The other PMP - Your Project Management Plan

In a previous blog, (But I don't want to be a PM), I wrote about the primary traits of a project manager that non-PMs tasked with running a project should mirror. Within that blog I touched upon what I consider to be a key document that will help you develop your project governance, as well as aiding in the project team’s alignment on key activities and their associated deliverables; yet this document isn’t prevalent within many corporation’s methodologies. Overlooking this I feel is a mistake and if embarking on a new initiative or working on your PMO uplift efforts, I would highly recommend incorporating this document as part of your initiation steps. Whether it be hybrid (common for regulatory), agile or a waterfall effort, this document can be used as the agreed upon execution of phases, sprints and if hybrid what must be done in a linear fashion and what can be accomplished within sprints.

Based on my primary focus working on SaaS implementations, and vendor-based data migration and transformations from a client perspective, a PMP is a clear way to set project expectations with your vendor and all key stakeholders. As an added bonus, when working in a regulated environment, it also emphasizes your due diligence on ensuring a quality effort by documenting your overall adherence to developed processes and regulatory requirements.

As I noted above, this document isn’t always a required deliverable, so there may be some hesitation for its need. If that’s the case, a key justification for its use is that it is a single source, which clearly highlights all aspects of your project execution and key deliverables, such as.

• Providing a summary of key aspects from your project charter. You don’t want a repeat of the document, you want to summarize areas around scope, key risks, and milestones; I recommend working on the charter and the PMP concurrently.

  • If you’re thinking that I could simply spell this all out in my charter, remember I’m focusing on the benefits of this document aligned with vendor managed projects. A charter tends to be more of the client’s vision, definition of done, key milestones and so on. On the other hand, the PMP is a cross organizational agreement between all parties around governance and project execution.

• You can document your project team and governance structure, so that everyone is in agreement; alignment within quality and communication management are also critical and should be documented here as well.

• What application will be used to manage your timeline and which team will be responsible for the primary plan?

  • This isn’t always cut and dry, I’ve managed projects where the client prefers status reporting within a certain application and the vendor manages via another source. Under a scenario such as this, I’ll work with the vendor PM to ensure alignment of activities in both plans and then use the client’s preferred method to drive status. In others I’ve overseen the full detailed plan and the vendor used their planning standards to drive their activities.

• This document will provide agreed upon risks, issues, and decision management, such as the development of a RAID (Risk, Action, Issue and Decision) log. What will the agreed upon items be within each, where will it be stored? Question such as those should be spelled out in the PMP.

What more details or assistance in developing a PMP either for a specific project or for PMO standard? Let’s connect.