Project Planning

Project Planning is very important to any project, whether large medium or small planning should be completed before starting any business activity.

Larger projects may have full time planners, or teams of planners keeping track of the project using suitable software. For startup projects software such as Microsoft Project is usable, here is an example of a Gantt Chart produced from MS Project.

Microsoft Project is eminently suitable for most Small to Medium sized projects but it does contain some advanced features which can be a distraction and a heavy time commitment if used on projects not suited to them. I include Work Brake down Structures, Resource leveling, asset tracking etc. etc. in this list.

In order to use MS Project to its fullest extent considerable experience is required, both in the usage of the software and knowledge of civil and project work.

The normal way of working is to fill in the project hierarchy and then split this down into sub projects and enter estimated time and costs. Once the actual or budget costs are known then the estimates are replaced.

There are several methodologies for planning a project, one of the most significant is called critical path analysis. This basically looks at the different stages comprising the project and decides on the critical path through the sub actions and concentrated on those which would delay the project. This is rather a simplification although much more information is available on the net.