How to make Project Planning

Project Planning

  How to make Project Planning

The next step, after you selected your project topic, is project planning. Project planning subject is taught, one way or another, at different schools. Some address it during teaching thesoftware engineering module/course and some others teach it as an individual module/course. Studentsmight even have some experience of planning through their previousindividual/group assignments. Despite the fact, it is quite a common phenomenon among the students to undermine this step extensively, which cause them to submit incomplete projects or face late submission.

Actually, in software engineering and development, project planning is intertwined into the metho- dology in a way that sometimes it is difficult to separate these subjects from each other. However, to understand the whole roadmap of conducting a project, these two concepts would be discussed in two different chapters, though the relation between the two would be maintained and addressed wherever appropriate. Having this, in the current chapter we will focus on the planning step, then we will discuss the methodology and its influence, and impacts on the project planin the next chapter.

To understand how to prepare a plan for your project, let us considerthe situation that you are standing in. You are in the final year of your study; you have several modules to study, you have other assignments and you have to pass several other exams; and finally you have to do your project as well. Now, other duties that you have would normally be scheduled by the university and/or the school. In fact, you are obliged to stick with the timetables that the university/school enforces, and therefore, the degree of freedom is not totally under your control. However, the scheduling and controlling your project is at your disposal. As a result, this situation makes the project planning of paramount importance in the whole process.

Obviously, lack of planning and being careless about schedulingcan create an irreversible catastrophic circumstance that puts your entire project in a hazardous situation. The dangerous outcomes can be very different. The extent can be from low quality project delivery, at one extreme, to a total failure, at the other. Now, how can you prevent this unwanted scenario? How can you guarantee that your project would provide the requirements to a pass, as a minimum achievement? How can you turn it to a real success then? Indeed, taking simple steps can help you to overcome with this situation, properly.

To illustrate, we begin with the assumption that you have already studied some project management techniques, therefore, you have the required knowledge of project planning and scheduling. If this is the case, then presumably, you already have familiarity with software development techniques, as well. Consequently, you are required to apply the knowledge that you have already obtained, efficiently. As a first action, if you are already familiar with the planning concepts and using Gantt charts as a scheduling tool then consider the following steps:

Main phases of a project plan

- Using one of the tools, such as Microsoft Project, Microsoft Visio, and OpenProj, etc. that can help you in

preparing a Gantt chart, devise a first-cut plan including the following major steps:

• Understanding the problem area

• Literature Review

• Requirements Management

• Analysis

• Design

• Implementation

• Test

• Project Report

• Presentation

If you are not familiar with the Gantt chart, which was mentioned in the previous step, and have not experienced the tools that you can use to createone at this stage,do not worry because these concepts would be presented in the following sections. However, although we are not going to discuss these concepts in a very detailed format, you can find general explanations that canhelp you plan and manage your projects, effectively.