What is a Project Management Plan? | Explained in 11 Minutes

project management plan explained in less than 15 minutes in this video I'll walk you through what a project management plan is and why it's so important let's get into it so a project management plan think of this as a master plan that a project manager uses

to drive a project from start to completion this master plan it's made up of a bunch of smaller plans that covers all the important aspects of a project so think about your timing your cost your resources so on and so forth you

can think of this plan almost like a really detailed recipe just like a baker needs precise measurements ingredients and timing in order to make a great cake a project manager uses the project management plan to prep organize and

track all the moving parts of a project to ensure that it's being delivered successfully so when do you create the project management plan this plan is created during the planning phase of a project why is the project management plan such a big deal well short answer

is projects are really complex often times projects involve a lot of people a lot of moving parts and they can be really Capital intense meaning you're investing a lot of money in order to get the project done because resources and finance are typically a limitation

that's why the project manager role exists it's an order to drive these projects to completion within a certain budget within a certain timeline and the the onus is on the project manager to ensure it's being delivered successfully so as you can imagine once a project is up and running things can get pretty

hectic and that's why it's so important to invest the time to create a project management Plan before you start a project so having this plan mapped out it serves a number of key functions number one is alignment you create this plan before starting a project to ensure

that everyone who is involved is on the same page alignment is is really critical because it helps with expectation setting it helps to ensure that folks are bought in and it gives you the platform and the opportunity to ensure that everyone is on the same page

so whether it be the timing of the project the total budget that you're given or you know the folks who need to be involved it's really important that you discuss these things before a project is up and running it's always easier to make adjustments before you start a project number two is it really

helps with visibility if a plan is documented it's something that you can refer back on many times projects can be really long projects can last years to complete and if the end result is something that you're delivering in 3 years how will your clients know and

ensure that you're on track well having a detailed plan it helps to alleviate some of these concerns it allows you to map out many Milestones or certain deliverables that you will be presenting and showing progress to your clients the more visibility you get with your

project management plan the better alignment you'll get as well so it goes hand inand with Point number one if escalations happen if folks get off track it's a great tool to use to refocus and to realign your teams and number three the plan helps with organization as well as you can imagine

projects are really complex for example let's say your goal is to open three new bakeries across the United States so three Net new shops what does that entail well you need to find the right space right so finding the right

foundation for you to run your business then after you find the space you likely will need to make some alterations to make it viable for your bakery then you'll need to find all these vendors so you can get your ingredients you'll need to find the Staffing if you haven't done

that already needless to say opening a bakery in three different locations that can be a very complex project that involves a lot of people a lot of time and there's a lot of considerations that you'll need to make point being is it's really important as

a project manager that you stay organized the project management plan is intended to help you with that so now that we've gone over what a project management plan is let's go over some of the key aspects that it contains so every project management plan should have a title a project description and

includes the project Charter that was aligned on from the start if you don't know what a project Charter is I made a really quick 4minute video that covers everything you need to know about it I'll link it right here basically a project Charter is a formal document that your executive stakeholders align

on hting why a project is up and running what are the goals and who will be responsible and involved with every project it's important to know who your stakeholders are your stakeholders can come in many shapes and forms your executive sponsors are the ones who

you'll be providing updates to your project team members they're the folks with their boots on the ground they're the folks who may be getting the work done getting the project to completion these are folks who you'll likely interface with and check in on it's important to have a stakeholder engagement plan in place you can think

of the stakeholder engagement plan kind of like a Scouting Report when you have a top athlete is performing if you're on the opposing team you likely want to know what their strengths are what their weaknesses are with the stakeholder engagement plan it's very similar you're mapping out the involvement of the

stakeholder what they're buying is what their role or function is and how to escalate to them as needed it's understanding more about who is the stakeholder that you're working with and the best way to work with them with every project it's important to know your scope scope being what exactly will

be performed and completed within this project the scope can be seen from a really high level View and when you break it down further you can break it down to many milestones in which we call the work breakdown structure having a well-defined scope allows you to know

what are the key many deliverables that you'll need to achieve in order to reach that greater goal in our example with the bakery if we need to create three bakeries three separate locations what we'll need to do is number one we'll need to make sure that we have the right

foundation to set up the infrastructure right we need to make sure that we have the right vendors in place to ensure we're getting the highest of quality ingredients for our bake jop probably need to kick out some job ads if we don't have folks already hired or lined up in order to run these bakeries these

are all the things all these many key deliverables and outcomes that we'll need to have in order to reach our goal of having successful bake shops once you define your scope and you understand what your Milestones are it becomes a lot easier to manage the schedule the

schedule management plan is intended to help you track and to ensure the project is being completed on time so if your manyi Milestones are making sure that the bakery is built making sure that you have the right folks hired and that you have the ingredients and the equipment

that you'll need especially when projects have multiple moving Parts there are things that can be done in parallel there are other things that may have dependencies so we of course need the foundation the bakery we need to make sure we have space for our Bakery first before we can do all the

alterations and make it custom to our Bakery having a great schedule management plan allows you to think in advance about the the things that you get done in parallel and the things that have dependencies some other really important considerations are to have a

cost management plan a resource management plan and a quality management plan as well no surprise cost is really important you want to make sure that you're delivering your projects under the allotted budget having a resource management plan allows you to start

thinking about how your Staffing and how your project team members will be involved and where their focus will be on throughout the project with resource verus it's important to also think about procurements so this can mean working with any third party vendors or any outside services that will be performing

tasks for you with every project quality is so important if one of our key deliverables was to have a bake shop up and running and we were serving burnt cookies how successful would we be probably not really successful right if

our end product is a burnt cookie something went wrong and something was missed that's why having a great quality management plan is so important quality is really important because the end deliverable doesn't matter if it doesn't meet the expectations of what you and your clients lined on the quality

management plan ensures that you have many Milestones or checkpoints to ensure that the project that you're completing is being done to the caliber and the quality of what's expected with every project it's important that you communicate and have a communication

management plan everyone has different St styles of communication some folks are super responsive in person other folks can be really hard to reach via email via phone via text it's important to understand how your team operates how

your clients operate and to align early on on a communication management plan that works for everyone and last but not least of course there are many other considerations but just at a high level having a risk management plan is really important so why is having a risk

management plan important no matter how much preparation you put into a plan things never go 100% according to plan that's just how the world works when you start noticing things arise that could derail or put the project off track it's

important to know how you can be proactive with your teams to avoid these risks from becoming actual issues and that's the sole purpose of the risk management plan is to ensure that you have a plan in place with your teams on how to identify risks on how to navigate

through them how to triage them and how to put them out before a spark becomes a fire so to recap having a project management plan is so important it allows you to think really deeply about all the dependencies everything that a

project entails and allows you to start thinking ahead about how you can best prepare you and your teams to successfully deliver the prodject it serves as a blueprint and the foundation for you to build off of it's a great reference tool to ensure that your teams and your clients are aligned and overall

it's one of many project management strategies and tools to ensure that you're delivering projects successfully I promise you the investment is worth the effort and it pays dividends thank you so much for watching I hope you found this video both informative and

helpful as always drop a like comment below if you have any questions and we'll catch you all in the next video