Module 2: Building a project plan

Hi. Welcome back. In the previous section, we learned more about
the planning phase which is the second phase
of the project life cycle. We introduced you
to kickoff meetings, which is the first meeting
for the project team. We also discussed milestones, tasks, and how to set
these within a project. Coming up, we’ll
explain why it is necessary to create and
manage a project plan. We’ll discuss the definition of a project plan, and we’ll learn what typically goes into one. This includes the
project schedule, which will help guide your
team to the finish line. We’ll also share how to use time estimation methods to
prevent project failure. We’ll introduce you to a few time estimation techniques which can help you build an
accurate project schedule. Finally, we’ll examine tools and best practices you can use
to build out a project plan. Ready to get started? Meet me in the next video.

Which of the following explains why a project plan is necessary?

Contains the timeline, team roles, tasks, milestones, and documents of the project to track project progress against its goals

A project manager adds these components for projects both big and small.

Which of the following are relevant documents the project manager may include in the project plan? Select all that apply.

Budget

The budget is the estimated monetary resources needed to achieve the project’s goals and objectives.

Project charter

The project charter defines the project and outlines the details the team needs to reach the project’s goals.

RACI chart

The RACI chart helps define roles and responsibilities for individuals on a team.

A project plan can be useful for
any project, big or small, since it helps you document the scope,
tasks, milestones, and overall activities of the project. At the center of the project
plan is the project schedule. The project schedule can help you estimate
the amount of time it’ll take to complete the project, and it can provide the team with a way
to track the project’s progress against your goals. What goes into a project plan may
vary from company to company, but most plans contain
these five basic elements. These are: tasks, milestones,
people, documentation, and time. Let’s break those down. A project plan will include tasks and
milestones, two topics we discussed before. Tasks are activities that need to be
accomplished within a set period of time. They’re assigned to different members
of the team according to their roles and skills. And milestones are important points within
the schedule that indicate progress. They usually signify the completion of
a deliverable or phase of the project. A project plan will also include
the people working on your team and their roles. It’s important that each team
member understands their role and the tasks they’re responsible for
completing. Ensuring that everyone is
clear on their assigned tasks frees you up to focus on
managing the project and creates a sense of personal
responsibility for members of the team. A project plan is a good place to
link to relevant documentation. This includes documents like your RACI
chart, which helps to define roles and responsibilities for
individuals on your team. You can also link to your charter,
which clearly defines the project and outlines the details needed
to reach your goals. Relevant documentation can also
include documents like your budget and risk management plan. We’ll discuss more about
those later on in the course. Lastly, a project plan should
include the estimated time that will be spent on the project. This forms the basis of the schedule,
which is the anchor of your project plan. The estimated time includes dates on which
tasks should be started and completed and the dates when you hope
to reach various milestones. It also includes the start and end dates
of the project, which are important in determining which resources you’ll
need and when you’ll need them. So, how exactly do you estimate
how long these things will take? Meet me in the next video to find out.

Project Management: Time and Effort Estimation Tutorial

Estimating time and effort is a crucial skill for any project manager. It helps set realistic expectations, plan resource allocation, and ultimately guide your project towards success. This tutorial will delve into the key concepts, techniques, and best practices for effective time and effort estimation in project management.

Understanding the Difference:

Before diving in, let’s differentiate between two closely related terms:

• Time estimation: Predicts the total duration of a task, including both active work and inactive periods (e.g., drying time for paint).
• Effort estimation: Predicts the amount of active work required to complete a task, based on its complexity and resource needs.

Techniques for Estimation:

Here are some common techniques to estimate time and effort:

• Expert judgment: Leverage the experience and insights of team members familiar with the task.
• Historical data: Analyze past projects with similar tasks to establish benchmarks.
• Analogous estimation: Compare the current task to a similar one previously completed.
• Bottom-up estimation: Break down the task into smaller sub-tasks, estimate each individually, and sum them up.
• Three-point estimation: Consider optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely scenarios to create a range of possibilities.

Tips for Accurate Estimates:

• Involve your team: Their firsthand knowledge of tasks and potential roadblocks is invaluable.
• Break down complex tasks: Smaller, more manageable chunks are easier to estimate.
• Consider all factors: Account for dependencies, external influences, and potential risks.
• Build in buffers: Allocate extra time to cope with unforeseen delays or challenges.
• Communicate and iterate: Continuously refine your estimates as you gather more information and feedback.

Tools and Resources:

Several tools and resources can aid in estimation, including:

• Project management software: Many platforms offer built-in estimation features and templates.
• Time tracking tools: Monitor actual time spent on tasks to improve future estimates.
• Collaboration platforms: Facilitate communication and information sharing for better team estimates.

Putting it into Practice:

Here’s a practical example:

Scenario: Estimating the time needed to design a new company website.

1. Break down the task: Identify sub-tasks like wireframing, content creation, development, and testing.
2. Gather information: Talk to designers, developers, and content writers to understand their time needs.
3. Apply estimation techniques: Use a combination of bottom-up, analogous, and expert judgment based on project complexity and team experience.
4. Consider contingencies: Account for potential delays like client feedback loops or technical challenges.
5. Develop a range: Instead of a fixed number, provide a realistic timeframe (e.g., 4-6 weeks) with buffer time built in.

Remember: Time and effort estimation is an ongoing process. Regularly review your estimates based on progress, feedback, and emerging challenges. By continuously refining your skills and utilizing the right tools, you can become a master of estimation and lead your projects to success!

Additional Resources:

• Project Management Institute (PMI): https://www.pmi.org/
• Agile Alliance: https://www.agilealliance.org/
• Project Management Software Comparison: https://www.softwareadvice.com/vendors/

Fill in the blank: For tasks that are difficult to complete or have an element of unpredictability, a project manager should add a(n) _____.

task buffer

Project managers need to make sure they don’t add too many task buffers, as they could lengthen the project schedule.

As the project manager, you aren’t
responsible for completing every task. What you are responsible for
is identifying and helping assign those tasks, and then estimating how
long they’ll take to complete. These estimates come together to
determine the overall project schedule. So, how do you estimate the amount
of time a given task will take? You do this with the help of your team. Time estimation is a prediction of
the total amount of time required to complete a task. Effort estimation is
a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work
required to complete a task. Effort estimation differs from time
estimation in that effort quantifies the amount of time it will take
a person to complete work on a task. On the flip side, time refers to
the overall duration of the task from start to finish.
That includes inactive time. Here’s an example. The effort estimation for
painting a wall might be 30 minutes, but time estimation might be 24 hours. That’s because in addition to the 30
minutes of active painting time, there are also 23 and a half hours
of inactive drying time. It’s important to understand
the difference between time estimation and effort estimation, because it can help you be more
efficient with your available resources. If there’s idle time
baked into a given task, your teammate is effectively
free to do other things. A painter can do other tasks while
the wall is drying, like painting the mailbox or the window trim. An unrealistic effort estimate can
negatively impact a project schedule. Generally, this happens when you
underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task. Often, the culprit for
under estimating effort is optimism. And listen, optimism is a wonderful
trait for a project manager to possess. But too much optimism can lead you to
overlook potential risks that could set your plans behind schedule. Though it might be tempting to make
the optimistic assumption that tasks will be executed exactly according to plan, there is always a possibility
that there will be setbacks. So, how do you try to avoid making
unrealistic effort estimates? You can do this by communicating with
teammates assigned to each task. Your teammates will have the most
realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task and should be able to provide
you with the best estimate. Let’s imagine this scenario in the context
of our Plant Pals project at Office Green. As a reminder, you’re launching a new
service to provide top office green customers with small, low-maintenance
plants that they can place on their desks. You might assume that creating
a contact list of top customers is relatively straightforward and
can be completed in a single day. But it’s important to really
consider certain sub-tasks required to complete
work in your planning. Sub-tasks refer to smaller tasks that
are required to complete a larger task. For example, this might include meeting
with the global sales team to identify clients gathering contact information,
determining client language preferences, and building a spreadsheet
to house this information. Asking the teammate assigned to the task
for their estimate is likely to yield a more accurate estimation since
they’ll have a deeper understanding of the work and the nuances of what’s
required to complete the task. You might learn that creating the contact
list may take two days to complete, which could be double the time
you originally expected. Of course, you can usually
ask follow-up questions, or even gently push back on
their estimate, as needed. Later on, we’ll discuss more of
the techniques you can use to get more accurate estimates from your teammates. Now, even though task owners tend to have
the strongest sense of how much time they’ll need to complete a task, the fact
is that effort estimates are just that, estimates, meaning that sometimes
those estimates won’t be accurate. For example, in our Plant Pals scenario,
your teammate estimates that it will take two days to create
a contact list of top customers. But, let’s say that the Sales team is
out of the office for a team-building exercise and unable to meet about
the client list until after the weekend. This will create a task delay, and as a result, the original
estimate is no longer accurate. Luckily, there’s a helpful
tool called a buffer that you can use during the planning phase to protect against
inaccurate effort estimates. A buffer is extra time added to the end
of a task or a project to account for unexpected slowdowns or
delays in work progress. Buffers are important because
they can provide some leeway, just in case your time and effort
estimates turn out to fall a bit short. With a buffer, you can add extra
time into your schedule, and your project shouldn’t fall off track
when task delays inevitably arise. There are two types of buffers you
can use when planning your schedule: task buffers and project buffers. First, we have task buffers, which refer to extra time
tacked on to a specific task. Task buffers should be used primarily for tasks that are out of
the project team’s control. For example, you might ask a potential
plant vendor to provide you with a cost estimate by Monday. You might assign them this deadline, knowing that you won’t actually
need the estimate until Thursday. The time between Monday and
Thursday is your buffer, and it provides your team with extra
time just in case the vendor sends their estimates to you a day or two late. Task buffers should be
used more sparingly for tasks within the project team’s control. For example,
you might choose to add buffers only to tasks that are difficult to complete or
that have an element of unpredictability, like the length of time it
will take plants to grow. Adding a buffer to every task could
lengthen your project schedule unnecessarily, leaving you, your team, and your stakeholders with
an unrealistic timeline. This is where project
buffers come in handy. Project buffers differ from task
buffers in that they provide extra time to the overall project schedule. Rather than adding a buffer to every task, you can add extra time as a buffer
towards the end of your project schedule. Then you can use that extra time,
two to three days, for example, as needed throughout the project. For instance, if a teammate
misses a deadline here and there, the project buffer gives you space in the
overall schedule to make up for lost time. I use buffers often in my
day-to-day role at Google. For example, on a recent project at
Google, I was working with a new hire who was great at coding but
kept missing deadlines. I realized they weren’t giving themselves
enough buffer time to do testing. I started to ask questions about
their current workload and the complexity of their tasks, and
based on their answers to those questions, I was able to gather insights
about their work and determine where I needed to
add buffer to their tasks. Ultimately, my goal is to ensure that
I’m setting a realistic timeline for the project. After all, if you hit your project
goal two months later than expected, your organization may not
consider the project a success. Time estimation, effort estimation, and buffers can help you build realistic
plans for reaching the project goal.

Fill in the blank: Capacity planning can ensure your team has enough _____ to complete your project on time. Select all that apply.

resources

Capacity planning ensures you have the right resources.

people

Capacity planning can ensure you have enough people to complete your project on time.

If Task A is a dependency for Task B, the two tasks should happen:

Sequentially

Task A needs to happen before Task B.

Hi again. Okay, so we’ve discussed time estimation,
which is a prediction of the total amount of time that will
be required to complete a task. And we’ve also discussed effort
estimation, which is a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active
work required to complete a task. These techniques can help you
estimate the length of time it will take to complete a task. Once you have that information,
you’ll need to determine if you have the right number of
people to get the work done. To figure this out you can use
a technique called capacity planning. First, let’s define capacity. Capacity refers to the amount of
work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably
complete in a set period of time. A person can only do so much, and it’s important to keep in mind each
person’s capacity when assigning work. This is where capacity planning comes in. Capacity planning refers to
the act of allocating people and resources to project tasks, and determining whether or not you have the necessary resources
required to complete the work on time. During this process, you might find
that you need more resources to speed up the project timeline, like a second
web developer or a third writer. Let’s imagine capacity planning in
the context of our Plant Pals project at Office Green. If you know that you’ll need to deliver
plants to 100 customers over a period of five days, then you’ll need to determine if you’ve
hired enough delivery drivers to meet that deadline. If one driver averages four deliveries
within an eight-hour workday, then you know you’ll need to hire at least five
drivers to complete the work on time. Even if a person on your project team is
spending 100% of their time at work on your project, they’ll have limited capacity for the amount of work they should be
expected to complete each day. Between meetings, unexpected urgent tasks,
and other elements of a typical work day, there’s only so
much each person can complete. So how do you decide where a teammate
should focus their priorities and make the most of their capacity? You can prioritize their time by plotting
the critical path of your project timeline. The critical path refers to the list of
project milestones that you must reach in order to meet the project
goal on schedule, as well as the mandatory tasks that
contribute to the completion of each milestone. Anything else is
considered off the critical path. For example,
tasks on the critical path for launching Project Plant Pals
might include hiring plant vendors, developing a new website, and fulfilling deliveries. A task like adding flowers to your
product lineup is nice to have, but might not have much impact on
the overall success of your project because this task isn’t
crucial to your launch. These tasks aren’t part
of the critical path. To summarize, your critical path includes
the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to
reach your project goal. If your team is unable to complete any
of those tasks on time, that might result in a project delay. To determine the critical
path of a project, you’d start by listing all the tasks
required to complete the project and the milestones they feed into. This is a perfect time to think back to
your work breakdown structure, or WBS, which is a chart that sorts all
the milestones and tasks of a project into a hierarchy according to the order
in which they need to be completed. This includes a detailed
overview of every project task. Then, you determine which tasks on
the list absolutely can’t begin until another task is complete. This is called a dependency, and we’ll discuss this topic
in more detail later on. Next, you’ll work with your
team to make time estimates for each task, and
map each task from start to finish. The longest path is your critical path. There are a few factors that can impact
capacity and capacity planning. First you need to be able to identify
which task can happen in parallel, which means they can happen at
the same time as other tasks. You will also need to identify
which tasks can happen sequentially, meaning they must happen
in a specific order. When you identify which task
can happen in parallel, it helps you create efficiencies
within your project schedule, by demonstrating where you can complete
multiple tasks at the same time. Identifying sequential tasks helps you identify the tasks that you need
to prioritize early on in the project. For example, a sequential task for
your Plant Pals project may include needing budget
approval before hiring a vendor. And two parallel tasks might include
hiring delivery drivers and the development of a website. These tasks have no
relationship to one another, as they focus on different
portions of the project, and can be completed by different
members of the team. That means that one task can begin even
if the other task hasn’t been completed, and so the work to complete these
tasks can happen at the same time. You also need to determine which
project tasks have a fixed start date. A fixed start date refers to the date on
which you must start work on your task in order to achieve your goal. Identifying whether or not your tasks have a fixed start date
can help with capacity planning because it helps ensure that you’ll have
the right number of people available to complete tasks on time. For example, let’s imagine that your
contract says you’ll need to deliver 100 plants on a specific date. That means that the task of picking up
those plants has a fixed start day of one day prior to delivery. Alternatively, some tasks might
have an earliest start date. An earliest start date refers to
the earliest date in which you can begin working on a task. Identifying an earliest start date can set
accurate expectations for when vendors and team members will be up and
running on the project. This can help you plan your work and
prioritize your work accordingly. For example,
if you’re working with a new vendor, you need to wait until
contracts are signed and the purchase order is approved and
created before the vendor can start. Let’s say that at Office Green this
process can take about three weeks. Based on this information, you can
determine that the earliest start date for your vendor will be three weeks from
the kick off meeting with your vendor. Another best practice for capacity
planning and creating a critical path includes identifying if a task has
float, also sometimes known as slack. Float refers to the amount of time you can
wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule and
threatens the project outcome. These are high priority tasks
that have low to no wiggle room. This helps reinforce what is and
what is not on your critical path. For instance, tasks on the critical
path should have zero float, meaning there is no room for delays. And tasks that do have float are not
a part of the critical path. For example, the shipment of plants
to a priority customer who has requested their delivery on a specific
date is a task that has zero float. Great, you’ve now learned a bit
more about how to define capacity, capacity planning, and critical path. We also discussed the techniques used to
identify critical path in a project and the various factors that can impact
capacity and capacity planning. In the next video, we’ll continue learning how to create
viable estimates in a project plan. You will also find out how your soft
skills can help the effectiveness of your team. Meet you there.

Hi again. Ready to get
back into it? Let’s go. Time estimation,
effort estimation, and capacity planning are all helpful techniques for creating
your project schedule. At the center of all this
planning is your team. Throughout the
schedule-planning process, you’re working with teammates to gather estimates,
and you’re taking into account each
person’s capacity when building the
project schedule. It makes sense to involve
your teammates at this stage. After all, the person assigned to the given
task is likely to have the best sense of how long it will take to
complete that task. They’ll also have
the best sense of their own capacity for
taking on the work. But these conversations are a two-way discussion, and
you’ll need to tap into your soft skills to get the most accurate
estimate from your team. Soft skills are personal
characteristics that help people work
effectively with others. These include crucial communication and
interpersonal skills we’ve discussed over the
course of this program. Soft skills can be important
when trying to understand what might be blocking
someone’s ability to do their best work. Let’s go over three ways to use soft skills and gather accurate estimates
from your teammates. These are asking the
right questions, negotiating effectively,
and practicing empathy. Let’s start with asking
the right questions. Think of conversations around the time estimation
as a kind of interview. You’re connecting with your
teammates to learn more about how they work
on specific tasks, and you’ll use this information
to build your schedule. To aim to get the most
relevant information from these conversations, you’ll want to be certain
that you’re asking effective, open-ended questions that lead to the answers you’re seeking. An open-ended question
is a question that cannot be answered
with a yes or a no. The answer provides
the relevant details of what you need to know. Let’s imagine this in the context of your
project at Office Green. You’ve discussed the design
of the new website with your web designer, and
you’d like to know how long it will take them to mock up designs for your review. Now let’s say you start the conversation by
asking a question like, can you complete the
mock-ups in one week? This is a closed-ended question and might elicit a simple
yes or no answer, which doesn’t tell you much
about the task of designing a website or about your
teammate’s working style. Now, imagine if you had started this conversation with
an open-ended question. For example, you might ask the web designer
something like, how long does it
typically take you to mock up a website
design like this one? This is an open-ended
question and is more likely to elicit a more
detailed response. From there, you can ask
follow up questions like, how complex are the steps
to complete this task? What are the risks
associated with this task? And, when do you think you
can have this ready? By asking your
teammates effective, open-ended questions about
their assigned tasks, you can learn more about how
they work and what they do. As you have more of
these conversations, you will develop
a better sense of your teammates roles
and their tasks, and you will be able
to rely less on your team to make
accurate estimates. Another way to use soft
skills to gather estimates from teammates is to
negotiate effectively. Part of your job as
the project manager is to bridge the gap between high-level goals of the project and the day-to-day
perspective of your team. While your project might
be your number one priority, it’s possible that people
on your project team have competing priorities
on other teams to keep track of, as well. Negotiating effectively
can help you influence a team member to make your
project their priority, by collaborating to find an outcome that
works for everyone. For example, let’s imagine
that the website designer estimates it will take them two weeks to mock up the
website design for review. But perhaps you were hoping that the estimate might be
closer to one week. To arrive at an
estimate that works for both you and the designer, you might gently challenge the estimate by asking
follow-up questions. Perhaps you’d ask if
their estimate includes mocking up designs
for multiple pages. If so, you might ask if the
designer is able to share one or two pages with you sooner than their
proposed deadline. By asking questions, you can determine if their
estimate is flexible, or if you need to bring in an additional designer
to support the schedule. By negotiating effectively
with your teammates, you can create a sense
of shared ownership over the project outcomes and create a schedule that aligns
with everyone’s workload. Now let’s discuss the value
of practicing empathy. Empathy refers to a
person’s ability to relate to the thoughts
and feelings of others. Practicing empathy at work can be a very effective way to
build trust with your team. Your teammates are humans, and each person can
only do so much. When you’re discussing
estimates with the team, you might practice empathy by asking each person
about their workload, including work outside of your project and the
overall work-life balance. You might also ask if they’ve scheduled vacation or leave during the duration
of the project, or if there are crucial holidays in which they won’t be working. This can help you
avoid assigning tasks when teammates are unable
to complete them on time. For example, the web
designer might tell you that they’re also designing a website for another team at Office Green, and that the timeline for
both projects overlap. So, to avoid overloading
your designer with work, you might work with the
other project manager to balance workloads
across the teams. People like to feel
their work is valued, so part of empathy
is remembering to always be appreciative
of the work, collaboration, and support that you’re getting from the team. So, to recap, asking the
right questions, negotiating effectively, and practicing empathy
can help you get viable, accurate estimates from your teammates about
project tasks. Coming up, we will
discuss putting these estimates to good
use in the project plan.

Hi, my name is Angel, and I’m
a Program Manager at Google. I’m a mechanical
engineer by degree. My first boss out of school
said, “You’re an okay engineer, but your people skills
are off the charts.” Having a technical background and having really good people
skills is hard to find. Soft skills to me have a lot to do with
emotional intelligence—being able to read other people and then ultimately really
knowing yourself—and being able to read the team, read what they need, but then at the same time, what am I doing? Either influencing the
team in a good way, in a bad way, or just
a different way. Just asking, sometimes,
people that don’t usually raise their hand to give
input goes a long way, because a lot of times the folks that are maybe a little
more quiet are genuinely thinking about the
problem and may have a lot of insights that if you didn’t catch on that or ask
them, you could miss out. And so, to me, soft skills just means, just really understanding the emotional needs of the team. That can really help with, whether it’s
estimations or costs, whether it be labor
or dollar-wise, get the full view from the team of what that
might look like. When it comes to task estimation
and time estimations, the other thing is just
asking good questions. Not just, “I need
you to go faster,” but really saying, “Hey, how much faster could you
go if I gave you this? What is stopping you
from going faster? What teams would you need to get involved to help this?” or “Hey, we have an issue, are there similar issues in
other parts of this project, and do we need to get together in a larger group to
bring that together?” I think as a Program
Manager that’s really your role is to see
patterns in a project and see where things are either slowing down or at
a complete stop, and having those soft
skills to be able to bring the team together
to solve that problem, and to even just see it. Just to acknowledge that there is a problem, and instead of blaming is really just digging in, and how do
we learn from this? How do we fix this?
How do we move on? Some of the things
that also help is just relating to
your team members. If you’ve either been
in a similar situation or just trying to understand
what their process is. Sometimes just having people walk through the estimate out loud can sometimes come up
with realizations of, we can save more time or could improve this
just by talking it out. I’ve been a Project Manager for machines that make labels
to locomotive engines to how you make plywood. Project management skills
don’t necessarily need to be all about the
field that you’re in. It’s really more
about the method and the process and how you structure a team and get
people to work together.

Using Time Estimation to Prevent Project Failure: Building a Project Plan Tutorial

Feeling overwhelmed by project deadlines? Fear not! This tutorial will guide you through building a rock-solid project plan using time estimation techniques, preventing project failure and keeping you on track for success.

Step 1: Gather Your Tools

Before diving in, equip yourself with the right tools:

• Time Estimation Methods: Recall methods like Expert Judgment, Analogous Estimation, and Parametric Estimation explored in previous videos. Choose the most suitable method for your project.
• Project Management Software: Consider free options like Asana or Trello, or paid options like Microsoft Project or Wrike. Spreadsheets work too!
• Communication Channels: Define how you’ll communicate updates, roadblocks, and progress within your team (e.g., email, messaging platforms).

Step 2: Break Down Your Project

Imagine your project as a giant LEGO set. Now, break it down into smaller, manageable tasks:

1. Identify Deliverables: What are the key outputs of your project? Milestones within the project?
2. Decompose Tasks: For each deliverable, list individual tasks required to achieve it. Be as granular as possible.
3. Estimate Durations: Apply your chosen time estimation method to each task. Consider dependencies between tasks.

Step 3: Build Your Project Schedule

Time to assemble your LEGO project! Choose your preferred tool:

• Gantt Chart: Visualize tasks as horizontal bars, representing start/end dates and durations. Great for timelines and dependencies.
• Kanban Board: Use cards to represent tasks, moving them across stages like “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” Ideal for agile projects and visualizing workflow.
• Spreadsheet: Create a table with tasks, owners, start/end dates, durations, and progress. Flexible and easily customizable.

Step 4: Integrate Time Estimation

• Effort: Translate estimated durations into person-hours or person-days for each task.
• Resource Allocation: Assign tasks to team members based on their skills and availability. Consider workload balance.
• Buffer Time: Add buffer periods (10-20%) to account for unforeseen delays or challenges.

Step 5: Refine and Communicate

Your project plan isn’t set in stone!

• Get Feedback: Share your plan with stakeholders and team members for feedback and buy-in.
• Iterate and Adapt: Revise your plan based on feedback, adjusting task durations, dependencies, or resource allocation.
• Communicate Regularly: Keep everyone informed about progress, updates, and potential roadblocks. Use your chosen communication channels effectively.

Bonus Tips:

• Track Progress: Monitor your plan regularly, comparing actual progress to estimated durations. Adjust as needed.
• Embrace Flexibility: Unexpected things happen! Be prepared to adapt your plan and react to changes effectively.
• Celebrate Successes: Acknowledge milestones and achievements to keep team morale high.

Remember: Building a project plan is an ongoing process. By using time estimation effectively, you’ll create a roadmap for success, navigate challenges proactively, and deliver projects on time and within budget. Now go forth and conquer your project goals!

Why do people working in project management find a Gantt chart useful? Select all that apply.

It presents clear breakdowns of who is responsible for work and when those tasks are due.

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that offers an overview of the project schedule. This visual format makes it easy to understand what team members need to do and when. It also helps clarify how an individual team member’s tasks connect to other project tasks.

It offers a highly visual representation of project tasks.

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that maps out a project schedule. Gantt charts display a highly visual representation of project tasks, who is responsible for what work, and when tasks are due.

Hi again. In the previous videos, we took you through a few
different time estimation methods. Now you can relate how to
use time estimation methods to prevent project failure. Let’s discuss how to pull all of
this information into a project plan to help you and your team stay
on track to meet your goals. Even the simplest projects can benefit
from a clear plan, and an anchor of a good project plan is a clear schedule
containing all the tasks of a project, their owners, and
when they need to be completed. Once you have your project schedule,
you can build a solid plan around that schedule using tools like
spreadsheets and Asana. We’ll explain these
tools in a few moments. But first,
let’s discuss building a project schedule. There are many helpful tools that you
can use to create a project schedule, but let’s focus on one that we sometimes use
here at Google called a Gantt chart. A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart
that maps out a project schedule. Fun fact: the chart gets its name
from American engineer, Henry Gantt, who helped popularize
the chart in the early 1900s. So, why did people working in project
management find this chart useful? Well, it’s a highly visual
representation of a projects tasks with clear breakdowns of who’s responsible
for the work and when those tasks are due. For many people, a visual aid that builds
upon written directions can be a helpful way to understand and synthesize the work
they need to do, when they need to complete it,
and how their individual tasks connect to the other tasks in a project. Gantt charts are almost like calendars. They feature the start and
end dates of each task, and the bars align with how much time
is devoted to each of those tasks. For example,
let’s say that your teammate, Leon, is tasked with creating a project
charter and another teammate, Kylie, is tasked with reviewing and
editing the charter when Leon is finished. Using a Gantt chart, you’ll use colored
bars to illustrate the days that they’ll be working on these tasks. With this method, you and the rest of your team can determine
that Leon has Friday, Monday, and Tuesday to work on the chart, and Kylie
has Wednesday to complete any revisions. The bars cascade down to
illustrate the passing of time and the blocks of time in which
the tasks are completed. Gantt charts can be a helpful tool for
tracking schedules, but what kinds of tools can you
use to make a Gantt chart? There are a few options, but we’re going
to focus on a straightforward spreadsheet. Creating a Gantt chart in
a spreadsheet is pretty simple. You can organize your left columns by
items like task title, task owner, start date, due date, duration,
and percent of task complete. This is a great place
to list the tasks and milestones previously identified
in a work breakdown structure. You’ll include relevant information in
the rows below, organized by start date. On the right side of your sheet,
you’ll order your columns by the weeks estimated to complete the project
from start to finish. In the rows below that, you’ll include bars representing the dates
when certain tasks will take place. Kind of neat, right? Spreadsheets are helpful here, because they can hold more information
than just the Gantt chart. Though the project schedule serves as
the central component of the project plan, you can use separate tabs on
your spreadsheet to house or link to other documents you
want to include in your plan, like a RACI chart or a project charter. You may also opt to include your plans for risk management and
communication here too. With a spreadsheet, you can simply
add a tab for your documents. Keeping every document for
the project in one spreadsheet saves time, helps everyone stay organized, and reduces the burden of having to search
through emails for information. Alternatively, you can also opt to use
a digital document to link out all the relevant documents. While Gantt charts are a useful tool,
they are far from the only option for your project plan, and there are plenty
of reasons why this form of documentation might not work for you or
your project team. For a simple project, you might find that
your team responds better to a digital document that features a list of tables or
tasks, their owners, due dates, and links to other relevant planning documents. Or perhaps your team works
best with Kanban boards, which uses cards to track and visualize the progress of your tasks. Regardless of your chosen tool,
if your plan includes the project’s goals, its tasks, owners, start and end dates, and relevant planning documentation, then you’ll be able to keep
everyone on the same page. Now you know a bit more about the tools
that can be used to create a project schedule. Up next, we’ll discuss best practices for
building a project plan. Meet you in the next video.

Building a Great Project Plan: 5 Best Practices Tutorial

Ready to craft a project plan that sets your team up for success? This tutorial dives into five key practices to ensure your plan remains valuable throughout the project journey.

Step 1: Break Down the Big Picture

1. Review Deliverables & Milestones: Recall your project charter’s goals and deliverables. Now, dissect them! For example, a new website becomes milestones like “web dev kickoff meeting” and “stakeholder approval on design.”
2. Task It Out: Each milestone crumbles into smaller tasks like “mockup website design” and “develop landing page.” Assign tasks to team members with clear start/end dates. Remember, every deliverable requires this breakdown!

Step 2: Plan Wisely, Plan Thoroughly

1. Embrace the Planning Phase: Don’t underestimate the importance of dedicated planning time, especially for complex projects. It allows for realistic assessment of your team’s capacity and workload.
2. Be Realistic: You and your team aren’t superhuman. Utilize time estimation methods to understand project duration and milestone deadlines. Don’t forget buffer time for unexpected hiccups!

Step 3: Expect the Bumps in the Road

1. Anticipate the Inevitable: Even the best plans encounter roadblocks. Identify potential risks (e.g., vendor delays) and brainstorm mitigation strategies. Buffer time becomes your ally again!
2. Embrace Risk Management: Learn more about creating a risk management plan later in this course. It’s an essential tool for proactive problem-solving.

Step 4: Curiosity is Your Ally

1. Tap into Team Expertise: You aren’t an island! Ask your team questions about their tasks and any challenges they foresee. Their insights strengthen your plan and build trust.
2. Understand Your Stakeholders: Don’t forget about stakeholders! Ask about their communication preferences and expectations. Understanding their needs ensures smooth information flow.

Step 5: Champion Your Plan for Success

1. Accessibility is Key: Choose a planning tool that everyone can use comfortably. Ensure information is clear and readily available for both your team and stakeholders.
2. Become a Plan Evangelist: Explain the benefits of following the plan to your team. Encourage regular updates and adherence to keep everyone on track. Remember, a plan gathering dust isn’t helpful!

Bonus Tip: Remember, your plan is a living document. Be prepared to adapt and adjust as needed throughout the project lifecycle.

By following these best practices, you’ll empower your team with a clear roadmap to project success. Now go forth and conquer those project goals!

Which strategies can help your team get a realistic sense of how long the project will take? Select all that apply.

Capacity planning

It’s important to assess what the team can and cannot accomplish within a certain time frame. That’s where effort estimation and capacity planning can help. These strategies offer the team a sense of how long a project will take and when the team will reach its milestones.

Effort estimation

When creating a project plan, it’s important to get a sense of how long the project will take. To do that, project managers use effort estimation and capacity planning. These strategies help the team understand project duration and when they will reach project milestones.

Hi again. Earlier, you learned about
creating a project plan based on a project schedule that lists all of the milestones,
tasks, and deadlines for the project and that clearly outlines the people
responsible for each task. You also learned about Gantt charts, which
are simple visual ways to create your schedule. So, how can you help make sure that
your plan works for you and your team? Let’s discuss five best practices for
building a great project plan that will remain useful throughout the execution and
closing phases of your project. Those include: ensuring careful review
of project deliverables, milestones,
and tasks; giving yourself time to plan; recognizing and planning for
the inevitable (things will go wrong); staying curious; and championing your plan. First, you’ll want to ensure that
you’ve carefully reviewed the project’s deliverables, milestones, and tasks. During the initiation phase, you’ll
recall that you created a project charter with important information
regarding your project, like your goal, scope, and deliverables. When a project enters the planning phase,
your plans become more granular. Let’s discuss this in the context
of your project at Office Green. In your plan, you need to break
this information down further. You’re creating a new website for
the service, so you’ll need to break that deliverable
down into smaller milestones, like kicking off a meeting
with the web developer and gaining stakeholder approval. And those milestones will
break down into smaller tasks, like mocking up a design of a new
website and developing a landing page. Each of these tasks will be assigned to
a teammate and given a start
and end date. Now, a new website isn’t the only
Project Plant Pals deliverable. You’ll need to break down every
deliverable into milestones and tasks to ensure that you and your team have a clear picture of what needs to be done to meet your project’s goals. Your plan revolves around completing
each and every tiny task, so you should take your time
to get this piece right. This brings me to my second tip:
give yourself time to plan. There’s a reason that planning is its
own phase of the project life cycle. It’s a time-intensive process,
especially for larger projects with
multiple deliverables. Planning gives you and your team
some time to think realistically about what your team can and cannot
accomplish within a certain time frame. You’re not a machine, and
neither are your teammates. There are limits to the amount of work any one person can do
in a given time frame. Using the strategies that we’ve shared
earlier, like effort estimation and capacity planning, can help you and your team get a realistic
sense of how long the project will take and when you’ll be able
to hit your milestones. It’s also important to allow for buffer time, since projects
rarely go exactly as planned. Later in the project, you’ll be
grateful that you initially planned for some built-in flexibility around timing. That leads nicely into my third tip: recognize and plan for
the inevitable—things will go wrong. Even with thorough planning,
your projects will still experience unexpected setbacks and
bumps in the road. You can’t plan for every problem, but
the team can identify the risks that will most likely occur and create plans
to prevent or mitigate those risks. As we mentioned before,
buffer is a helpful tool for mitigating issues related
to slowdowns in progress. You’ll learn more about how
to create a risk management plan that goes into your project
plan later on in this course. On to my fourth tip: stay curious. Though you may be the sole expert
on your project overall, it’s extremely unlikely that you’re
an expert on every task of the project. That’s why it’s so important to sit down
with your teammates during a planning phase and ask lots and lots of questions. As we mentioned earlier, asking your
teammates questions about their work can give you deeper insights into
their tasks for the project. Their input will help you
build a stronger plan, and the back and forth dialogue will
help you build trust between you and your teammates. To keep the project running smoothly, it’s also important to understand
the expectations, priorities, risk assessments, and communication
styles of your stakeholders and vendors. For example, you might ask stakeholders
how to best keep them in the loop on the project’s plans, and you might ask your vendors about
their availability to complete work for the project. Now onto my fifth tip: champion your plan. While deciding how to organize your plan, you’ll want to ask
yourself a few questions. Like, can your teammates use the tool
you used to build your plan? Is the information clear enough for
your stakeholders? Will using this plan as a single
source of truth save your team and stakeholders the time and energy when they
need to find information on the project? If the answer to each of these
questions is a strong yes, then you’re on the right track. To achieve buy-in from your teammates and stakeholders on your
project plan, champion it! Tell your team why it benefits
them to stay on top of the plan. By doing so, you may influence your
teammates to stay on track and update the plan regularly. So to recap,
you can set your project plan up for success if you review your deliverables,
milestones, and tasks; give yourself time to plan; prepare for things to go wrong; stay curious; and
champion your plan once it’s finalized. Coming up, we’ll recap what you’ve
learned over the past few videos. See you there.

Nice work! Let’s recap
what we’ve just covered. First, we took you
through why it’s necessary to create and
manage a project plan. At the center of the project
plan is a project schedule, and we discussed methods
for determining realistic time and effort
estimates for each task. You also learned more about the power of soft skills to help you gather time and
effort estimates from members of your team. We also introduced
you to a Gantt chart, which is a useful tool for visualizing a project schedule. And, I shared my best practices for creating a project plan
that will serve as a useful source of
information throughout the planning phase
and execution phase. Coming up, we’ll take you through managing costs and
budgets. See you soon.