Without an agreed, integrated Project Plan in place how does anyone on the project have any idea what they are supposed to be doing, when they are supposed to doing it, who is depending on them doing it, when the various Milestones are going to be met, when the project will be delivered, and I’m sure I could think of loads of other reasons for the plan if I took the time. But, I think you get the picture.

In this Arrow Diagram, Function 4 can be started as soon as Function 1 is completed. By planning intelligently, by the tine Function 3 gets done, Function 4 must be in its final finishing phase.

There are two distinct major audiences for your project plan. The first is management. These are the people who are tasked with spending money wisely. Who are tasked with accomplishing the business of business. The second major audience is the project team. This is the group of people who will be accomplishing your project for you. In addition to these major audiences, there can be a number of variations including customers, end clients, and peers. But for our purposes we’re going to focus on the two major players.

1. The cost of the addition or improvement

Once the detailed functionalities are identified, they can be further organized as Independent and Dependable Functionalities. Breaking down the functionalities to the lowest level possible at this phase will be more helpful while planning for the Work Allocation, Identifying the Team Size, Identifying the technical skills required.

Tailor to your audience

Proper planning and prioritization are also foundations of another skill that allows successful people do large jobs on time. This skill is project management. This is another prized skill for employees who want to take on larger tasks to earn a larger paycheck.

So what does a structured plan look like. Well, a structured Project Plan is broken down into a number of levels. The Project itself is the top level and successful completion of it can be broken down into a number of sequential or slightly overlapping Stages. Each Stage can be broken down into at least one but, in almost all cases, a number of Products. Each of the Products are produced and delivered by completing a number of Activities. Some Project Plans even break the Activities down into Tasks to provide greater granularity of the work required to produce the Product. Milestones can be identified at whichever level you wish for tracking purposes. In terms of this example, I’ve established the Milestones at the Product level.