Planning

Since software projects are complex, planning is essential to ensure there is a reasonable understanding of a project's key aspects and expected challenges ahead of time. This is so that issues can be prevented or solved quickly. It's also important to ascertain whether the project is worth doing at all.

Establishing the business case is an essential part of planning. Using simple but effective techniques such as cost-benefit analysis, a Project Manager – with input from the project team and stakeholders – can quickly work out whether the project is a worthwhile endeavor for the organization.

Simplistically, if the project is expected to cost £100,000, then it should benefit the organization in excess of £100,000, therefore creating value for the organization.

The quantification of cost is a simpler task, even if it is arduous, depending on the level of detail required, and where most project initially focus. With the best information you have, you estimate what it will take to achieve the project's goal. Like estimating a building project, you guess how much materials and labor you might need, then get quotes for each element and add them together.

However, the quantification of benefits is often more difficult in the real world. This is because there are many forms of benefit, and it's often a potential benefit, which means it may not materialize immediately, or at all. Quite often, a software project is required to mitigate a cost, in which case, this can be used as a good indication of benefit.

For example, if the organization does not upgrade to the latest version of its software, its supplier will charge an additional cost to extend its support. This cost and therefore benefit can be quoted for in advance. But there are also more complex benefits, such as avoiding a potential regulatory fine, or most commonly, investing in a new piece of software in order to expand a business. Business expansion is a complex and risky venture. Having the new piece of software ready is only one part of its chances of succeeding. So, in this wider context, it often comes down to what the Project Sponsor is willing to invest, in relation to the overall business plan of the organization.

If you remember, back in Chapter 2, What Are the Key Skills I Need?, the business case is a key element within the PRINCE2 project management methodology. It's normally recorded formally in the management product called the Project Initiation Document (PID).

With the cost largely considered, a Project Manager will usually then focus on time.

In the cost-benefit analysis, time already has a large part to play. The End Of Service Life (EOSL) for the existing software has a finite time. The risk of a regulatory fine has a defined point in time when the regulation starts to be enforced.

The overall business plan will have a date when the new business is aiming to launch. So, all of these factors can be used as input to set a deadline for the project's completion.

A Project Manager has to balance this counting back approach, with the practicalities and resource limitations at their disposal.

As the old cliché goes: Everyone knows that it takes one pregnant mother nine months to give birth to a baby. But you can't ask nine mothers to make a baby in one month.

It's the role of the Project Manager to balance this in creating the project plan, in essence, deciding and organizing the project's resources in a way that realistically achieves the completion deadline. In other words, this means spreading the work as thinly or heavily as required within the duration of the project, with special considerations for milestones and key events, some of which may be outside of your control, such as external events like public holidays.

The project plan is invariably accompanied by a corresponding Gantt chart, which is the most widely accepted way of visualizing a project plan. A good Gantt chart can illustrate the required tasks, who is responsible, the effort required, the timing or scheduling, sequencing, and dependencies all on the same chart!