you also produce an executive summary, which highlights the most critical points in a format that is easily accessible.
The plan should be dynamic, meaning that it should be reviewed and updated during the various phases of the project to reflect any changes.
It may take some time to create the plan, but you can use a project management template tailored to your industry. You will save time and create consistency with your project planning.
What is the benefit of a project plan
As an agency leader, you may wonder if spending so much time on detailed project documentation is the best way to go. A well-crafted plan is a good thing. Can it capture the reality and unpredictability of working on digital creative projects?
The short answer is that you can manage a project without a plan. It will make your life easier in various stages of the project life cycle.
Here are eight benefits of a good project management plan.
You were defining project scope, boundaries, and deliverablesBring your stakeholders together for a project planning meeting to lay the foundations of your new project. It is essential first to define the scope of your project. This will help you determine the limits and boundaries of your project and ensure that you are clear about the deliverables.
You need to specify how you will handle changes at this point in the planning process for scope management. Once the project is underway, certain aspects will inevitably need to change. This is fine as long as everyone agrees on how this should be done. Scope management helps you balance client and team expectations.
Make sure everyone is clear about budgets and timelines
Project managers can create transparency by providing clear information about the budget and timeline of the project. The scope can be translated into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to help develop a schedule. This will ensure that all tasks are completed on time.
Determines the resources required for the project
A complete project plan must also include a Resource Management Plan. This plan will list the resources you need to complete the project. Your resource plan should consist of the required number of hours and the expertise needed at each stage.
It’s possible to plan this out on a spreadsheet, but it is not recommended. It’s too easy to make mistakes and then reproduce them, which can cause significant problems.
This task is made more accessible by a resource management tool such as Runn. You can use it to map out your resources and timeline to allocate them accurately across multiple projects.
Defines the success of the project
Early on, we learned that everyone has a different idea of what “done” means. It is easier to evaluate whether your project’s goals were met if you have a clear understanding of the objectives.
This will not only ensure that you deliver on your promise to the client but also reduce scope creep due to unclear expectations.
Clarity about a project’s objectives can also reduce wasteful resources. This happens when people take the project in a wrong direction because of misunderstandings.
Helps identify risks and decide what to do about them
A project risk plan is one of the most important components of a successful project management plan . It allows the team to be prepared for any risks that may arise and to ensure adequate resources in case something goes wrong.
Throughout the project lifecycle, it is important to revisit your risk analysis. The constraints of the project may have changed.
This tool helps you to determine how to report on a project
The project plan should include the metrics and reporting measures that will be used for the project to evaluate and report its progress. Details you include will depend on your project management method and the type project you are working on.
A project plan allows you to create functional reports on the status of the project that include all the information needed for a successful project completion.
Outlines the project communication management
Include a communication plan in your project template to help ensure that communication channels are clearly defined from the planning stage. It includes the when, how and to whom various aspects of the project are communicated both internally and externally.
project management can be used to monitor communication with clients and provide a quick view of the progress of each member of the team. It also makes sure that each member of the team is responsible for their deliverables.
Supports stakeholder management
Stakeholder management plans can be incorporated into your project plan to help you manage stakeholder relations. A clear plan for this crucial element of your project operations will help to ensure that the client experience across all projects is calm, controlled and consistent.
You can develop strong relationships with stakeholders by defining how often you will communicate with them, what you will do to meet their expectations and how you will analyze their feedback.
It is obvious that happy clients will be more likely to return. It is important to draw the connection between the planning and documentation done at this point and the clients who return later because they are impressed with the service.
Wrap-up
The variety of projects undertaken by digital agencies can be exciting, but it can also put the team in danger of losing sight of the objectives or the specifics of each project. A project management plan gathers all of the important information in one place so that your team can refer to it for any questions.
It is important to include in your project management plan which software tools will be used throughout the lifecycle of the project. This can be the difference between smooth sailing and rough seas.
It allows you to manage resources across all the projects your agency handles. This gives you the control you need to develop operative solutions and strategies, and keep ahead of any resourcing risk. This platform also forecasts trends based on current capacity, usage, and financial patterns so that you can improve project planning as you tackle new challenges.