Project Planning

Project planning is part of project management that relates to the use of schedules such as Gantt charts to plan & subsequently report on progress in the project environment.

To start with. the project scope is defined & appropriate methods for implementing the project are determined. After this step, the duration of the various tasks necessary to complete the work are listed & grouped into a work breakdown structure. The logical dependencies between tasks are defined using an activity network diagram to identify the critical path. Float or slack time in your schedule can be calculated using project management software. Then the necessary resources to be estimated & the costs for each activity can be assigned to each resource, giving the total project costs. At this stage the project plan can be optimised to achieve an appropriate balance between resource use and the project to comply with the project objectives. Once established and agreed, the plan is called the baseline. Progress will be measured against the baseline throughout the project life. Analysing progress against the baseline is known as Earned Value Management.