A Practical Guide to Project Planning

2 Defining the Plan

“People never plan to be failures; they simply fail to plan to be successful. William Arthur Ward”

Projects exist to satisfy some sort of need. The term used to describe that need is ‘requirements’ (i.e. what we want the project to deliver). The requirements then inform the objectives and everything else that follows.

Surprisingly, getting the requirements properly defined is often difficult, and the lack of them is often the cause of problems. If people have not committed to paper what they require then assumptions have to be made, and during the development and delivery people change their minds, resulting in delays and ...