Project Management Plan

The Project Management Plan, in PMP® Certification, quite simply is the document
that lists all of the project requirements, activities, resources, deliverables,
acceptance criteria and measure of success. Through this one document, an effort is
made to capture the entire project end-to-end, covering all project phases, from
initiation through planning, execution and closure.

When writing a project management plan, the approach depends primarily on the
project's priority, size and context. Project Management plan is perhaps the most
important document, with relevance as high as getting the buy in from the
sponsor/stakeholder for the project. Just as the project cannot proceed without
stakeholder buy in, without a solid plan proceeding is equally, if not more, disastrous.

The Project Management Plan is a master, and an all-encompassing document. All

other plans, scope management plan, cost management plan, schedule
management plan, all baselines (performance measurement baseline comprising of
cost, schedule and scope baselines), configuration management plan, quality
management plan, requirements management plan, communications plan, risk
management plan & resource management plan are a part of this master document.

Please note: Project planning is iterative. Iterative here means that each phase or
part is defined or elaborated more as the work progresses on. That means that the
project plan itself will change. It is acceptable till the basic hygiene factors according
to the methodology are maintained.

For example, in traditional project management, the plan provides an outline of the
anticipated project constraints (schedules, budgets etc) through all five stages:
initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and completion. In contrast, agile projects
cannot be planned end to end due to the on-demand nature of work. Instead, the
plans are created and adjusted throughout the project life-cycle as needed.
The iterative nature however is not an excuse for poor or incomplete planning. Each
planning process may use the results of previous process and each process may
cause changes to the previous processes. The idea is to complete each planning
process as fully as possible. The project management plan is not finalized till the
time all risk management processes are completed. After completing all risk
management processes, i.e. risk identification, qualitative & quantitative risk
analysis, risk response planning etc., project manager goes back to planning
document to finalize the project plan.

Project lifecycle in a multi stage project (Rolling Wave

Planning)

For Projects involving multiple stages (testing, install, roll out etc) iterative project
planning is needed. This is due to the underlying condition that the entire project
cannot be fully planned to a detailed degree before beginning the work. In such
cases, only the first stage or phase of the project (for example Design stage) is fully
planned, while other stages are planned only at a higher level with detailed planning
for each stage or phase happening as the previous stage nears completion.

In a multi-stage project, each stage has the same 5 parts of project management,
Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and Closing.

From PMBOK® guide knowledge areas’ perspective, Planning is the only process
group that involves processes from all the 9 knowledge areas, i.e. Scope, Time,
Cost, Quality, Human Resources, Communications, Risk & Procurement
Whether the planning is required for a phase or the entire project, the following are
listed:

 Overview: Why the project is being conducted and its primary objectives

 Scope: Business needs, requirements, deliverables, constraints and work

breakdown structure

 Schedule: Activities schedule and project milestones

 Costs: Project budget and its funding approach

 Quality: Quality measurement and control approach

 Project team: The people working on the project, their roles and responsibilities

 Communication: Communication type, channels and the reporting approach

 Risks: Risk index, methods to identify and evaluate risks, risk mitigation &
contingency planning

 Procurements: Required procurements and purchase processes

 Closure: Closure approach, including the deliverables hand-off protocol

 Changes: Procedures used to track changes in the project

 Baselines: Scope, schedule and budget baselines

Once the plan is complete, the project manager uses the project management plan
as a tool to help manage the project on a daily basis. Though it may evolve and
change over the lifecycle of a project, the project management plan is designed to be
as complete as possible before the execution begins.