Planning a project

Determine the objectives, or goals, of the project. It is only by understanding the project's objectives that you can organise the tasks required to meet the objectives and judge when the project has been completed. Some projects have a single objective; other projects have more than one.

Typical constraints for most projects are cost, quality, timescale and internal and external constraints. There may be other constraints such as working to a recognised standard or using environmentally-friendly materials.

Identify the tasks that must be completed to reach the objective. Start with identifying general tasks, then break them down into smaller, more specific tasks. The more detail you go into, the more accurate the final project plan will be.

Estimate the duration of each task. The more accurate your estimates, the more accurate the total project duration will be. However, you do not need to be completely accurate, as you can adjust the duration of tasks easily once the project is underway.

Ensure that you have included all the tasks required to reach the project objectives. If you omit any tasks, you must add them once the project is underway, which may cause unforeseen problems with the progress of the project.

Decide which tasks affect other tasks in the plan. For example, identify tasks that must be completed before other can start and tasks that can take place simultaneously.

Determine whether there are any time constraints or external constraints on any of the tasks. For example, note whether a task can only take place during a specific week, or if a task cannot start before notification has been received from a third party.

Identify the people, equipment and materials (the resources) that you will need to work on the project. Identify how much of each resource you will need and when the resources are available to work on the project. For example, your technicians may only be available during the last two weeks of the project.

Using Asta Powerproject, you can first specify the skills required to complete a tasks, then allocate individual resources to the task subsequently to fulfill the demand. This is known as 'demand and scheduled resourcing'.

The duration of a task may depend on the amount of work that a resource needs to complete. This means that the length of time a resource works on a task controls the duration of the task. Such a task is said to be resource-driven. For example, if a task has a duration of one week and you assign a resource that has a duration of two weeks, the duration of the task is increased to two weeks to give the resource enough time to complete the task.

Decide whether all tasks will work to the same calendar, or whether some tasks will be worked on at different times. For example, the holidays of key employees may affect the time during which a task can be worked on. You may find that each task will be worked on at a different time, in which case you need a separate calendar for each task.

In Asta Powerproject, you can create calendars for resources and tasks. If necessary, each resource can have its own calendar. When you assign a resource to a task, you can choose whether the resource works to its own calendar or to the task's calendar.

Estimate the cost of each task. Each task may have a direct cost and additional resource costs. For example, the cost of packaging a product may include the cost of renting the warehouse in which the packaging takes place (a direct cost) and the cost of packaging materials and labour (resource costs). You also need to be aware of the budget for the project and any income that will be received during the project.

Categorising tasks makes a project plan easier to interpret. For example, you could categorise each task according to the department responsible for the task, the location at which the task is taking place, the risk involved with the task, or the person who will be working on the task.

Decide how often you are going to update the plan and ensure that all team members are aware of when their progress information needs to be submitted. Arrange regular update meetings with the team so that you can inform them of any changes to the plan and show them how the whole project is progressing.

Make a copy, or a baseline, of the original project plan. As the project progresses, you can compare the actual plan against the original baseline and note where the plans differ. If the project undergoes significant changes, you can re-baseline it so that you have a record of exactly what changed and when.

Planning a project can be time-consuming, but remember that the more accurate your original plan, the more likely the project will meet its objectives with the minimum number of changes to the plan.

Unfortunately, however accurate your initial plan, it is unlikely that everything will happen as planned. When the project gets underway, you may realise that you have forgotten to include certain items in the plan, and unexpected events can arise that delay your progress. Nobody can make accurate predictions all the time, and every project has some degree of uncertainty. To keep your project on track, you need to update it regularly to take account of changes as they occur.