Crafting a Project Plan: Seven Steps for Achieving Your Goals

Are you embarking on a big project?  Perhaps you’re thinking of launching a new product or service or putting on a large event.  Whatever it may be, a project plan is a great tool to make sure that you and your team are planning ahead for what’s to come, organizing tasks, delegating responsibilities and ultimately ensuring your goals come to fruition.  Some people may be interested in doing this within a project management system.  There are several options available for this, some industry specific, others that can be used broadly across several industries.  But for those who aren’t interested in the technology of that, a simple spreadsheet can be utilized to keep track of it all too.  Regardless of if you’re using a project management system or a spreadsheet, these seven steps will help ensure the project plan works for you and your team!

Step 1:  Determine your goal and the scope of your project.  Get very clear on the overall goal that you want to accomplish for your specific project.  This will help inform your decisions and define your scope. Because you’re going to be putting a lot of resources behind this project, make sure your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time based.  When defining the scope of your project, this will include what resources will be used/leveraged including human resources so you’ll want to consider that as well when defining your goal and scope of your project. 

Step 2:  Meet with your project team and share the goal and scope of the project.  It will be important for you to have the buy-in from the team that will be helping you reach your goal.  Make sure they understand what the goal is and what it isn’t and be sure to also share with them the scope so that everyone is on the same page and rowing the boat in the same direction.  You will also want to clearly define their roles and appoint a project manager 🙋🏽‍♀️.  This person will be designed to ensure that the project is moving forward and can raise any issues with you if needed.  They should also understand what level of decision-making authority they have before needing to involve you in a decision.

Step 3:  Identify specific tasks needed to accomplish the end goal.  This is where you’ll get into the nitty gritty of all of the individual steps that need to be taken in order to get to the final product.  You may need to leverage the team and their areas of expertise to provide input on these tasks.  Depending on the size of your project, you might want to divide the project up into smaller sections (this can either be done in a timeline format so things are divided up based on how far out they need to be completed prior to the end date of the project – for example 3 weeks before X, 2 weeks before X etc. OR you can divide it up by related deliverables – for example, a technology subsection, and a marketing one etc.).

Step 4:  Assign all tasks an owner and a due date.  This, IMO, is probably one of the most important steps to ensure your project gets completed accurately and on time.  Once you’ve identified the specific tasks needed to carry out the goal, you will need to assign each of those tasks one owner and a due date.  You might be wondering…“why only one owner per task?”  Well, I’m so glad you asked!  The reason for this is multi-layered.  First, it avoids any confusion about who is ultimately responsible for completing said task.  No one on the team can say that they thought someone else was going to do it if their name is in the assigned field next to that task.  And secondly, it helps you from an accountability standpoint.  If something is or isn’t done, you know exactly who to go to for more information to find out about what did or didn’t happen. It’s also a great opportunity to give positive feedback when the person has done a good job. And finally, it saves time to know exactly who to go to first if anyone has a question or needs additional information about any specific task.  And, just as important is to assign a due date.  Know that the dates may need to change but it’s always best to adjust the dates than to not have any dates assigned because when there’s no date, there’s no urgency in getting the task done.

Step 5:  Plug the tasks into a project management system or a spreadsheet for tracking.  I touched on this in the introduction but this is also an important step.  By having everything documented in one place, all project team members should be able to access this.  This allows them to make notes, complete their tasks and refer to any project related information.  The project manager should be ultimately responsible for the upkeep of the overall project and should be regularly inspecting results and data for the overall progress and health of the project but for transparency, the entire team should have access to it. The best part of this is that if your team is using it correctly, it provides a real-time snapshot of the status of the overall project for you to see if anything is behind schedule or off-track.  The vehicle that you use for this is less important than just having it all together in one place for everyone to access and utilize.  So, if you’re not currently using a project management system, I recommend starting with a spreadsheet.  If you’ve done that and are ready to implement a tool to help your team be even more efficient with it, there are both industry specific tools that can be used as well as other popular project management tools (my favorite happens to be ClickUp!). 

Step 6:  Check-in regularly with the team on the status of the project.  This may be something that you delegate to the project manager (especially if you’ve got a seasoned pro!).  But you should always ask to be included in the updates to keep your pulse on what’s happening.  I recommend weekly (if not more frequent) check-ins with the team depending on the scope and nature of your project.  This doesn’t always need to take place in a meeting but sometimes meetings are necessary because the team is working together to accomplish the goal of your project and that requires communication and collaboration.  So, use your best judgement on the method that works best for your team from a communication and collaboration standpoint.  If you’re just getting started or this is the first time that your team has worked on this type of a project together, then I recommend more frequent check-ins.  If you’ve been there, done this and not a lot of new changes are happening, less frequent check-ins are probably fine.

Step 7:  Debrief, Document Results & Celebrate your Successes!  Often this final step is the forgotten step. Once the project is complete, it’s important to debrief the project.  Include the team for their feedback and determine what went well and what things can be improved for next time.  Any data that was collected should be included in the debrief; data is powerful information that should be used to inform future decisions.  And don’t forget to celebrate your team and their successes!  Thank them for the work that they put into bringing the project to life.

There you have it! My seven steps to a wildly successful project plan.  If you have any questions or would like further information about systems and formats that I’ve used for several projects and events that I’ve managed, please connect! If you’re looking for additional support with an upcoming event, project or launch, let’s chat.  And most importantly, I’m always looking to celebrate the wins of my clients and fans so if you’ve implemented any or all of these steps after reading this, please share the good news with me.

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