How-to Guides - Community Resource Kit

project management/ planning

Project planning is one of the stages of project management.

The planning we have looked at so far in this section relates to your group - defining what you want to achieve in the community - and how you plan to make this happen. This section relates to separate, distinct projects, events or programmes that you are looking at developing. These will link to the actions or activities in your operational plan.

Project management often refers to large projects, such as building developments or developing a major IT project. However, the basic steps are useful for managing smaller, community-based projects as well.

Any project has a life cycle with the following four distinct phases:

1. project initiation (or start up)

This is where you work out what you are aiming to achieve, what you need to do it and how you will know if you have been successful. This can become the project terms of reference, which sets out the overall reasons for, and terms of the project.

The terms of reference document may include the following:

• Name of the project.
• Project manager - you need to have one person who is responsible for co-ordinating and managing the project. This is the person that contractors will work with to get the project done. One of the risks of many community projects is that too many people, all with their own "good ideas", will all try and have their say.
• Project objective - why it is being done and what you hope to achieve.
• Project deliverables - the specific things that you want to achieve.
• Project scope - what is included and what is not. This may mean you need to be very clear about what you want to have happen - and what you will need to leave out.
• Project inter-dependencies/relationships - what other projects will affect, or be affected by, this project.
• Resource requirements - including time and money.
• Overall project schedule and deadlines - when it is to be completed.
• Risks - what might threaten the project (see separate section on "Risk Management" below).

2. project planning

This is the "what, where, when, who and how" stage. In this stage you work out the detailed tasks to be done and map it out on a project schedule or GANTT (1) chart (see Figure 1).

(1) Named after Henry Gantt who designed it, a GANTT chart is a popular type of bar chart, that aims to show the timing of tasks or activities as they occur over time (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart or www.ganttchart.com).

The planning stage may also include drawing up the following plans and documents:

• risk register and management plan (see separate section on "Risk Management")
• communications plan (see Section 9 - Communication)
• budget (see Section 6 - Financial Management).

3. implementation phase

This is the "doing" stage of the project.

In this phase you can expect to come across some unforeseen issues that may mean the project will take longer, cost more and/or not be up to the quality you had hoped for. Perhaps you overlooked an important item when you defined the scope, and now need to include it. An effective control system is needed to keep track of these issues.

Depending on the scale and complexity of the project, you should:

• have a system to monitor progress, budget/expenditure and risks
• have a system to approve changes to the project scope
• produce regular (e.g. monthly) reports for your management committee or board including:

  • progress against the project plan - especially noting any delays

  • financial update

  • any communication about the project

  • significant risks - and how you plan to manage them.

In larger projects or organisations, you can expect to have a change management process and a range of other forms and registers, such as an Issues Register and Project Change Request forms that need to be signed off to approve changes.

4. project closure

As the name implies, this phase is the last stage of the project. In many situations there will be some ongoing work resulting from the project - such as the ongoing maintenance of a resource that you have developed, and it is easy for this stage to drift into "business as usual".

Four things to do in the project closure stage are:

1. Tidy up the "loose ends" making a note of what needs to be carried over as "business as usual".
2. Project evaluation - checking:
   • whether the project met its objectives
   • how well it was run
   • what you learned that may help for future projects. Consider both what worked well, and the difficulties you may have faced.
3. Project closure report - to record the project's completion.
4. Celebration - take a moment to celebrate the completion of this project - before getting caught up in the inevitable next piece of work.