Top 5 Secrets Of Project Planning For Project Managers!

Project Planning takes time and effort but becomes a necessity for a project’s success. It also guides sponsors, stakeholders, Project Managers, and teams throughout the project phase.

Identifying risks before it turns into a crisis has become critical.

Clearly, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail… Ironical, isn’t it?

Usually, Project Managers rush the planning phase in a struggle to execute the project deliverables.

What are the Benefits of Project Planning?

1. Project Planning needs Goal Setting

A plan without goals is synonymous with a business without a vision.

Setting goals will help your team members establish a reliable benchmark to evaluate the progress of their contributions. You won’t need to waste time on tasks that do not support the goals.

If there are any conflicts about project deliverables during the process, you can remind your stakeholders and customers of the agreed-upon goals, which can possibly prevent scope creep.

What types of goals must a project plan include?

Realistic and Specific: Vague goals bring no outcome in the entire project phase. This is exactly why setting goals that are achievable can help in setting future milestones.

Measurable: Aimlessly completing tasks without a measurable goal with an end will only drain you out. The number one reason for burnout is when managers don’t know where to put an end to a specific goal.

Time-sensitive: Make time-bound tasks and goals to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Managers need to analyze the amount of time spent per task pertaining to a goal.

Orangescrum all-purpose time tracker automatically tracks time-based on every team member’s activity and task completion.

2. Planning reduces Potential risks

Consider this a red flag when the risks outweigh the scope of your project.

If your project stands on the edge of a cliff, your project is bound to fall.

Companies usually evaluate risk checklists based on their experience from past projects.

Some of the potential risks (without a project plan) can point out to:

• Cost
• Contractual
• Technical
• Financial
• Schedule
• Resources

Good projects fail when there’s no contingency plan in place. This plan is built during the project planning phase.

It’s nearly difficult to create new technologies, developing recommendations and partial solutions.

How to handle risks involved in Project?

Managers use project plans, budgets, and timelines, to curb execution risk.

“A risk mitigation plan is designed to eliminate or minimize the impact of the event.”

Risks always play like invisible background noise.

Effective planning can reduce potential risks by mitigating them into smaller tasks and further into milestones.

3. Identifies Future Bottlenecks

Bottlenecks can occur during any stage of a project that can reduce the pace of a project. It’s especially scary when you’re running behind a schedule.

The major harms caused by bottlenecks range from—

Work backlog, lower productivity levels, reduced team morale, loss of revenue.

Identifying bottlenecks is the first step in getting your project moving.

Bottlenecks can be a nightmare for a Project Manager.

The work stage within a project that stalls and holds up

4. Helps in planning Project Milestones

Strategic implementation in project planning is possible when milestones are planned.

Project Managers place Project planning importance on milestones help to a great extent.

Milestones track the achievements of a project phase at each stage.

Some of the key milestones in project planning help in-

• Project phases – Start and end dates.
• Task deliveries.
• Stakeholder approvals.
• Important meetings and presentations.
• Key dates.
• Outages that may impact your timeline.

 5. Reducing Project Failure Rates

Planning in Project Management is critical for reducing the percentage of failures. During the project planning phase, expectations are set along with identifying assumptions.

It’s possible that something can slip between the cracks, and a project team will miss important details, deadlines, and deliverables.

How to become a great Project Planner?

Does your project align with business objectives at large?

Do you plan on winning or risking an outcome?

Small margins can make a big impact if a project fails!

A great project planner ensures the start and endpoint of the project involves all aspects such as tasks, deliverables, milestones, resources, and costs.

• Brainstorm resource planning to complete each task.
• Make your project schedule as transparent as possible to plan ahead of time for managing risks.
• Make sure you get a clear vision of the end goals to break them down. Identify the tasks.

Project Planning with Orangescrum

Every minute spent on a work plan saves time and effort during the execution.

Schedule projects with transparency and get the most out of your efforts with Orangescrum – Project Management software loved by Project Managers!

Let’s get started!