What is Project Planning? Definition and meaning
Project planning is the main task of project management. It takes place immediately after the formulation of the project and the definition of the goal.
The goal of project planning is to plan the previously defined project in detail with regard to costs and its execution.
Project planning translates the project goal into a concrete, verifiable plan. It answers the questions of what needs to be done and to what extent, in what order and by which deadlines the work will take place, who carries it out and what costs arise in the process. In this way, it forms the basis for steering and controlling throughout the rest of the project.
Components of Project Planning
Important components of project planning are:
- Work breakdown structure planning
- Effort estimation
- Resource planning
- Cost planning
- Financial planning
- Assembling a project team
- Risk and utility analysis
- Quality management
- Configuration management
Phases of Project Planning
The individual planning steps build on one another and together form the project plan. Project planning typically goes through these phases:
- Work breakdown structure: The project scope is broken down into manageable work packages. The work breakdown structure is the foundation on which all further plans are built.
- Process plan: The work packages are put into a logical order and their dependencies are defined.
- Schedule: The process plan, combined with durations and deadlines, produces the schedule, often shown as a Gantt chart or network diagram. Milestones mark important interim targets along the way.
- Resource plan: Personnel, materials and operating resources are assigned to the work packages and balanced over time.
- Cost plan: Costs and the project budget result from effort and resources.
These plans are not a one-off exercise but are continually refined over the course of the project whenever scope, deadlines or resources shift.
Classic and agile project planning
In practice, two fundamental approaches to project planning have become established:
- Classic project planning: Scope, deadlines and costs are planned as fully as possible in advance, after which the plan is worked through in phases. This approach is suitable when requirements are clear and stable from the outset.
- Agile project planning: Planning is done in short iterations. Goals and tasks are continually reviewed and adapted to new insights. This approach suits undertakings with unclear or changing requirements.
Many projects combine both approaches into hybrid planning that unites the fixed framework of classic planning with the flexibility of agile methods. The relevant feature page shows how both approaches can be mapped in project planning from projectfacts.