In the PMBOK, project planning is a project performance domain, along with stakeholders, team, development approach, project work, delivery, measurement, and uncertainty.
Who participates in planning? Stakeholders participate in and shape planning. What is planning? Planning organizes, elaborates, and coordinates project work throughout the project.
Time spent planning should be appropriate for the project. If scope and requirements are well understood, up front planning along with a predictive/waterfall approach is likely. If scope and requirements are not well understood, planning might be minimal upfront and done for each development cycle/sprint. If the latter – and certainly in the case of an innovative deliverable – the project team is highly involved with the planning for each iteration of work.
So it’s often the case that project deliverables necessitate the type of planning necessary. For example, construction projects require significant up-front planning to consider materials, logistics, and delivery. Product development, particularly high-tech products, may use continuous and adaptive planning to allow for stakeholder feedback and factor in technological advances.
Regardless of the type of planning done, planning usually calls on a lot of estimating. Work effort, duration, costs, people, and physical resources are all estimated. As the project moves forward, the estimates may change.
Want to learn more about Project Management? See my Project MGMT publication for these 30 key PM topics:
Projects, lifecycle, management, manager, methodologies, the triangle, stakeholders, deliverable, team, charter, scope, budget, schedule, planning, baselining, milestones, dependencies, resources, risk, procurement, communication, ceremonies, integration, backlog, whiteboard, closure, software tools, office(r), code of ethics, body of knowledge
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