10 Project Planning Techniques For Project Success in 2024
Plan to Succeed: A proper project plan is crucial for success. It steers the project towards delivery and includes a clear schedule, contingency plans for risks, time estimates, a budget, and a methodology.
Software to the Rescue: The right project planning software ensures visibility and flexibility for project managers and team members, so you can make changes when plans inevitably evolve or challenges appear.
Handle Unexpected Delays: Risks, issues, and other changes to your project can cause significant delays, but if you've planned in advance with the right planning techniques and tools, you can minimize the impact on your project and get back on track.
Without a proper project plan in place, your project is doomed before it even starts. These project planning techniques will help you create a realistic schedule, prepare for risks, set an accurate estimate and budget, and choose the right project methodology to deliver the project successfully.
Using the right project planning software is also important—it makes sure your plan is visible to the entire team and helps you make quick adjustments when things inevitably change.
10 Project Planning Techniques
Here are ten project planning tools and techniques that will get you on your way to project success.
1. Critical Path Method
What it is: The critical path method (CPM) is used to determine the longest possible sequence of tasks in your project—this is the shortest possible duration for your projects.
How it works: Create a diagram with all your project tasks and arrows between them denoting the sequence and any. interdependencies. Include a time estimate for each task (in days or hours). Once you've identified the shortest possible duration, you'll can identify the critical tasks—these are the tasks that, if delayed, will cause delays to the overall project timeline.
Why use it? By identifying which tasks are critical and which can be moved around within the schedule (and where they fall in the project's life cycle), you can plan resources in advance to avoid delays.
2. Critical Chain Method
What it is: The critical chain method (CCM) is similar to CPM, but it takes resource constraints into account.
How it works: Start by determining your project activities and their estimated duration, as you would with the critical path method. Then, you can calculate the buffer for each task and create a contingency based on who is working on that task and how much time they have to dedicate to it.
Why use it? CCM allows you to spot potential bottlenecks and task dependencies in advance so you can add any buffer needed and mitigate any potential delays.
3. Work Breakdown Structure
What it is: A work breakdown structure (WBS) is used to map out project deliverables and break them down into sub-tasks. as your project's family tree.
How it works: There are two types of WBS: deliverable-based and phase-based. The former breaks deliverables into smaller bite-sized tasks, and the latter breaks each phase of your project into deliverables or tasks.
Why use it? A WBS ensures you've captured everything that needs to be done before the project is considered completed. This will help prevent scope creep, and you can use it to plan resources and schedules for each task in advance. Consider using software to create a work breakdown structure.
4. Cost Breakdown Structure
What it is: A cost breakdown structure (CBS) is similar to a WBS in that it breaks down your project and deliverables into their components, but the CBS also accounts for what each deliverable, sub-task, and unit of work should cost.
How it works: This planning method breaks down your budget like a pie chart, showing you exactly how it's allocated. You'll be using estimates at this stage, but a CBS will give you a pretty good idea of whether each deliverable and the project as a whole is feasible with the budget you have.
Why use it? A CBS allows you to avoid overspending, and reallocated budget throughout the project when the plans changes (not if).
5. Gantt Charts
What it is: A Gantt chart is visual representation (usually a bar chart) of the project timeline and when in the project schedule each task will be completed. It also typically displays dependencies between tasks.
How it works: On a Gantt chart, each task is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflect the start date, duration, and end date of the task.
Why use it? Gantt charts help you spot overlaps and dependencies, see who's doing what, and find efficiencies such as starting certain tasks earlier or removing bottlenecks.
6. Scrum
What it is: Scrum is a methodology that offers set rituals and processes that are meant to result in better project outcomes. It's especially popular within software development, and emphasizes flexibility, teamwork, and making steady, iterative progress towards project goals.
How it works: The Scrum process is driven by sprints: short, time-boxed periods where teams complete select tasks. Daily meetings ensure the team is aligned, and end-of-sprint reviews and retrospectives foster continued improvement.
Why use it? This project management methodology allows you to do more lightweight planning more often (rather than planning the entire project upfront). You can adapt more quickly to change and stakeholder feedback, and get up and running quickly.
7. Scaled Agile Framework
What it is: The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns that guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile project management practices. It's designed to provide a flexible and comprehensive model for large, complex projects, and works with agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, and lean to promote alignment and collaboration.
How it works: SAFe is a multi-layered framework, with each layer representing different levels of the organization like Team, Program, Large Solution, and Portfolio. This helps you with project planning by aligning strategy with execution at every level.
Why use it? SAFe assists project planning by helping you coordinate efforts, manage risks, and maintain a focus on continuous improvement and delivery at scale.
8. Kanban
What it is: Kanban is a popular project management method that originated from lean manufacturing principles and the Toyota Production System. It emphasizes continuous delivery without overburdening the development team, and it's useful when tasks vary in priority and complexity.
How it works: This method uses a Kanban board filled with cards, where each card represents a task. The board is divided into columns that represent different stages of the process, such as "to do," "in progress," and "done." Cards move from left to right as work is completed, and the number of cards in each column is typically limited to prevent bottlenecks.
Why use it? Kanban allows teams to visualize their work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize throughput. The focus on completing current tasks before taking on new ones reduces bottlenecks and makes workloads more manageable.
9. Risk Management Planning
What it is: Risk management planning is a critical component of project planning that involves identifying, analyzing, and creating response plans for potential risks that can impact a project's success. This not only minimizes the likelihood and impact of negative events, but capitalizes on opportunities that may arise.
How it works: It involves systematically identifying risks (such as financial uncertainties, legal liabilities, strategic management errors, and accidents), assessing their potential impact, and developing strategies to manage them.
Why use it? It will help you minimize delays and disruptions to your projects and keep them on time, within budget, and to the desired quality standards.
10. PERT
What it is: The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a project planning tool used for managing and scheduling complex projects. Developed in the 1950s for the U.S. Navy's Polaris submarine project, (yes, really) PERT involves creating a flowchart (known as a PERT chart) that outlines the tasks required for project completion, estimated durations, and dependencies.
How it works: PERT employs a probabilistic approach to time estimates, using optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely completion times for each task.
Why use it? PERT is great for projects with a high degree of uncertainty. This allows you to identify the critical path and potential bottlenecks, which helps with scheduling, resource allocation, risk management, accurate time estimations, and efficient project execution.
Read more about how PERT compares to CPM.
What Are Project Planning Techniques?
Project planning techniques are strategies you can use during the project planning stage of a project. This is a crucial stage in which you create a roadmap for your project and map out how to tackle it. Project management techniques help you create a successful project plan that allows you to stay on track, use your resources wisely, and meet deadlines.
Project Planning Tools
Project management tools can also make our project planning lives a whole lot easier.
- Project management software solutions offer intuitive dashboards that display project progress, notifications that ensure no task or milestone gets missed, tracking for KPIs and metrics, and tracking for the project schedule and budget usage.
- Project management templates save you time when creating important project documentation. Instead of starting from scratch, you can copy, paste, and edit as needed (PS: you might find our project plan template useful).
- Communication tools help you keep stakeholders and the project team on the same page. Check to make sure any tools you choose have integrations with other tools you're already using. This keeps conversations in the relevant place and allows you set up workflow automations that will help you create an effective project management process that brings success.
Here are my picks for the best project planning software.
Here's a list of alternatives to Quickbase, another popular tool on the list above.
What's Next?
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