Project Management Checklists For Dummies

Chapter 22

Ten Tips for Effective Planning

In This Chapter

Good planning pays for itself

When do you prefer to find the problems?

Tips for effective planning

Inadequate planning, or no planning at all, is a well-known source of project problems. Hardly surprising is it? Just about everyone, apart from some senior organisational managers that is, realise that if you want something to go well then you have to plan it, whether it’s a holiday, a wedding or a business critical project.

You don’t just want any plan though; you want a good one. This chapter gives some tips to help you get the plan right. And if the plan’s right, then your project is going to be a whole lot easier to manage.

Balancing the Plans

At the start of this chapter I pointed out the problem of inadequate planning as a well-known source of project problems. Actually it’s often the cause of complete project failure. However, the answer to under-planning isn’t over-planning, it’s correct planning.

Over-planning hits you twice. First, it takes you more time and effort than necessary to do the planning in the first place. Second, you now have to maintain those plans throughout the project and so you’ll use up even more ...