Before committing to major expenditure on the project, the timescale and resource requirements must be established. This information is held in the Project Plan and is needed so that the Business Case can be refined and the Project Board can control the project.
Planning is not an activity that the Project Manager performs in isolation but, rather, something that should be done with close involvement of the user and supplier. It is often useful to hold planning workshops to help identify all the products required, their details, and the dependencies between them.
PRINCE2 recommends:
✔ Understand what the project is to deliver and check for any predetermined milestones as defined in the Project Brief
✔ Check whether there are any corporate or programme management strategies, standards or practices relating to planning that the project needs to follow
✔ Check understanding of any prerequisites, external dependencies, constraints and assumptions documented in the Project Brief
✔ Check understanding of the selected solution as described by the project approach
✔ Seek lessons from similar previous projects, corporate or programme management, and external organizations related to planning. Some of these may already have been captured in the Lessons Log
✔ Review the Risk Register and Issue Register for risks and issues associated with planning
✔ Decide on the format and presentation of the Project Plan, given the audience for the plan and how it will be used (for example, is it sufficient to use a product checklist for presenting the plan to the Project Board?).
✔ Identify any planning and control tools to be used by the project
✔ Choose the method of estimating for the project's plans
✔ Review the Quality Management Strategy, Risk Management Strategy, Configuration Management Strategy and Communication Management Strategy to understand the resources, standards, methods and costs for the work to be carried out
✔ Create a product breakdown structure, product flow diagram and Product Descriptions for the major products in the Project Plan. Identify the arrangements for the transition of the project's products into operational use. Where the project's products are likely to require potentially expensive maintenance once operational, plan for a suitable service agreement or contract to be drawn up between the support group and the user. In such instances, it will be necessary to include any agreement as a product in the Project Plan
✔ Consider whether the Project Product Description needs to be updated (for example, if the understanding of the acceptance criteria
