Please bookmark this page for quick reference.
Below you’ll find the resources I mentioned in the book by chapters.
From one side, I want to help you master project management. From the other, I don’t want to overwhelm you with information.
So, focus on finishing the book first. Then, review additional materials here.
Copy and paste this step-by-step process into your notes. It will be a great reference for you.
- Determine How You Will Plan the Project
- Determine Existing Templates, Policies, and Processes
- Outline the Project Management Plan Contents
- Determine Detailed Requirements
- Determine Quality Standards, Processes, and Metrics
- Create the Project Scope Statement
- Determine Project Management Team
- Create a Work Breakdown Structure
- Assess What You Need to Buy Or Outsource
- Breakdown Work Packages and Deliverables into Tasks
- Identify Dependencies Between Tasks
- Estimate Required Resources, Experts, and Materials
- Create Human Resources Plan
- Create Materials and Tools Acquisition Plan
- Estimate Duration of Tasks
- Estimate Costs of Each Task
- Develop a Project Schedule
- Determine the Critical Path
- Develop Project Budget
- Create the Process Improvement Plan
- Determine Roles and Responsibilities
- Plan Project Communications
- Plan stakeholder engagement
- Perform Risk Management Activities
- Validate your plan
- Create Baselines
- Plan ways to measure performance
- Create a Change Management Plan
- Create a Reward and Recognition system
- Finalize Subsidiary Plans and Create a Project Plan
- Gain Formal Approval of the Plan
- Present Your Plan to the Whole Team
Below is a high-level step-by-step process for creating an accurate schedule. You can copy-paste it as an instruction.
- Prepare a Schedule Management Plan
- Set milestones for project start and end dates.
- Add an official “holidays calendar” for each resource based on their location.
- Add resources (or real people) and their availability.
- Add known vacations and days off for all team members.
- Set milestones when new resources should be available.
- Import a list of tasks (if you didn’t do decomposition in the scheduling tool).
- Assign resources to each task.
- Identify dependencies.
- Set duration for each task (copy the estimates provided by the team).
- Identify Critical Path.
- Do a sanity check. Do you fit into the deadline? You should have a 10-15% buffer before the deadline.
- Move work packages to do the work in parallel. Or assign more resources to do the work faster. Or negotiate to de-scope something.
- Check workload for resources. People should not go over their working hours during the day.
- Adjust schedule and resources until you fit into the deadline. Or prove that it’s impossible. Provide the Next Best Alternatives.
- Perform Risk Management activities with your project schedule.
- Add new risk response plans to the plan.
- Move work packages to do the work in parallel. Or assign more resources to do the work faster. Or negotiate to de-scope something.
- Check workload for resources. Validate the whole project schedule.
- Repeat the process until you have a realistic project schedule that you and your team believe in.
- Finalize Project Schedule Baseline.
Procurement management will depend on your company, industry, niche.