“Plans are useless, but planning is everything” are the words of the 34th President of the United States of American. Dwight D. Eisenhower said this word in a speech he mad to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference on Washington, D.C. in 1957. As a decorated soldier, Ike knew that a plan or a goal mean very little until the process of accomplishing the plan is put into effect. As a team, our goal is to complete a project, initiating project planning is necessary in order to achieve the goal. Wikipedia defines project planning as a “part of project management, which relates to the use of schedules such as Gantt charts to plan and subsequently report progress within the project environment” (Project Planning, n.d.). This definition does not give justice to the actions involved in project planning. Jiang, Bin and Heiser (2004) breakdown project planning into four parts; project selection, planning phase, execution phase, and termination phase. The first and last phases are self explanatoryand will not need to cover them in detail. The chief objective is to illustrate the importance of the planning and execution phase in the process of a team oriented project.
Planning Phase
This phase is best completed as a team. According to Ambler (2000),when involved in the planning phase members are more likely to believe in the plan. This will lead to a better quality of work and smoother progress throughout the project.
Identify the Tasks
According to Bernal and Polleck (2005) the first step is to identify the tasks or the steps towards completing the project. This breakdown should be done through joint efforts of the project manager and the rest of the team. Having a variety of people involved in this step allow for a more detailed list of responsibiliti ...