Aug
29
2013
Project management: developing your project plan
In order to develop your project plan and get a meaningful idea of what has to be done by when, it is important to break the project down into meaningful parts. You can break the project down into the activities required within each stage - initiation, planning, implementation, closure etc. Alternatively, you can analyse the project into different kinds of activity and then break each of these down separately.
Three processes which may help you in thinking through the various stages of your project, in outline and in detail are mindmapping, taskboarding and storyboarding.
Mindmapping
There are different ways to undertake mind mapping and the best descriptions are given in the books of the man who invented them, Tony Buzan. I've described below the method I use. It doesn't follow all of Tony Buzan's ‘rules' but it is simple and works for most people!
Take a large piece of paper. Put the main heading for your project in the middle. From this think of all the things that will have to happen in order to make the project work - write each of these down, drawing lines to connect each to the project and, where appropriate, to each other. As you think of each activity, new ideas will occur to you. If these are directly linked to something already on your paper, write them in showing the link. If they are new ideas, write them in showing the link directly to the project. Lots of your ideas will be linked to several other ideas producing lines going in every direction. Try not to get too worried about the process in this exercise but let your mind go and simply write everything down as you think of it, drawing the links as you perceive them.
This exercise is particularly useful when undertaken in a group, perhaps by the project team. Get the group to shout out the different ideas and links and keep busy at the flipchart, writing down the tasks and drawing the lines. The idea is to open your minds to new possibilities and help you think through all the possibilities.
When you break your project down into components or stages, your mind map will be helpful in showing the various ways in which the different activities must link together.
Example mind map:
Storyboarding
This is a technique used in making television advertisements. The copywriter designs the ‘story' of the advert in a series of drawings and talks the client through the advert, using the drawings.
To apply this to your project, think of a particular key stakeholder, perhaps a service user. Take them through the project, from their first contact onwards, using a series of drawings so that you end up with a comic strip effect. You do NOT have to be able to draw for this exercise - stick figures are fine. Try to show exactly what is happening to the central ‘character' in the story in each drawing: how are they reacting, who else is there, what might happen next.
This is a useful way of helping you to think through your project, this time from the point of view of one of the customers. This ‘outside in' way of thinking is especially important where a particular group such as service users will play an important part in making the project happen.
Taskboarding
Getting the tasks clear in your head is one thing. Getting them in the right order is another. Again, this is best done in a team.
- Write each task on separate post-it note.
- Stick the notes on a white board or flip chart in the order they must be done. As you think of more and more tasks, you will find that some of them ‘clump' together while others stand out as ‘one off' tasks.
- Leave the white board or flip chart in place for a day or two - you are bound to think of extra tasks later that can be slotted in.
This article is taken from the Centre's published book Project management by Jan Burnell. This book compliments our Project management training course and is aimed at those who like to keep things simple and to work with everyday language. From the lifecycle of the project to budget control, this book gives a step-by-step guide to running successful projects.
