Stage Plan & Work Packages

A project is often broken down into more manageable stages, and where necessary further divided into work packages. Each stage will have its own targets, activities and deadlines so these should be planned so that you know what you want to achieve by their end.

 

Where one stage ends and another begins is dependent on the project itself and where the Project Manager decides the divisions should be. There are no rules on where the Project Manager should put these divisions, but a common sense approach is to put them at decision points in the delivery of the project. As an example, if you were building a house you may use the following stages:

 

 

Breaking the project down into stages presents an opportunity to reflect on the developments during the previous stage before making the decision to proceed onto the next. For example, after clearing the site, a surprise discovery may mean that it is unsuitable to build on, or whilst the foundations are being laid an emergency occurs that means the money you had put aside to build the house is no longer available. The benefit of stage planning is that you have set milestones at which you can make these decisions rather than allowing yourself to get caught up in the flow of the project and not having opportunity to reflect on if it makes sense to continue.

 

On larger projects it often makes sense to break the project down even further into work packages. Work Packages are pieces of work that make up the larger stage. These can then be delegated to someone else to deliver and they can report back when the work package is complete. From the example above, finding & purchasing the site can be broken down into:

 

 

Splitting the project down further identifies that the work package of “surveying the site” can be delegated to a qualified surveyor. Here, you give the surveyor instructions and they report back to you on the suitability of the site.

 

The next section introduces a different kind of plan, the Quality Plan.