Project Plan

The Project Plan provides an overview of the whole project. It sets out the tasks, timescales and costs associated with each phase. It is used by the Project Manager to assist in the day to day running of the project, and the Project Sponsor and Board to monitor costs and progress, so it should be updated at the end of each stage to reflect progress and any agreed changes. Make sure that when you change the plan it is reflected by updaing the business case, and any impacts are recorded.

 

In many cases, the Project Plan will consist of a Gantt chart showing the tasks that need to be completed and their interdependencies. But there should also be some additional documentation covering costs and noting where changes have occurred.

 

SCC doesn't have one specific project planning software, each project should be considered individually to decide on the best way of managing the plan.

 

A copy of the first Project Plan should be saved as a baseline so that it can be compared against later revisions in order to see if any lessons can be learned.  This will also be come part of the baselined Project Initiation Document.

 

The tasks that you have broken the project down into above will represent stages in the project's delivery. These may require an additional level of planning, the next stage introduces Stage Plans and discusses project stages in more detail.