Project planning is an essential part of project management and a defining point of your productivity, workflow, and results. Work environment heavily relies on wise organization of every process, precise schedules, and accurate arrangement of all the other aspects. However, more serious or lasting projects usually require advanced practices and that is the point, at which project planning comes in handy. Read about the positive impact business planning tools may have on your working process.
What is project planning and why do you need it at every step of your business?
Project planning refers to every action you take in order to optimize your functionality, working environment, each and every process, effort, timing, and, eventually, the final result. The definition itself is simple but when it actually comes down to project planning, there’s no do without any practice and tools, that will help to achieve the desired goals.
In fact, no modern medium/large scale enterprise works without at least a basic set of project planning tools and some project management specialists. For small businesses, the implementation of project planning is an opportunity to optimize the running processes, be more efficient in terms of money and time, get rid of useless activities, and improve your final results. As a result, you’ll notice more growth opportunities right after dealing with the detected challenges. Right, project planning sounds just like a magic wand for any business and it really does work that way if you pick the right tools.
Project planning tools and things you can achieve by using them
77% of best-performing business projects use project planning software, which is a quite convincing statistic. Imagine how much you lose by neglecting project planning?
1. Project requirements are often strict and demanding amid the increasing competition and economic challenges. While business dissatisfaction with project portfolio management is increasing every year, so-called “professionals” don’t really use any project planning techniques. They just don’t fathom how some basic project planning steps can prevent most of the common difficulties.
2. Let’s look at the reason why most failures happen. The cause may vary from organizational priorities and inaccurate time estimates to dramatic changes that you cannot predict and the casual lack of time management or any other common mistakes. This all could be easily avoided. In fact, a situation with no possible better outcome is quite rare to come by. Usually, it’s just typical human error, the very reason project planning exists.
3. KPI is a huge part of project planning tools. It may indicate a large number of metrics for your company, project, and staff performance. You must understand your KPIs to understand how your business is really doing. For some businesses, it’s a core part of the organization, without which they couldn’t have worked at all. At the same time, over 35% of businesses don’t check KPIs and lose big time! (starting with awareness of the state of their own company and finishing with its progression).
- Program (or Project) Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) uses a network diagram scheme to build the workflow path. The structure includes every process from the beginning to the end. Mention everything you’re planning on doing.
We’ll use this project planning method as an example of an efficient and productive workflow.
A Wrap-Up
While learning how to create a project plan, you strategize, prioritize, and structure the work process. Project planning is not complicated at all. It shows excellent improvement and immediate results as well as long-term progression. It doesn’t cost a single penny but saves a lot of time and costs. This methodology is available to everyone. The only thing you have to do is pick it up and use it. While your competitors may sleep on project planning, you now know its true potential. So don’t miss the chance to overwhelm the market!
Project planning software
Depending on the project, the used software may vary. It may as well as be customized specifically for your company’s needs. While you know what your enterprise needs, it’s challenges and opportunities, the current and future projects, you still have to keep track and analyze every detail, prepare the initial plan, and look at existing tool-software. Perhaps everything you need already exists and is available for free or with varying price offers.
Quite often project planning software works perfectly well but you need a bit more than it provides: more customization for a specific project or a completely new niche product. That’s the case when it makes sense to look deeper into additional services or even develop something new.