Project Planning: Putting It All Together
Baselines and the numbers behind them
The project management plan bundles baselines and subsidiary plans: scope (with the WBS), schedule, cost, quality, resource, communication, risk, procurement, and stakeholder engagement. Baselines are approved; changing them requires formal change control.
A WBS decomposes deliverables into work packages - deliverable-oriented, not a to-do list. Milestones are zero-duration markers of significant progress. Dependency types: finish-to-start (most common), start-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-finish. The critical path is the longest path through the network; it sets the shortest possible duration and has zero float. Float (slack) is how long a task can slip without delaying the project: late start minus early start. Traps: candidates pick the shortest path as critical, or forget a project can have more than one critical path.
Estimating: analogous (top-down, fast, less accurate), bottom-up (accurate, expensive), parametric (rate × quantity), three-point/PERT (optimistic, most likely, pessimistic).
Budget: direct vs indirect costs. Contingency reserve covers known risks and is controlled by the PM; management reserve covers unknown risks and belongs to management/sponsor.
Risk management: identify → analyze (probability × impact matrix) → plan responses (avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept, escalate) → monitor. Every risk needs an owner and a trigger.
Rule of thumb: any task with float greater than zero can slip that many days before the end date moves; a task with zero float is on the critical path and any slip pushes the finish date.