Develop Project Management Plan: Learn The Process Step by Step

In the Project Integration Management knowledge area, Develop Project Management Plan Process comes as the second project management process after develop project charter process. Develop Project Management Plan is a broad process and until that process, there are many steps. It’ll be handy to summarize all the steps leading to develop project management plan process with explanations. Further information about these processes can be found in any PMP Training because the develop project management plan process plays an important role in the whole project life cycle. 

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Note that, project management processes are documented and controlled by the help of project management templates. You can see sample free project management templates to have an idea of how they work.

Read this article and find the summary of steps leading to develop project management plan process. Also, the objectives of develop project management plan process.

4 Steps Leading to Develop Project Management Plan Process

Now let’s review steps leading to develop project management process. But before that, if you want to obtain thorough knowledge about develop project management plan process, we strongly recommend you to enroll in a course to become a project management professional.

Step 1#: Defining the business needs

A project starts with a business need because the sponsor or the customer always asks “what do I want” for starting a project. There will be several answers to this question and these will describe the project requirements. Based on the project requirements, objectives of the project are determined and project scope is defined. Project Scope Statement of work describes what is expected to be achieved by the end of the project.

Step 2#: Preparation of the Project Charter

A project manager is assigned to a project as early as possible. With the project statement of work, project manager goes through companies’ existing culture and systems, processes, procedures and historical info to identify stakeholders and prepare project charter. Note that, the creation of project charter is the accountability of the project sponsor but project manager might prepare it. However, it must be published by the project sponsor.  

Step 3#: Authorization of the project by the sponsor

After project sponsor signs the charter, it is published by the sponsor. Once the project charter is published, the project is authorized and this will give authority to the project manager to proceed project management activities. Then, develop project management plan process starts that will produce the project management plan of the project.

Step 4# Leading to Develop Project Management Plan Process: Finalization of the Project Management Plan

Project Management Plan needs to be approved by all stakeholders. Because stakeholders might affect the success of the project if their expectations or requirements are not met in the project. Once project management plan is finalized, agreement of all stakeholders must be acquired.

What are the objectives?

We have seen the four steps of develop project management plan process briefly. Now let’s explore its importance. Project management plan must be realistic, so develop project management plan process should be managed accordingly.  This means the plan should include attainable targets. Let’s consider a project activity that can be completed in 10 days, if you push your project resources to complete it in 5 days, this will be unrealistic. Unrealistic plans cause demotivation in the project team since they will not be able to meet the targets. This will impact the project outputs drastically.

For instance, demotivation may increase turnover of the resources, due to time pressure quality of the produced work might decrease and the customer can be unhappy since the targets are not met. Therefore, realistic and formal plans should be produced. Everybody in the project needs to believe it can be done according to plan. If the project targets are attainable, project resources will agree with the plan and will be motivated to complete the work.

Project Management plan is designed to be as complete as possible before executing process group begins. With the information available in the project initiation, project planning process is finalized. Then project execution starts. Project planning is an iterative and ongoing process throughout the project. As long as the actual results are seen, project plans are revised accordingly.

As we have summarized in this article, develop project management plan process is an important component of project management. If you want to learn more about this process you may consider enrolling in a PMP Training.