A Project Manager's Book of Templates

2Project Plans

Once a project is authorized, the planning begins. Some projects with a well‐defined scope that is unlikely to change spend a great deal of time planning up front and seek to minimize changes to the plans. Other projects do moderate planning at the start and then progressively elaborate the plans as more information becomes available. Projects that use Agile methods expect to evolve the scope and do just enough planning to start working and then evolve the scope of the project based on feedback and work priorities.

The management plan templates in this section are used predominately for projects with a well‐defined scope that is not expected to change. The templates can be used to determine and document how various aspects of the project will be performed, such as communication management, risk management, and procurement management. There are 13 templates associated with planning the project:

• Scope management plan
• Requirements management plan
• Schedule management plan
• Release plan
• Cost management plan
• Quality management plan
• Resource management plan
• Communications plan
• Risk management plan
• Procurement management plan
• Stakeholder engagement plan
• Change management plan
• Project management plan

Some templates in this section can be combined to meet the needs of the project, stakeholders, and organization, such as the scope management plan and the quality management plan, or the communication plan and the stakeholder engagement plan.

For small projects, you may ...