What is project planning?
If you are a project manager interested to know what is project planning and how to do it better, then this post will help you to create better project plans!
Project planning definition
Project planning is a step-by-step process in which an organization or individual plan their work processes, depending on the scope of the project and deliverables agreed with one or more parties involved.
A project plan is a great tool for organizing your workload and consist of several parts such as schedule and additional documentation support such as invoices or term and conditions.
What does project planning involve?
Usually, project planning requires digital tools to schedule, organize, share with stakeholders and track deliverables in a timely manner.
Project managers have the responsibility of creating project plans which require a lot of effort and that is when digital tools such as OutSmart can come in handy.
OutSmart can help you to create work orders highlighting the project plan for each customer.
What should be included in a project plan?
In a project plan there 5 main parts you should include:
- Goal: what is being requested or needs to be achieved. For example, an air conditioning installation
- Deliverables: what will be delivered, when, how, where, by whom, fees agreed by both parties
- Schedule: start and end date for a project. A useful tool for the schedule part is a Gantt chart. Template here
- Information on parties involved and the responsibility level for each of them
- Supporting action plans or documents. For example, an invoice
Project planning template example:
As you can see, in the project planning excel chart, the goals of the project are highlighted clearly along with the schedule and parties involved.
Additional links or documentation can be added or even notes to help you to track better the goals and deliverables.
If you need to create a project plan and need to store information about customers and employees you can do so by using a tool such as OutSmart app.
Think for example, about tracking employees’ hour or customer’s information
It is extremely tedious to do this in excel.
However, with OutSmart CRM software, you can easily track and store all this information in the app; you can add this process as an additional “note” in your excel Gantt chart by simply typing “check employee info on the app”.
Try for FREE here!