Five steps to create a project plan

The project plan is the result of a process to schedule the stages of a project, prioritizing tasks and resources, which gives an overview of the phases, scope, and time of its activities.

We will share the five main steps so that you can create a plan that gives you a real vision of the project time.

1. Understand the client’s needs in terms of time and budget: It is very important to understand the client’s times and the project delivery date, since the way in which the project is executed in terms of planning can vary. Regarding budgets, it can directly impact the resource, which impacts the time. Also understand the approval times that the client handles, to consider it within the program.
2. Understand the scope of the project specifically: A clear and concrete list of the activities to be executed within the project must be made.
3. Set times for each activity: Each activity set in the previous step must be assigned an execution time.
4. Establish the dependencies and the order of the tasks: Knowing the order of the activities is essential to be able to give an adequate follow-up to the plan. Once the order is established, one indicates dependencies to each activity. The following dependencies are handled:
   → Start Start: Both activities start at the same time.
   → End End: Both activities end at the same time.
   → Start End: The activity cannot finish until its predecessor starts.
   → End Start: The activity cannot start until its predecessor finishes.
5. Understand the critical path of the project: Once the activities to be executed, the times of each activity, and their respective dependencies have been established, it is necessary to check that the critical path established by the software is the one indicated. The critical path is extremely important in the plan tracking stage during the project, since the activities on this path are what will cause the project to go ahead or behind schedule, depending on its execution.