Expert Guide To The Project Planning Phase

Marissa Taffer

Last updated on Sep 18, 2025

QUICK SUMMARY

If you don't get the planning phase of your project right, you're setting yourself up for failure. Here are the key components of planning, what outputs you'll have at the end, and my best practices so you can plan and execute a successful project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS What Is The Project Planning Phase? Why Is Project Planning Important? Key Components Project Planning Outputs Tools for Planning Best Practices

Key Takeaways

Planning Challenges: Project planning can be tough when you have limited information on budget, team, or deadlines at the beginning of the project.

Essential Components: As part of project planning, you'll conduct a scope review, create a work breakdown structure, build a resource plan, and identify risks.

Outputs: At the end of the project planning phase, you'll have a completed project plan, communication plan, and resource allocation plan.

Software Tools: Project management software can help with planning—it can workback from deadlines, automatically assign available resources, and help you keep track of tasks and deliverables.

The project planning phase is one of the most important in project management, but it can be challenging because it happens at the beginning of the project when you usually have the least amount of information about your project—you might not know which team members will be involved, what the exact budget is, or when the project needs to be completed by.

Below, I’ll cover how to plan, kick off, and run through the full project management lifecycle, and how to deal with every uncertainty that might come your way.

What Is The Project Planning Phase?

The project planning phase involves creating the project plan & project schedule, assigning resources or team members, and allocating the budget. It’s the second of the five phases of project management, as defined in the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) PMBOK.

If you aren’t running a traditional waterfall project, you still need to do some planning before you can move into project execution. For agile or hybrid projects, start by putting together the backlog, determining sprints and ceremonies, and pulling together a team of developers.

Why Is Project Planning Important?

Project planning is important because it gets everyone on the same page. It lets you highlight areas of risk, such as a tight timeline, a constrained budget, or gaps in resourcing or staffing.

Having a plan also gives you, the project manager, a way to measure progress and define success. The plan will become a map that provides direction and shows you where you have been and how far you still need to go.

Key Components of Project Planning

The key components of the project planning phase include:

Review Project Scope

If you have a project charter or, more commonly, a statement of work (SOW), review it and look for the following:

What is in the scope statement, and what is excluded from the scope?
What was included in the deliverables section?
Are there rounds of revision for deliverables, and how many?
What is the budget for the project and the payment schedule/terms?
Who will you need to complete this work, and has the project been staffed yet? If not, how will you staff the project to achieve all of the in-scope items?

Break Work Down into Smaller Pieces

Once you are clear on the scope of the project, break that work down into smaller pieces. You can create distinct phases with project milestones and tasks. Some best practices include:

Create tasks with a single owner. While work can be collaborative if more than one person “owns” the task, it’s easier for it to fall through the cracks.
Add checkpoints to the plan. Don’t just wait for items to be due.
Add tasks for items you’ll need from your client or external stakeholders. Assign those to yourself so you remember to get what you need when you need it
Use buffer time between tasks or phases. This way, if something goes sideways, you have time to course correct.
If you’re planning to work in a more agile environment using sprints, break the work into more manageable pieces to fill in your backlog. Those pieces can then be refined and pulled into sprints during your sprint planning ceremonies.

Plan Resources

Resource planning isn’t about staffing; it is about making sure you have the right team, tools, and technology, as well as a realistic budget to complete all the necessary work. This process might look like:

Checking your forecasting tool to see who is available over the target dates
Adjusting your project schedule to align with team member availability
Confirming that the budget will be sufficient for the work
Ordering supplies, software licenses, and hardware needed for the project
Reserving meeting rooms or Zoom rooms for brainstorming and collaboration sessions

Schedule Tasks and Activities

During the planning phase, you will draft a tentative project schedule. In formal projects, this may be a detailed work breakdown structure (WBS). Consider it a first draft—it’s subject to a lot of change. When planning your schedule:

Note the ideal timeframe for the project and milestones that are fixed, such as a launch date tied to an event (a PR event, tradeshow, holiday, etc.)
Add buffer time so that if something slips past due, it won’t require a full re-planning
Note dependencies (tasks or activities that can’t start until other tasks or activities finish)
Assign a due date and owner to all tasks so roles and responsibilities are clear
Get feedback from the project team before sharing the schedule with outside stakeholders or clients
If you are planning to run your project using an agile methodology, this step may be simpler—you can put together a sprint schedule and plan when the sprint ceremonies will be

Identify and Plan to Address Risks

Projects inherently come with risks, and the more unknowns there are in your project, the more risks can be lurking at every turn. When identifying risks and coming up with a mitigation plan, make sure you:

Involve all stakeholders. Having everyone on the same page makes sure you capture all of the potential risks and that everyone can play a role in mitigating them.
Consider the potential for scope creep. This is one of the most common risks and one of the most common ways that project progress can be derailed.
Be honest about risk. Naming a risk and coming up with a plan to prevent it might feel offensive, but it is the easiest way to support project success.

Create a Budget or Budget Tracker

If you have a fixed project budget, this part may involve allocating that budget to make sure spending is aligned with the project objectives and setting up your system so you can track your team’s spending.

In this part of your planning process, make sure:

Your budget is allocated to every possible need for the duration of the project
You have asked for a contingency budget in case there are areas of overspending
Your team is aware of their budget and any approval process needed before using allocated funds
There is a process for balancing the budget and tracking budget overages throughout the project

Engage Project Stakeholders

While you may have consulted with stakeholders throughout the project planning phase, create a plan to engage them throughout the project. This might look like:

Having a plan for regular status updates that aligns with the roles and interests of all key stakeholders
Giving stakeholders clear direction about the role you expect them to play
Asking stakeholders what they will need at various points in the project, including appropriate project documentation

What Are the Outputs of Project Planning?

There are a number of outputs from project planning that you will need to use as you move into the next phase of your project (project execution). These include:

Project plan: The project plan will most likely be a living, breathing thing that you’ll iterate on throughout the project. You can update the plan as the project evolves, but the original plan (i.e. baseline) will be created during project planning.
Communication plan: The communication plan is a formalized deliverable that outlines exactly how you (and other members of the project team) will engage key stakeholders.
Resource allocation plan: Your resource allocation plan shows what resources you will need during the execution phase and how much time you will need. If you don’t have the resources in-house, include how you’ll acquire these resources in the plan. The resource allocation plan is not the same as your resource management plan—the resource allocation plan addresses the who, and the resource management plan addresses the how.
Kickoff meeting: After you have completed the pre-work in the project planning phase, you will hold at least one kickoff meeting. This meeting will help everyone understand what a successful project looks like. You’ll review the project plan and roadmap (if you have one), work on the risk identification and mitigation plan, and finalize the communication plan. This meeting is also a good transition to the next project phase.
Work breakdown structure: The work breakdown structure shows every task in the project and the order in which they will take place. As a digital project manager, I have not been asked to make one of these very often (or at least not formally), but I create a lot of Gantt charts, which show project phases and tasks over time.
Project schedule and project timeline: In some projects, especially smaller ones, these might take the place of the work breakdown structure. You might create multiple versions if you are working with external stakeholders or clients—one version for the internal team with significantly more detail and a second version for the client or other stakeholders' use, which only shows specific milestones of interest to them.
Risk management plan: Another output of the planning phase is your risk management plan. You might find some overlap with your communications and change management plans, as these are inherently part of managing risk.
Quality management plan: Having a plan to manage quality at every phase of project execution can help with overall success. You might allocate outside resources for testing or QA, or have a senior team member or project sponsor review deliverables at key milestones.

Tools for Project Planning

There are so many tools that can support you in the project planning phase and help you develop and maintain your project management plan.

Project management software often includes templates that can speed up project plan creation, and you can also create custom templates from your own plans. Building a project plan template means you don’t have to start from scratch on future projects.

Some of the best project management tools that can support you in the project management phase and help streamline the process include:

Project Planning Best Practices

When it comes to mastering project planning, there are many things you will need to do simultaneously to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and causes more work down the road. But, to help you on your way, here are some project planning techniques:

Don’t forget about the project goals and make sure your plan supports them.
Set metrics and KPIs to help track progress.
Involve your project team in the planning.
Determine how you will do the necessary project monitoring and controlling when you are in the execution phase.
Make sure to address all stakeholders’ interests.
Use a project planning checklist to make sure you don't miss any key steps in the process.

What’s Next?

Want to connect with other digital project managers to share resources and best practices? Join our membership community and get access to 100+ templates, samples, and examples and connect with 100s of other digital project managers in Slack.