Levels of Planning
Projects are often planned at a summary level and then detailed out in the schedule before the work is commenced. Smaller projects may be detailed out during project planning but other large or complex projects may require several levels before the project plan is fully detailed out.
The main reason for not detailing out a project early is that there may not be enough information at that stage; and time would be wasted in preparing detailed schedules that will be made redundant by unforeseen changes. The following planning techniques may be considered:
The PMBOK® Guide discusses the following techniques:
The Rolling Wave. This technique involves adding more detail to the schedule as the work approaches. This is often possible, as more information is known about the scope of the project as work is executed. The initial planning could be completed at a high level in the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). As the work approaches the planning may be completed in more detail at a lower level such as WBS Component and then to a Work Package level for detailed planning.
The use of Sub-projects. These are useful in larger projects where more than one person is working on the project schedule. This situation may exist when portions of projects are contracted out. A subproject may be detailed out when the work is awarded to a contractor.
The use of Phases. A Phase is different from a PRINCE2 Stage as Phases may overlap in time and Stages do not. Phases may be defined, for example, as Design, Procure and Install. These Phases may overlap, as Procurement may commence before Design is complete. The Phase development of a schedule involves the detailing out of all the associated WBS elements prior to the commencement of that Phase.
The PMBOK® Guide does not have strict definitions for levels of plans but assumes that this process is planned when decomposing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). There are some other models available that may be used as guidelines, such as the PMI “Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures.”
Projects subject to many changes may require the work to be granulated out into more tasks immediately prior to the work starting. For example, at the end of every week the next two weeks’ work (that will have had been planned at a summary level) would be planned out in detail. This is a type of Rolling Wave development of the project. This is often found in a software-testing phase, where the next portion of work is dependent on what has passed and what has failed testing in the previous portion of work.
PRINCE2 Level of Plans
PRINCE2 is a project management methodology that was developed in the UK. This methodology defines the type of plans that a project team should consider.
Stages in PRINCE2 are defined as time-bound periods of a project, which do not overlap in time and are referred to as Management Stages. Under PRINCE2, a Project Plan is divided into Stages and a Stage plan is detailed out prior to the commencement of a Stage. PRINCE2 defines the following levels of plans:
Programme Plan – which may include Project Plans or one or more portfolios of multiple projects,
Project Plan – this is mandatory and is updated through the duration of a project,
Stage Plan – there is a minimum of two Stage Plans, an Initiation Stage Plan and First Stage Plan. There would usually be one Stage Plan for each Stage.
Exception Plan – which is at the same level and detail as a Stage Plan and replaces a Stage Plan at the request of a Project Board when a Stage is forecast to exceed tolerances (contingent time), and
Team Plan – which is optional and would be used on larger projects where Teams are used for delivering Products that require detailed planning. A typical example is a contractor’s plan, which would be submitted during the bid process.
Jelen’s Cost and Optimization Engineering
The book outlines several levels of planning, each of which goes deeper in the planning process, depending on the level of granularity the planner wants to achieve:
Level 0: Corresponds to the project as a whole, therefore it will show as an individual bar in the Gantt Chart which extent will be from the start to the finish date of the project.
Level 1: This level programmes the project according to its most significant parts; hence, it will show like a Bar Chart on the Gantt Chart. For example, visualize a schedule for a food factory, which could be broken down into quality control, processing, packaging and storage.
Level 2: This level takes the previous one as a foundation to keep splitting down the parts of the project. Generally, the schedule will be shown in a bar chart format and it could have some constraints against it. Following the previous example, the storage area in the food factory could be further divided into dried foods, fresh produce, canned products, etc.
Level 3: The breakdown goes even further and at this point it becomes very clear where the critical path is. Likewise, since this division is not too detailed, the level of control over the project can be performed very well.
Levels 4 – n: From this level, is up to the planner’s decision to keep breaking down the project into more detailed parts. This type of planning is usually performed to build a look-ahead of the schedule between 1 and 6 months. The most common practice is to show these schedules in a Bar Chart format or as CPMs.
