Effective Project Planning Techniques – CornerStone Dynamics

Steps You Can’t Afford To Skip

You know effective project planning is critical to project success, but maybe you’re not 100% confident about where to begin? Not to worry! Following the project planning steps I describe here will help you streamline your processes, optimize your resources, and consistently reach successful project outcomes.

Planning step one: Gather critical project information

Before you kick anything off you need to gather the information that is critical to your project. This involves meeting with your project sponsor and connecting with subject matter experts to determine details around your project goals, expectations, priorities, and resources.

You’ll then take that information and start completing your:

• Project charter
• Scope statement
• Priority matrix
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)

Populating these documents will ensure that you’re looking at everything from start to finish, and they’ll also give you some insight into your project timeline as well.

Planning step two: Get the right support

Before you kick your project off, you need to have the right relationships in place – ones that will support you AND the goals of your project.

How exactly do you do this? By reaching out to the following people to confirm their commitment to the project and to introduce yourself as the PM:

• Executives for the STC
• Team member managers
• Team members / SMEs
• 3rd party vendors or outside consultants

That way, when you need their support, you’ve already cemented a relationship with them.

More critical project planning steps

There are four more steps you don’t want to skip when you’re planning your project and I made a video that explains them in detail. Watch it and learn:

• What you MUST do to get the most out of your kickoff meeting
• How to identify risks and create contingency plans to mitigate them
• Why you should use a multitude of different types of project schedules
• How a well-defined change management plan will ease the way for your deliverable’s end-user

Follow me over to YouTube for all the details of each of those steps!

Plus, if you want even more tips on every aspect of managing a successful project, make sure you check out my SLAY Project Management course where I give you all the templates, tips, and techniques to implement to make your future projects productive and successful.

Adriana Girdler, PMP | Creator of Slay Project Management™

P.S. Check out what one of my students said recently about SLAY: “The program is worth your time and energy to add tools to your bag and develop your skills as a PM.” J.S.

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