Preventing errors of project planning

One of the stages of project management is project planning that is aimed to design conditions for proper assignment of resources and achievement of well-controlled lifecycle of products and services within constraints of time, quality, budget, etc.

The most basic error in project planning implementation is hidden in human's assurance that states: "if the project does not go wrong, then everything is ok, and there is no need to be worry about". But in fact, the error happens, and the project manager should be ready to react to the errors. Once the errors are appeared, he should carefully examine them and correct the plan according to the new conditions. Success of the project manager is defined not only by good planning but also by ability to compensate potential loses. In other words, good project manager is the manager who can create a plan with enhanced tolerance.

To predict and prevent errors in planning, the project manager needs to generate a strategy and apply it using a software. VIP Task Manager is designed to manager and planning projects. This application allows to create hierarchical structure of task list, assign employees to tasks, set deadlines, planned and actual time for task accomplishment, etc. Planning the project, the project manager should take into consideration several factors that are vital for successful accomplishment of the project. The strategy of errors predicting is based on three phases:

1. Reviewing and analyzing activities of previous planning

On this phase the project manager reviews and analyzes all mistakes and omissions done. For better result all errors can be grouped by some indications. For example, it could be errors occurred while implementing a new appliance, insufficient staff training, or else. The main idea of such a method of analysis is to sort out the most occurred and significant errors, and put them in several groups of risk (risky groups). The risks groups will allow then derive main factors of risk of wrong planning.

2. Amendment of ongoing planning

The factor of risk will demonstrate drawbacks and gaps of previous planning. Armed with the experience of previous errors, the project manager can make amendments and corrections to the ongoing planning and so get well-balanced project. Having revealed risky factors, the project manager can work out a strategy of improving the planning. For example, it might include personnel training or consultancy for new appliances, or creating a foundation for feedback.

3. Implementation

All three phases can be represented as task groups and you can insert a number of tasks in each task group. For example, for the group"Reviewing and analyzing activities of previous planning" you can create the following tasks:

• Collecting data for analysis
• Searching for error identifications
• Grouping errors by identifications
• Deriving factors of risks
• Creating recommendations and measures

Each of the tasks can be assigned to responsible employee as executor and to the project manager as a supervisor. The business practice demonstrates that the strategy of errors preventing leads to successful outcome and is a guarantee of increased profits and business confidence. You can use VIP Task Manager to implement the strategy of errors preventing.