Project Management: Planning Phase of Project Management 23

Identify what defines a project as a unique, temporary endeavor with a defined aim and timeframe, coordinating multidisciplinary teams under time, cost, and resource constraints; distinguish projects from routine operations.

Define the project goal and navigate the holy trinity of scope, time, and budget, balancing tradeoffs and constraints to guide early planning and decisions.

Identify the organization and stakeholders with the stakeholder cycle and power grid, predict behaviors, choose integrated strategies, and align with certifications for a successful project.

Define project success by aligning objectives with on-time delivery, budget, scope, and customer satisfaction, while addressing planning gaps, leadership, training, and biased thinking across technology, novelty, space, and complexity.

Analyze two case studies, one successful and one failed, to identify factors that drive project outcomes, and reflect on these insights to position yourself for projects; download the assignment materials.

Explore the project life cycle’s four stages—initiate, plan, execute, and close—and how scope, tasks, schedule, resources, and risk management shape outcomes, with monitoring, postmortems, and iterative stage-gate reflections.

Explore why planning matters and how a project plan defines scope, tasks, dependencies, schedule, resources, and risk. See how the plan remains flexible, revisable, and guides execution, milestones, and governance.

Master the planning phase by building a work breakdown structure to define project scope, visualize components, and break work into tasks, packages, and insights for better scope control.

Apply design matrices, tables, and network diagrams to map task dependencies, identify predecessors, and establish start and end points, while using finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-start relationships.

Plan task durations using a work breakdown structure and precedence to estimate weeks for key activities. Note Parkinson's law, student syndrome, and biases like anchoring and confirmation that distort timing.

Identify the project duration by constructing and analyzing a network diagram, calculating early and late start/finish, and highlighting the critical path and slack.

Identify the critical path, the longest chain of activities, using network diagrams and software to determine early and late start and finish times.

discover how to use a free Excel template to craft a work breakdown structure and Gantt chart for planning, including project info, start dates, durations, and percent complete.

Use critical path analysis to guide scheduling by identifying zero-slack tasks. Assess slack in non-critical tasks and compare as soon as possible versus as late as possible strategies.

Shorten your project duration by focusing on the critical path and crashing the least costly critical task. Reassess critical paths and risks, and consider scope reduction or outsourcing if needed.

Reflect on common planning mistakes and learn to build a proper work breakdown structure, define accurate durations, create a network diagram with dependencies, and align scope and estimates.

Explore a practical planning checklist focusing on work breakdown structure, network diagram, milestones, dependencies, and a clear critical path to ensure a detailed, sane project plan.

Engage in an assignment on the planning phase by examining Sara McGee's case study from 80-20, focusing on offsite construction, and compare her project management approach with traditional construction management.

Prioritize thorough project planning by defining a complete scope and schedule, and balance time, cost, and scope with clear ownership and dependencies.

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