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Saturday, June 2, 2007

Project Planning Checklist

Standard Planning Checklist

Project Manager

[name]

Risk Management

q

The project team has invested time and energy into identifying all project risks-internal kick off.

q

A risk response strategy has been developed for all risks that have a significant impact or probability.

q

Weekly internal and external meetings have been established with the teams to continually look for risks.

q

Escalation plans are reviewed to ensure risks are communicated throughout Client Operations departments.

q

A project workbook has been developed to manage known risks and is accessible to all project team members.

q

Every risk in the log has someone responsible for managing it.

q

There is a plan in place for continuously identifying and responding to new risks.

Work Breakdown Structure

q

Tasks have been identified to produce every deliverable in the statement of work.

q

The work breakdown structure for the project is consistent with templates for similar projects.

q

The project team participated in building the WBS and has reviewed and approved it.

q

Every task on the WBS has a strong, descriptive name that includes a noun and a verb.

q

Every task on the WBS has a beginning, an end, and clear completion criteria.

q

Project management tasks are included on the WBS.

q

Tasks have been broken down to a level that enables clear responsibility to be assigned.

q

The WBS follows the rules for creating a top-down decomposition.

q

The structure of the WBS has been evaluated to ensure the summary tasks are meaningful to stakeholders that require high-level understanding of the project.

Task Sequence

q

All work packages have predecessor tasks identified and task relationships are illustrated using a network diagram.

q

The team has reviewed all predecessor-successor relationships to ensure there are none missing and that none of the relationships are unnecessary.

Scheduling

q

Critical path analysis has been performed to identify critical path tasks and schedule float.

q

Resource leveling has been applied to ensure the schedule represents a realistic allocation of personnel and other resources.

q

The schedule is based on realistic assumptions about the availability of project personnel.

q

Portions of the schedule that contain many concurrent tasks have been evaluated for risk.

q

The cost-schedule-quality equilibrium is realistic and acceptable to the customer.

Approvals

q

The detailed action plan has been presented and approved.