Diving Deep into the Project Plan

The step-by-step process of building a project plan

Let's explore the step-by-step process of building a project plan. This is similar to learning math in the sense that we'll start out writing down every step, even when the step is obvious. As we get better, steps are done in our head, or multiple steps are performed at the same time. For now, we’ll show all of the steps. In real life, we usually combine the first two and the next two together. The steps we’ll cover are the following:

• Requirements gathering and refinement

• Building use cases from the requirements

• Task breakdown with estimates

• Assembling the project plan

Let's look at each of these in detail.

Requirements gathering and refinement

This is a crucial step where a TPM refines and clarifies the requirements. Because this is the first step toward building a plan, everything builds from this foundation, so clarity is key.

The table below shows the high-level requirements for the Mercury program’s Windows Rollout Project.