Hi.
This is Jason with Team Gantt.
A project plan is arguably the most important document created
on your project, and any good plan
starts with a project brief.
Today I'm going to help you create a project brief that
will keep your project from going off the rails.
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At its core, a brief should communicate your project
approach and the process your team
will use to manage the project according to scope.
If it's handled with care and great consideration,
a good brief should act as an agreement
on project objectives, scope, major deliverables, milestones,
timing, activities, process, and even resources
needed to deliver your product.
If you take the time to create a good process around how
your plan is built, and you consider all of those factors,
you can create a great plan that will work for everyone.
Now you could easily slap together
a document that shows dates and deliverables,
but if you're managing a project that
has a hefty budget, lofty goals, and a whole lot of decisions
attached, you'll find that it's important to take the time
to get this document right.
With the right amount of background information
on your project scope and requirements,
and with a good level of input and collaboration
with your team and your clients, you
can make a solid, workable plan that will guide everyone
through your project, and it doesn't
have to be difficult to create.
To many people, a project plan is a dry document
that lists dates.
To people who are invested in your project,
the plan is the project guide that
will dictate how you will get to project milestones, decisions,
and eventually project completion.
At a minimum, a project plan answers some basic questions
about the project like what are the major deliverables?
How will we get to those deliverables and the deadline?
Who is on the project team, and what role will they
play in those deliverables?
When will the team meet milestones,
and when will other members of the team
play a role in contributing to or providing feedback
on those deliverables?
Look at it this way, your plan should educate any reviewer,
coworkers and clients included, on the logistics
of the project.
They trust that you've got this, so when reviewing a document,
they truly believe that you've considered every possible risk,
and if you have, it feels good to know that you've done
a good job, and you're trusted.
The first step in creating a good plan
is drafting up a good project brief
to go over with the client.
Picture it.
You work for a web design agency,
and your team just scored a big new project.
Your new client is an internationally recognized art
museum, and their website is woefully out of date.
In fact, it hasn't been redesigned since 2007.
The site architecture, visual design, content, and code
are ripe for change.
And it's up to you to make it happen.
Your clients aren't very web savvy,
so they're looking to you as the expert
to determine a process that will work.
They'll also lean on you to let them
know what you need in terms of content like photos and text.
That's right.
It's all on you, and the scope you have in place
will support an end to end project.
We've put together an example of a project
brief in our free Guide to Project Planning for you
to download and use.
And when you're ready to create your Project Gantt chart,
you want to use the best and easiest web-based Gantt chart
software out there.
Team Gantt is used and loved by thousands
of teams in over 60 countries.
We think you'll love it too.
To sign up for a free 30-day trial,
go to teamgantt.com/signup.
Quite often, you'll receive a ton of project details, pages
upon pages of requirements, team biographies, invoicing
instructions, contractual clauses, and the like.
It's very critical that you read through all
of that documentation, but when it comes to creating a plan,
this is what you need to know no matter what type of project
you're managing-- project goals, the client or team's intended
process or methodology, the team and their expertise,
expectations on deliverables, expectation on iteration
and collaboration when creating and revising deliverables,
who the client stakeholder team is,
and, specifically, who the main decision makers are,
the amount of time the client will
need to review work and provide feedback, dependencies,
and deadlines.
Never leave any of these items unanswered.
If you're responsible for creating the project plan,
that means you must be sure that all factors have
been considered.
If you don't, the project will definitely
hit a bump in the road, and every finger
will be pointed at you.
For instance, if you have not fully
explored the decision making process,
there's a great chance you'll encounter the good old swoop
and poop during the process.
If you don't know what that is, it's
when a stakeholder you weren't aware of
swoops into the project at the 11th hour
and poops on the work, and then puts you back to square one.
It's a budget and timeline nightmare
that will become a reality if you don't
practice your due diligence.
Just remember, you can get as much information as possible,
and details can change.
Do your best to document the information you have,
so you can account for it in your plan.
This was just a brief excerpt from Team Gantt's
Guide to Project Planning written by project
management consultant, Brett Harnett.
Brett focuses on solving issues that
are important to organizations who
want to produce quality digital projects in harmony.
Click the link in the description
to download the full guide for free,
so you can plan your projects more efficiently than ever.
And if you like this video and want to see more,
don't forget to click the Like button
and subscribe to our channel.
Thanks.
See you next time.