What is a Project Plan
Project Plan is an important document created before start working on the Project. A Project Plan contains details of Project Phases, project schedules, tasks, responsible persons. Most of the Project Plans are created using ready to use Project Plan Templates. A Project Plan must represent the Overall Project Progress, Project Activities and Schedules with Gantt Chart.
Importance of Project Planning
Development of any Project required a proper planning to produce the accurate outputs. We must have a solid plan before start developing any Project. A Project Plan helps the Project Team to deliver the project onetime. It is very difficult to run a project with out having a plan.
- Project Plan is an essential document for both Development and Client Side
- It contains clear Schedules to deliver the outputs on promised timelines
- Team members can aware of their responsibilities and timelines
- Clients can send the required inputs based on the Plan
Elements of Project Plan
A Project Plan must include the Project Milestones, Tasks & Timelines, Project Schedules, Project Managers, Contact Details and Project Team Members.
Project Milestones: A project can be delivered by setting the planned Milestones. We can divide entire project into small and achievable portions in certain time limit. So that, it is very easy to develop and complete the work to meet the milestones.
Project Tasks: Tasks or the Action items are the actual project activities which are needs to be completed in order to deliver the project. Project Tasks will have a Start Date and End Date. And each Task is assigned to one of the team member with the required skill set.
Project Timelines: Project Plan help the development teams to clearly specify the project activities with achievable timelines. This helps the project team to learn the required skills and finish the tasks on-time.
Gantt Chart: This helps the Project Team and Clients to see the Project Plans with a graphical representation. Gantt Chart will have the Tasks and Timelines on a chart with complete and pending time representation.
Project Team: Specify the Project Team and their contact details in the Project Plan with responsible activities. For Example a Project can have Project Managers, Developers, Testers, Stakeholders and Clients.