 You may be planning a project yourself and need your manager's approval or you may have been asked to lead a project and need to create a project plan for your manager and other stakeholders to review and approve. Creating a project plan is a great way to get the budget and the people to actually do the project. I'll be taking you through how to create a project plan your manager will sign off, covering, writing a project plan makes you think through all of the moving parts, the benefits your project will bring to the team and the business, the problems you may encounter etc. Writing a good project plan and implementing your plan significantly improves the chances of success. With a good, well thought out project plan your manager will be ten times more likely to sign off the plan and sign off in a fraction of the time compared to not having a project plan. Thinking through and writing a project plan is a great habit to get into and will make your job as a manager easier and less stressful. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 20 year plus management career in corporate and household names through to SMEs and every effective manager quickly learns the importance of project planning and being able to write a project plan your manager will sign off and get approval from all stakeholders. If you're new to this channel, enhance.training shares, business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. If you like this video, please hit the thumbs up button and subscribe. There are many interdependencies to consider when writing a project plan. Do the first three steps in order as these are critical to get right when creating a project plan your manager will sign off. Do steps four, five and six in the order that best suits your project and going back and forth between these steps when planning a project is quite common. The first step in how to create a project plan is defining the what. When you are planning any project big or small working out exactly what the goals of the project should be is the first step. Don't do anything else until you have the goals clear written down and shared and agreed with your stakeholders. The goals of the project plan need to be clear to all so there is no confusion now or later about what the project will achieve. For medium complexity projects and bigger I would absolutely advise you to write a full project scoping statement detailing out what is included in the project and what is not included in the project. Be very clear what the project is going to deliver and what it is not delivering. This step can be time consuming and challenging. Setting clear goals and the project scope is a lot easier, less stressful and quicker than having an unclear project scope and then managing changing and different expectations throughout the project. Always define the goals and scope of the project before doing anything else. The second step in how to write a project plan is to explain the why. Why is this project going to help the business, department or team? Put yourself in the shoes of those signing off the project. Can you explain the benefits to the business in terms of firstly increasing revenues, secondly saving costs, thirdly saving time, fourth improving processes, fifth increasing efficiency, sixth reducing risk. Show as clearly as possible the benefits of doing the project that outweigh the time and cost of undertaking the project. There are very few managers that will sign off a project that doesn't have a clear benefit to the business. This is a very good step to do together with the scoping of the project and agreeing goals. Be as specific as possible and try to include numbers to show the scale of the benefit. The third step in how to create a project plan is setting out the when, the timeframes and milestones of the project. What is going to happen when during the project? Many projects in business are time dependent. The project is a lot more valuable when completed in a specific time frame. Always include the completion or end date of the project. If the project is small and will be completed within a week say, just stating the end date is absolutely fine. If the project is longer then break down the project into separate sections, each with a clear goal and time frame. Building in milestones allows you and others to track progress of the project and also for you to communicate the project progress a lot more clearly. Timeframes are important so be clear about what you need to achieve by when. The fourth step in how to write a project plan is mapping the who. You're mapping out all the people involved in the project is a sensible step to take at this point. Think about who you want working in the team to plan and deliver the project. Are they available to work on the project when you need them to be? Who are the key sponsors and supporters of the project? Who will help get resources, sign off the project and help you deal with the roadblocks? What other stakeholders will be affected by the project benefit from the project will be threatened by the project. All need to input into the project in some way. One way of categorising all the people you have identified is using racy, responsible, accountable, consulted, informed. How are you going to keep each group informed about the progress of the project? Meetings, phone calls and email updates all work. Proactively keep these groups informed. The fifth step in how to create a project plan is planning and securing the resources. Planning and securing resources will impact what you can do and how quickly. Having the right skills available at the right time can mean the difference between success and failure of a project. There is a lot of competition within any business for resources. You know staff members time and energy or budget allocations and cash investment or management time and support or use of systems or being able to set up new systems and the list goes on. Having done the first four steps well you should be in a very good position to argue why your project should get priority on resources ahead of many other projects available to the business. You will also know exactly who you will need to be speaking to and persuading. Once you know who will be available to deliver the project and your budgets you are in a good place to get the project team together and take them through the output from the first four steps. You are selling the benefits of doing this project to the project team in terms of the experience gained to help move their careers forward, the increased personal profile, the satisfaction they might get, the benefits of the business etc. You need them excited and confident in your ability to help deliver the project. A good project plan is a great way to build both. Then you can get the project team's help with the detailed steps of planning the project. The sixth step in how to write a project plan is working out the how. Now you can start the detailed work of planning out how the project will be delivered. Get the project team involved in this step. They should be the experts in each of their areas so get them to create each of the detailed steps or tasks to work to achieving the project goals. Get the team to work out the order or sequence of those steps and the pitfalls that need to be avoided. Asking the team to help with the task by task planning work engages them and creates ownership. The project becomes theirs too. During this planning step list out all the assumptions the team is making. As you go through the project these assumptions may need to be revisited and changed. And work out the key risk areas the project will face and plan steps to take to minimise these risks as much as possible. And if you're planning to a long or complex project the next few steps should be detailed. The future steps less so. Your project is a living document. You will be making changes and updating steps regularly. Reducing the level of detail the further into the future you go saves time without impacting the project's success much. The seventh step in how to create a project plan is building the project budget or financials. When you know what resources you have available, the time frames you're working to and the assumptions you're making and the steps you need to take to deliver the project goals you are in a position to create a project budget. The steps, activities and tasks that you want to undertake will drive the cost of the project. Keep comparing this against your total budget available. If you're all within your budget you might want to be more aggressive on timings and use of resources. If you're over your total budget you'll have to look at the resources you're using and the steps planned and adjust these to reduce costs. The eighth step in how to write a project plan is getting project sign off. You should have everything in place to get final sign off on your project plan. Remember who your audience is. It may be just your manager for small projects. The bigger the project the more people are likely to be involved in signing it off and the more senior these people will become. If senior management or directors require sign off, think about creating a summary of your plan with a focus on the benefits the project will give the business and the scope and the time frames. Senior people are time poor so make it as easy as possible for them to sign off your project. Another very good tactic is to speak to each individual involved in signing off the project is for the sign off meeting so you can take each person through the project plan and answer all their questions and deal with their objections. Get agreement from each individual and you'll have agreement from the group. You've got your sign off and are now ready to start the execution phase. Your project plan should be a live document which you amend as the project progresses. Assumptions change, problems and opportunities arise, the business environment and priorities change etc. All of these will impact your project plan in some way and your plan should change to take these into account. Your plan is your roadmap to achieving the goals originally set out, work your plan. In summary you have nine steps for how to create a project plan your manager will sign off. A good project plan massively increases the success of any project. The bigger and more complex, the more moving parts within the project, the more important good planning is to make the project successful. And just as a reminder we've gone through first defining the what, second explaining the why of the project, third setting out the when, the time frames and milestones, fourth mapping the who, the team, the contributors and the stakeholders, fifth planning and securing the resources, sixth working out the how, seventh building a project budget, eighth getting approval or sign off and a nine starting the project or project execution. Adapt the steps to fit the requirements of the project you are planning. Small simple projects require a light touch, the bigger more complex projects will require more planning work and detail, adjust how you use each step. And if you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.