Paul Heffernan - project planning

If we’re talking about project planning, it starts at the point when someone decides there is a project – that there is a need for a project. So at that point someone, whether it is the client initially or the project manager, whoever is responsible for the project has to work out what is involved and what to do next.
So in the first phase, the planning process may be simply to say “well the only way we’re going to get work under way is to start to work out how much it’s going to cost, how long it might take.” At that point it may be very sketchy but there’s then a process of refining that planning until you get to a point when you’re able to implement, but that’s going to change even once you’re implementing

In most methodologies you end up with some kind of planning document that defines how you will run the project. The reason it has to be clear is because each individual has to understand what their role is in the project. It isn’t fixed, it will evolve over time. It may evolve over time simply because you understand the people in the team better as you go along. You know, you’ll find that someone who is actually responsible for one thing is in a great position to share responsibility for something else. It’s that starting point when you simply say “what do I need to deliver this project? How am I going to configure it and what does that mean in terms of what individuals are going to do and what they’re going to need to tell other people.”

Having said that projects are involved novelty, there’s an element of the unknown. Then inevitably you have to try and find a way of managing that.
Risk assessment is fundamental to this because what it’s really about is saying “What do you think might go wrong with this project? What are the things that could stop us from achieving what we want to do? What are the obstacles?” And that in itself, it can be a very negative process. So the really positive part, the thing that a project manager has to do is to say “okay, I’ve established what might stop me from doing this project, what am I going to do about it? What can I do to mitigate the impact of these obstacles?”

Planning is a proses not a phase. It doesn’t stop. Planning continues -- planning continues because you continue to get more information. All the way through the project you know more, so at any given stage there’s still an awful lot of the unknown ahead of you. So the idea of saying what you sketched out at the beginning of the project as being your plan, when you knew a lot less. It’s unlikely to be the thing finally delivered, so you have to keep re-visiting partly because things change, but also because you know more and you’ve got better information.