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Define the Work

Build the Work Plan

Manage the Work Plan

Always Assign One Person to be Primarily Responsible for Work

A common mistake is to assign two or more people to an activity without designating who has the primary responsibility to ensure the work is done correctly and completely. A lack of primary responsibility may make some people defer to each other, delay work that needs to start now, work on activities that have a lower priority or flounder without knowing who to talk to. If an activity has only one person assigned, it is pretty clear who is responsible. But if two or more people are assigned to the same activity, make sure one of them is designated as the primary person to coordinate and ensure the work is done completely, correctly and within quality, effort and duration estimates.

Assign Generic Resource Groups First, Then Specific Resources

In many cases, you are not sure who the resources are that will be assigned to your team while you are developing the project workplan. This will especially be true for resources that are not needed until further out into the future. In these cases, use a generic resource description as a placeholder in the project workplan. For instance, you may need a data modeler three months after the project starts. In the workplan, refer to this person with a generic name of Data Modeler #1. Then, as time gets closer to actually needing the person, you can update the workplan with the exact name of the person who will do the work. This also helps the project manager better estimate the work. Sometimes when you know who will do the work, there is a tendency to create an estimate based on that person's track record. If the person does not end up working on the project, your estimate could be way off. However, if you will estimate the work based on a generic role, you probably will be okay no matter whom the actual resource is that does the work.

Use Full-Time Project Resources When Possible

In many cases a project team is made up of full-time and part-time staff. Usually that is a function of the size of the organization, the size of the project, available resources and how the functional department is organized. However, if you have the ability, your first choice should always be to utilize full-time resources on your project. Taken to the extreme, for example, you will get much more done with one full-time resource than you will with five resources that each are assigned for 20%. Part-time resources have competing workloads, competing priorities and competing managers. This is especially the case if people have part-time project and part-time support responsibilities, since normally production support issues have priority over the project. Also, in many cases, people are not able to effectively allocate their time across projects as they are requested, which results in the need for more oversight on the part of the project manager. Lastly, there is a productivity cost to having to switch from one type of work to another. The team member needs to ramp down from their current work and ramp up with the second assignment. If there are three sets of priorities, even more thrashing occurs, and less productive work gets done.

Who is the Best Person to Write the Project Workplan?

The project manager is the person who has the responsibility to successfully execute the project. They are the person who must create the workplan and believe in it. If it was necessary for someone else to create the initial workplan, this should be reviewed and modified by the project manager to ensure they accept the timeline, budget and the deliverables to be produced. Otherwise, it is too easy for the project manager to opt out of the responsibility to deliver, by saying that they cannot be held accountable for a workplan that they did not create.

That being said, the project manager does not usually have the expertise to build the plan entirely on their own. There are two main techniques for gathering all the information required to complete the workplan.

• Create a draft and circulate to stakeholders. In this approach, the project manager creates an initial draft of the workplan. There may be a subset of team members involved as well. When the draft is completed, it is circulated to the stakeholders for feedback. During the review process, activities are added, changed or deleted. If the workplan is long and detailed, this draft may need to be at a summary level. The project manager takes the feedback and incorporates it into the workplan, which is then used going forward in the project. This approach results in a very good workplan and provides opportunities for feedback and buy-in from the stakeholders. There are two potential risks. First, the stakeholders may not be engaged in the project yet. This may result in them not focusing enough on the workplan or else not knowing enough to provide valid feedback. Second, if the workplan is detailed and lengthy, most of the stakeholders probably will not be able to mentally absorb it. In this case, the workplan probably will need to be circulated at a higher-level, perhaps with summary tasks or milestones only.

• Build the WBS and workplan through direct stakeholder involvement. In this approach, the workplan is built through one or more sessions with the major stakeholders in the room. It may be possible to get all the stakeholders in a facilitated session for one or more days to gain consensus on what needs to be done. If the project is large, you may need to meet with the major stakeholders in groups. For instance, you may have facilitated sessions with each functional department. Each department has a specific way of viewing the project, but a complete workplan can be generated by consolidating the various session results. This approach has the advantage of having active engagement and participation from the stakeholders. They should then have complete buy-in to what needs to be done and what their role is. This technique might or might not take longer and be more labor intensive that the first option, depending on how many sessions need to be run and how soon the session results can be sent back to the session participants for validation.  

Predetermined End Dates

In a perfect world, project completion dates would be derived based on the amount of work to be done and the number of resources available. As you know, that is not always the case. Sometimes there is an arbitrary or very valid date by which the work must be completed. For instance, the end date may be determined by a government regulation, a scheduled event, or to coincide with another company initiative. This situation is referred to as a timebox, meaning you have a fixed amount of time to get the work done.

There is nothing wrong with having a fixed end date. It provides a sense for the business priority of the project, and gives everyone on the team a sense of urgency and focus. There may be a problem, however, if the project manager and team do not think they can get the work done by the deadline. In that case, the project manager needs to raise this as an issue. Potential resolutions include:

• Assigning more resources to the project. Even though each additional resource begins to have diminished value, this is usually the first place to start.

• Having the team work overtime, with the understanding that overtime itself has a diminishing return for each additional hour, and that long-term overtime can actually have a negative effect.

• Working with the business clients to scale back the required deliverables due by the deadline. This may include removing entire deliverables, or functionality from required deliverables.

• Determining whether required deliverables and features can actually be delivered later than the due date. In these cases, a 90% solution may be viable at the due date, with the additional work completed soon after.

Estimating Techniques

An important part of building the workplan is being able to accurately estimate the work activities. Estimates of effort hours will, in turn, drive the cost and cycle time estimates. Although the estimating process can be complex, some techniques and definitions are provided in  Estimating Techniques.

Spend More Time Up-Front to Save Time Later

Doesn’t it seem that most problems that are encountered on a project tend to surface toward the end, when the construction and testing process is going on? In fact, some project managers purposely hurry through planning, analysis and design; because they think they will catch any mistakes in the testing process. Unfortunately, the longer it takes for errors to be caught, the more time consuming and expensive it is to fix them. When you are building your workplan, try to spend more time in preparation and planning work up-front. This should end up saving time and cost in the overall project. For instance, spending more time in early planning will save time in analysis. Spending more time in analysis makes the design work go more smoothly. Spending more time on deliverable reviews will catch errors earlier and save time in testing. Testing thoroughly will save time in implementation and support. Of course, you don't want to over-plan or overanalyze. That doesn't buy you anything. But be diligent in this up-front work. Don't rush through it. Time invested up-front will more than make up for itself over the life of the project.