1. Writing a Project Plan

2. Module Objective After completing this module you will be able to
Write the project plan
Describe the components of a project plan in BMS
Define the attributes in managerial process
Document and report the project in BMS under project plan

3. *Reference: A guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge.
What is a Project Plan?
A project plan is a master document, where all the strategies about the projects are
mentioned.
Project plan is useful to the stakeholders.
A project plan is a formal approved document that defines how the project is executed, monitored and controlled. It may be the summary or detailed document and may be composed of one or more subsidiary management plans and other planning documents.
A project plan is
A formal business document
An approved document used to guide both project execution and project control.
A document that defines how a project will be executed, monitored and controlled and closed.
Used as reference by the project managers and team, which helps in managing changes in a project.
*Remember: Project Mangers should re-visit the project plan once in a quarter
*Reference: A guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge.

4. Components of a Project Plan
A project plan consists of essential components which are important in project planning and different phases that occur during the implementation of actual project.
Project Overview
Project Description
Project Objectives
Project Acceptance
Criteria
Project Estimates
Inputs Received
Project Organization
Project environment

5. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management

6. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Assumptions
There are technical, managerial level, execution level and so on.
Eg: Acceptance testing environment will be equivalent to production environment.
Licenses to run the application will be provided by the customers

7. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Dependencies
There are dependencies on customers, vendors, stakeholders and its impact.
Eg: Suppose the development part is done by one service provider while the testing part is done by another service provider. We have a dependency.

8. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Constraints
It includes technical constraint about software license and environment
Eg: Customer might have specified in the SOW that service provider needs to follow its own coding standard rather than industry ones.

9. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Risk and Management Issue
Risk is uncertainty of an event which can occur in future. Risk further can be converted into an issue
Eg: Delay in customer sign offs for the deliverables

10. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Escalation Plan
Escalation Plan is a document that consists of the escalation matrix of any issue

11. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Resource Plan
Resource plan is a document, which mentions all the resources including human as well as mechanical resources

12. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Training Plan
It includes existing skills matrix of every resource and gap analysis which clearly shows the training requirement or training need.

13. Risk and Issue Management
Managerial Process
A Project plan should clearly define the essential plans under the elements of managerial process
Assumptions
Dependencies
Tracking & Reporting
Training Plan
Resource Plan
Escalation Plan
Constraints
Risk and Issue Management
Tracking and Reporting
It includes the project monitoring documents, defect prevention documents, project status reports and updates in project plan.

14. Quantitative Project management Plan
The purpose of the Quantitative Project Management (QPM) process is to quantitatively manage the project to achieve the quality and process performance objectives.
Project Goals
It includes document of all the project goals with respect to quality and process performance, incorporating:
Needs and expectations of customer’s and other relevant stakeholders
Organization's objectives.
Current performance of the project.
Each goal should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and should have the time by when it has to be achieved.
Eg:
Project Goals
Plan Measures
Plan for meeting Project Goals
Project Goals for Quality & Process Performance
Metrics
Unit of Measure
Specification Limits
Remarks
Target
USL
LSL
Improve productivity by 10% in 6 months
Productivity- COBOL
FP/Person-month 22 24 20
Source:
Current productivity level at 20 Org PCB H207
Tracking & Analysis

15. Quantitative Project management Plan
Plan Measures
In this process:
In order to track the project goals the various measures like data, data source, time when data is gathered and the person responsible for data collection are identified.
Additional measures that may be needed to cover critical product and process attributes of the selected sub processes are identified.
Eg:
Project Goals
Plan Measures
Plan for meeting Project Goals
Data
Data Source
When
Responsibility for Data Collection
Size
Estimation sheet
Estimated size at the beginning of the release and re-estimation(if applicable) at the end of release/WP PM
Tracking & Analysis

16. Quantitative Project management Plan
Plan for Meeting Project Goals
For meeting the project goals
Identify the action to meet the project goals. This should be updated periodically
Identify the criteria used in selecting the critical sub-processes that are the main contributors for achieving the project goals
Identify the parameter or metric
Identify the process limit for metric like upper and lower limits
Identify the expected benefits
Eg:
Project Goals
Plan Measures
Plan for meeting Project Goals
Critical sub process/steps to be added to meet the goal
Parameter/Metric (attribute of the critical sub process/ stop)
Process Limits (for the metric)
Expected Benefits
Remarks
Upper
Lower
Group Review of Design Document
Review rate(Number of defects detected per hour review) 5 2
PM Reduction in FDD
Expected benefit is based on project level data analysis
Tracking & Analysis

17. Plan for meeting Project Goals
Quantitative Project management Plan
Tracking and Analysis
The project performance is monitored periodically to determine whether the project goals are satisfied and corrective action are identified
For each of the critical sub-processes
Metrics is collected and analyzed at unit of planning.
Control charts are used to determine if the process is under control
Special causes of variations are identified, analyzed and corrective/preventive actions are taken.
At the end, predictions are done to identify whether the project would be able to meet the project goals, using process performance models. If based on the prediction there is a deficiency in achieving the project goals, corrective actions are planned and implemented.
Project Goals
Plan Measures
Plan for meeting Project Goals
Tracking & Analysis

18. Deviation and Tailoring
Deviation and Tailoring documents are based on the standard followed in an organization. All the standards cannot be applied to the processes as there are some deviations. Deviation is observed as the organizations customized standards to suit the customer requirements.
In tailoring, the project mangers can select appropriate tailoring based on project characteristics. It is mandatory to define all the tailoring applicable to the project.
In deviation, the customer procedures, standards, templates and forms are adopted. Sometimes the project is not in a position to switch over to the newly released processes in the stipulated time frame

19. Customer Supplied Process
Customer supplied processes include:
Formats or templates
Processes
Business manuals
Documents
URLs
Organization standards. For Eg: coding standards
One must refer to contract/SOW/PO/WO help in setting the right expectations. One may have to refer back to deviation and/or tailoring depending on the situation.

20. Configuration Management Plan
Templates in configuration Management Plan
Deployment Plan
Change Management
Configuration Control
Configuration Plan
CI List
CM Responsibility
Configuration Management Plan
Configuration Management is primarily a version control system for the product of the project.
Let us take a look at the project’s configuration management plan categories

21. Asset Management and Business Continuity Plan
While managing the asset, one should
Identify the asset inventory from contract or SOW
Develop a plan to protect and manage the assets as per the template in BMS.
Identify the application and infra critical for the customer. It might have already been defined in contract/SOW.
Create the business continuity plan for site outage and city outage. Whether one will do site and/or city level, business continuity planning is dependent on what has been agreed with the client in the contract

22. Supplier Management Plan
In supplier management plan, a plan is defined to manage supplier or third vendors associated with the project
The plan should include:
Service Level Agreement (SLA) tracking
Status reporting
Escalation plan
Progress review meetings

23. Verification and Validation Plan
Operational Process
Project Review
Schedule
Verification and Validation Plan
Work Package Plan

24. Operational Process Project Review
The processes included in the project view are
Methodology: The various methodologies used for development are waterfall. Object Oriented Analysis and design(OOAD), agile and so on.
Entry, Task, Verification and Exit (ETVX):
The different criteria that come under this category are phase description, entry criteria, task validation and verification exit criteria and outputs.
For eg:
Common Entry Criteria
The entry criterion that is applicable for each phase specified in the ETVX is,
Availability of hardware and software resources and identifying whether the environment has been set up for the applicable phase
Phase Description
Entry Criteria
Tasks
Validation and Verification
Project planning This phase creates the framework for project execution.
Project Manager has been assigned to the project
Prepare Project Plan (PP)
Review of project planning documents by QC/QR and GH/Program Manager

25. Operational Process Schedule
A detailed schedule for the development project is created. If the development project is a single work package then only one schedule is required. However, in case of multiple work packages is required:
It is mandatory to use Microsoft Excel/Microsoft Project Plan (MPP) for planning and tracking of work packages. The project schedule should compromise of baseline plan dates, current plan dates and actual plan dates.
The project schedule is drawn based on effort estimates. The schedule incorporates imposed milestone dates, critical path, critical dependencies. And other constraints.
The schedule is based on various factors such as productivity, skill levels, training, past experience, assumptions and resource ramp.

26. Operational Process Verification and Validation Plan
The table displays the verification and validation plan. This table needs to be updated as per the project requirements
Review Type
Target Work Products
Frequency/ Stage
Reviewer
Peer Reviews/Reviews
RDD
Whenever created and updated
Allocated Resource
Design
Code Modules
Test Cases
User Manual
Test Plan
Project Plan
Peer Project Manager (PM)/ Senior Project Manager(SPM) & QC/QR
CMP
PM & QC/QR

27. Operational Process Work Package Plan
The work package plan describes the detailed process for work package handling that includes tasks such as
Work package planning
Tracking
Closure

28. Document on BMS Document name: Project Planning Procedure
Document Description
Project plan is the blueprint of a project and is the basis for executing a project. Writing a project plan is a comprehensive exercise in creating a project plan document which has all the details related to a project.
It is a document that is:
Used to establish the common understanding of the project
A communication tool for all the stakeholders in a project.
Used to explain the project execution process
Used to explain the role of the stakeholders in the project
The project plan gives the details of all the aspects of project management discipline.