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.