Project Planning for Beginners | Google Project Management Certificate

this video is a part of the google project management certificate providing you with job-ready skills to start or advance your career in project management get access to practice exercises quizzes discussion forums job search help and more on cosera and you can earn your official certificate visit grow.google project cert to enroll in full learning experience today a project plan can be useful for any project big or small since it helps you document the scope tasks milestones and overall activities of the project at the center of the project plan is the project schedule the project schedule can help you estimate the amount of time it'll take to complete the project and it can provide the team with a way to track the project's progress against your goals what goes into a project plan may vary from company to company but most plans contain these five basic elements these are tasks milestones people documentation and time let's break those down a project plan will include tasks and milestones two topics we discussed before tasks are activities that need to be accomplished within a set period of time they're assigned to different members of the team according to their roles and skills and milestones are important points within the schedule that indicate progress they usually signify the completion of a deliverable or phase of the project a project plan will also include the people working on your team and their roles it's important that each team member understands their role and the tasks they're responsible for completing ensuring that everyone is clear on their assigned tasks frees you up to focus on managing the project and creates a sense of personal responsibility for members of the team a project plan is a good place to link to relevant documentation this includes documents like your racy chart which helps to define roles and responsibilities for individuals on your team you can also link to your charter which clearly defines the project and outlines the details needed to reach your goals relevant documentation can also include documents like your budget and risk management plan we'll discuss more about those later on in the course lastly a project plan should include the estimated time that will be spent on the project this forms the basis of the schedule which is the anchor of your project plan the estimated time includes dates on which tasks should be started and completed and the dates when you hope to reach various milestones it also includes the start and end dates of the project which are important in determining which resources you'll need and when you'll need them so how exactly do you estimate how long these things will take meet me in the next video to find out [Music] as the project manager you aren't responsible for completing every task what you are responsible for is identifying and helping assign those tasks and then estimating how long they'll take to complete these estimates come together to determine the overall project schedule so how do you estimate the amount of time a given task will take you do this with the help of your team time estimation is a prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a task effort estimation is a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task effort estimation differs from time estimation in that effort quantifies the amount of time it will take a person to complete work on a task on the flip side time refers to the overall duration of the task from start to finish that includes inactive time here's an example the effort estimation for painting a wall might be 30 minutes but time estimation might be 24 hours that's because in addition to the 30 minutes of active painting time there are also 23.5 hours of inactive drying time it's important to understand the difference between time estimation and effort estimation because it can help you be more efficient with your available resources if there's idle time baked into a given task your teammate is effectively free to do other things a painter can do other tasks while the wall is drying like painting the mailbox or the window trim an unrealistic effort estimate can negatively impact a project's schedule generally this happens when you underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a task often the culprit for underestimating effort is optimism and listen optimism is a wonderful trait for a project manager to possess but too much optimism can lead you to overlook potential risks that could set your plans behind schedule though it might be tempting to make the optimistic assumption that tasks will be executed exactly according to plan there is always a possibility that there will be setbacks so how do you try to avoid making unrealistic effort estimates you can do this by communicating with teammates assigned to each task your teammates will have the most realistic understanding of the amount of work required to complete a task and should be able to provide you with the best estimate let's imagine this scenario in the context of our plant powers project at office green as a reminder you're launching a new service to provide top office green customers with small low maintenance plants that they can place on their desks you might assume that creating a contact list of top customers is relatively straightforward and can be completed in a single day but it's important to really consider certain subtasks required to complete work in your planning subtasks refer to smaller tasks that are required to complete a larger task for example this might include meeting with the global sales team to identify clients gathering contact information determining client language preferences and building a spreadsheet to house this information asking the teammate assigned to the task for their estimate is likely to yield a more accurate estimation since they'll have a deeper understanding of the work and the nuances of what's required to complete the task you might learn that creating the contact list may take two days to complete which could be double the time you originally expected of course you can usually ask follow-up questions or even gently push back on their estimate as needed later on we'll discuss more of the techniques you can use to get more accurate estimates from your teammates now even though task owners tend to have the strongest sense of how much time they'll need to complete a task the fact is that effort estimates are just that estimates meaning that sometimes those estimates won't be accurate for example in our plant power scenario your teammate estimates that it will take two days to create a contact list of top customers but let's say that the sales team is out of the office for a team building exercise and unable to meet about the client list until after the weekend this will create a task delay and as a result the original estimate is no longer accurate luckily there's a helpful tool called a buffer that you can use during the planning phase to protect against inaccurate effort estimates a buffer is extra time added to the end of a task or a project to account for unexpected slowdowns or delays in work progress buffers are important because they can provide some leeway just in case your time and effort estimates turn out to fall a bit short with a buffer you can add extra time into your schedule and your projects shouldn't fall off track when task delays inevitably arise there are two types of buffers you can use when planning your schedule task buffers and project buffers first we have task buffers which refer to extra time tacked onto a specific task task buffers should be used primarily for tasks that are out of the project team's control for example you might ask a potential plant vendor to provide you with a cost estimate by monday you might assign them this deadline knowing that you won't actually need the estimate until thursday the time between monday and thursday is your buffer and it provides your team with extra time just in case the vendor sends their estimates to you a day or two late task buffers should be used more sparingly for tasks within the project team's control for example you might choose to add buffers only to tasks that are difficult to complete or that have an element of unpredictability like the length of time it will take plants to grow adding a buffer to every task could lengthen your project schedule unnecessarily leaving you your team and your stakeholders with an unrealistic timeline this is where project buffers come in handy project buffers differ from task buffers in that they provide extra time to the overall project schedule rather than adding a buffer to every task you can add extra time as a buffer towards the end of your project schedule then you can use that extra time two to three days for example as needed throughout the project for instance if a teammate misses a deadline here and there the project buffer gives you space in the overall schedule to make up for lost time i use buffers often in my day-to-day role at google for example on a recent project at google i was working with a new hire who was great at coding but kept missing deadlines i realized they weren't giving themselves enough buffer time to do testing i started to ask questions about their current workload and the complexity of their tasks and based on their answers to those questions i was able to gather insights about their work and determine where i needed to add buffer to their tasks ultimately my goal is to ensure that i'm setting a realistic timeline for the project after all if you hit your project goal two months later than expected your organization may not consider the project a success time estimation effort estimation and buffers can help you build realistic plans for reaching the project goal [Music] okay so we've discussed time estimation which is a prediction of the total amount of time that will be required to complete a task and we've also discussed effort estimation which is a prediction of the amount and difficulty of active work required to complete a task these techniques can help you estimate the length of time it will take to complete a task once you have that information you will need to determine if you have the right number of people to get the work done to figure this out you can use a technique called capacity planning first let's define capacity capacity refers to the amount of work that the people or resources assigned to the project can reasonably complete in a set period of time a person can only do so much and it's important to keep in mind each person's capacity when assigning work this is where capacity planning comes in capacity planning refers to the act of allocating people and resources to project tasks and determining whether or not you have the necessary resources required to complete the work on time during this process you might find that you need more resources to speed up the project timeline like a second web developer or a third writer let's imagine capacity planning in the context of our plant pals project at officegreen if you know that you'll need to deliver plants to 100 customers over a period of five days then you'll need to determine if you've hired enough delivery drivers to meet that deadline if one delivery driver averages 20 deliveries within an eight hour work day then you'll need to hire at least five drivers to complete their work on time even if a person on your project team is spending 100 of their time at work on your project they'll have limited capacity for the amount of work they should be expected to complete each day between meetings unexpected urgent tasks and other elements of a typical work day there's only so much each person can complete so how do you decide where a teammate should focus their priorities and make the most of their capacity you can prioritize their time by plotting the critical path of your project timeline the critical path refers to the list of project milestones that you must reach in order to meet the project goal on schedule as well as the mandatory tasks that contribute to the completion of each milestone anything else is considered off the critical path for example tasks on the critical path for launching project plant powers might include hiring plant vendors developing a new website and fulfilling deliveries a task like adding flowers to your product lineup is nice to have but might not have much impact on the overall success of your project because this task isn't crucial to your launch these tasks aren't part of the critical path to summarize your critical path includes the bare minimum number of tasks and milestones you need to reach your project goal if your team is unable to complete any of those tasks on time that might result in a project delay to determine the critical path of a project you'd start by listing all the tasks required to complete the project and the milestones they feed into this is a perfect time to think back to your work breakdown structure or wbs which is a chart that sorts all the milestones and tasks of a project into a hierarchy according to the order in which they need to be completed this includes a detailed overview of every project task then you determine which tasks on the list absolutely can't begin until another task is complete this is called a dependency and we'll discuss this topic in more detail later on next you'll work with your team to make time estimates for each task and map each task from start to finish the longest path is your critical path there are a few factors that can impact capacity and capacity planning first you need to be able to identify which tasks can happen in parallel which means they can happen at the same time as other tasks you will also need to identify which tasks can happen sequentially meaning they must happen in a specific order when you identify which tasks can happen in parallel it helps you create efficiencies within your project schedule by demonstrating where you can complete multiple tasks at the same time identifying sequential tasks help you identify the tasks that you need to prioritize early on in the project for example a sequential task for your plant powers project may include needing budget approval before hiring a vendor and two parallel tasks might include hiring delivery drivers and the development of a website these tasks have no relationship to one another as they focus on different portions of the project and can be completed by different members of the team that means that one task can begin even if the other task hasn't been completed and so the work to complete these tasks can happen at the same time you also need to determine which project tasks have a fixed start date a fixed start date refers to the date on which you must start work on your tasks in order to achieve your goal identifying whether or not your tasks have a fixed start dates can help with capacity planning because it helps ensure that you'll have the right number of people available to complete tasks on time for example let's imagine that your contract says you'll need to deliver 100 plants on a specific date that means that the task of picking up those plants has a fixed start date of one day prior to delivery alternatively some tasks might have an earlier start date an earlier start date refers to the earliest date in which you can begin working on a task identifying an earlier start date can set accurate expectations for when vendors and team members will be up and running on the project this can help you plan your work and prioritize your work accordingly for example if you're working with a new vendor you need to wait until contracts are signed and the purchase order is approved and created before the vendor can start let's say that at officegreen this process can take about three weeks based on this information you can determine that the earliest start date for your vendor will be three weeks from the kickoff meeting with your vendor another best practice for capacity planning and creating the critical path includes identifying if a task has float also sometime known as slack float refers to the amount of time you can wait to begin a task before it impacts the project schedule and threatens the project outcome these are high priority tasks that have low to no wiggle room this helps reinforce what is and what is not on your critical path for instance tasks on the critical path should have zero float meaning there is no room for delays and tasks that do have float are not a part of the critical path for example the shipment of plants to a priority customer who's requested their delivery on a specific date is a task that has zero float great you've now learned a bit more about how to define capacity capacity planning and critical path we also discussed the techniques used to identify critical path in a project and the various factors that can impact capacity and capacity planning [Music] time estimation effort estimation and capacity planning are all helpful techniques for creating your project schedule and at the center of all this planning is your team throughout the scheduled planning process you're working with teammates to gather estimates and you're taking into account each person's capacity when building the project schedule it makes sense to involve your teammates at this stage after all the person assigned to the given task is likely to have the best sense of how long it will take to complete that task they'll also have the best sense of their own capacity for taking on the work but these conversations are a two-way discussion and you'll need to tap into your soft skills to get the most accurate estimate from your team soft skills are personal characteristics that help people work effectively with others these include crucial communication and interpersonal skills we've discussed over the course of this program soft skills can be important when trying to understand what might be blocking someone's ability to do their best work let's go over three ways to use soft skills and gather accurate estimates from your teammates these are asking the right questions negotiating effectively and practicing empathy let's start with asking the right questions think of conversations around the time estimation as a kind of interview you're connecting with your teammates to learn more about how they work on specific tasks and you'll use this information to build your schedule to aim to get the most relevant information from these conversations you'll want to be certain that you're asking effective open-ended questions that lead to the answers you're seeking an open-ended question is a question that cannot be answered with a yes or a no the answer provides the relevant details of what you need to know let's imagine this in the context of your project at office green you've discussed the design of the new website with your web designer and you'd like to know how long it will take them to mock up designs for your review now let's say you start the conversation by asking a question like can you complete the mock-ups in one week this is a closed-ended question and might elicit a simple yes or no answer which doesn't tell you much about the task of designing a website or about your teammates working style now imagine if you had started this conversation with an open-ended question for example you might ask the web designer something like how long does it typically take you to mock up a website design like this one this is an open-ended question and is more likely to elicit a more detailed response from there you can ask follow-up questions like how complex are the steps to complete this task what are the risks associated with this task and when do you think you can have this ready by asking your teammates effective open-ended questions about their assigned tasks you can learn more about how they work and what they do as you have more of these conversations you'll develop a better sense of your teammates roles and their tasks and you'll be able to rely less on your team to make accurate estimates another way to use soft skills to gather estimates from teammates is to negotiate effectively part of your job as the project manager is to bridge the gap between high-level goals of the project and the day-to-day perspective of your team while your project might be your number one priority it's possible that people on your project team have competing priorities on other teams to keep track of as well negotiating effectively can help you influence a team member to make your project their priority by collaborating to find an outcome that works for everyone for example let's imagine that the website designer estimates it will take them two weeks to mock up the website design for review but perhaps you were hoping that their estimate might be closer to one week to arrive at an estimate that works for both you and the designer you might gently challenge the estimate by asking follow-up questions perhaps you'd ask if their estimate includes mocking up designs for multiple pages if so you might ask if the designer is able to share one or two pages with you sooner than their proposed deadline by asking questions you can determine if their estimate is flexible or if you need to bring in an additional designer to support the schedule by negotiating effectively with your teammates you can create a sense of shared ownership over the project outcomes and create a schedule that aligns with everyone's workload now let's discuss the value of practicing empathy empathy refers to a person's ability to relate to the thoughts and feelings of others practicing empathy at work can be a very effective way to build trust with your team your teammates are humans and each person can only do so much when you're discussing estimates with the team you might practice empathy by asking each person about their workload including work outside of your project and the overall work-life balance you might also ask if they've scheduled vacation or leave during the duration of the project or if there are crucial holidays in which they won't be working this can help you avoid assigning tasks when teammates are unable to complete them on time for example the web designer might tell you that they're also designing a website for another team at office screen and that the timeline for both projects overlap so to avoid overloading your designer with work you might work with the other project manager to balance workloads across the teams people like to feel their work is valued so part of empathy is remembering to always be appreciative of the work collaboration and support that you're getting from the team so to recap asking the right questions negotiating effectively and practicing empathy can help you get viable accurate estimates from your teammates about project tasks coming up we'll discuss putting these estimates to good use in the project plan even the simplest projects can benefit from a clear plan and an anchor of a good project plan is a clear schedule containing all the tasks of a project their owners and when they need to be completed once you have your project schedule you can build a solid plan around that schedule using tools like spreadsheets and asana we'll explain these tools in a few moments but first let's discuss building a project schedule there are many helpful tools that you can use to create a project schedule but let's focus on one that we sometimes use here at google called a gantt chart a gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart that maps out a project schedule fun fact the chart gets its name from american engineer henry gantt who helped popularize the chart in the early 1900s so why did people working in project management find this chart useful well it's a highly visual representation of a project's tasks with clear breakdowns of who's responsible for the work and when those tasks are due for many people a visual aid that builds upon written directions can be a helpful way to understand and synthesize the work they need to do when they need to complete it and how their individual tasks connect to the other tasks in a project gantt charts are almost like calendars they feature the start and end dates of each task and the bars align with how much time is devoted to each of those tasks for example let's say that your teammate leon is tasked with creating a project charter and another teammate kylie is tasked with reviewing and editing the charter when leon is finished using a gantt chart you'll use colored bars to illustrate the days that they'll be working on these tasks with this method you and the rest of your team can determine that leon has friday monday and tuesday to work on the chart and kylie has wednesday to complete any revisions the bars cascade down the chart to illustrate the passing of time and the blocks of time in which the tasks are completed gantt charts can be a helpful tool for tracking schedules but what kinds of tools can you use to make a gantt chart there are a few options but we're going to focus on the straightforward spreadsheet creating a gantt chart in a spreadsheet is pretty simple you can organize your left columns by items like task title task owner start date due date duration and percent of task complete this is a great place to list the tasks and milestones previously identified in a work breakdown structure you'll include relevant information in the rows below organized by start date on the right side of your sheet you will order your columns by the week's estimated to complete the project from start to finish in the rows below that you'll include bars representing the dates when certain tasks will take place kind of neat right spreadsheets are helpful here because they can hold more information than just the gantt chart though the project schedule serves as the central component of the project plan you can use separate tabs on your spreadsheet to house or link to other documents you'll want to include in your plan like a racy chart or a project charter you may also opt to include your plans for risk management and communication here too with a spreadsheet you can simply add a tab for your documents keeping every document for the project in one spreadsheet saves time helps everyone stay organized and reduces the burden of having to search through emails for information alternatively you can also opt to use a digital document to link out all the relevant documents while gantt charts are a useful tool they are far from the only option for your project plan and there are plenty of reasons why this form of documentation might not work for you or your project team for a simple project you might find that your team responds better to a digital document that features a list of tables or tasks their owners due dates and links to other relevant planning documents or perhaps your team works best with kanban boards which uses cards to track and visualize the progress of your tasks regardless of your chosen tool if your plan includes the project's goals its tasks owners start and end dates and relevant planning documentation then you'll be able to keep everyone on the same page now you know a bit more about the tools that can be used to create a project schedule earlier you learned about creating a project plan based on a project schedule that lists all of the milestones tasks and deadlines for project and that clearly outlines the people responsible for each task you also learnt about gantt charts which are simple visual ways to create your schedule so how can you help make sure that your plan works for you and your team let's discuss five best practices for building a great project plan that will remain useful throughout the execution and closing phases of your project those include ensuring careful review of project deliverables milestones and tasks giving yourself time to plan recognizing and planning for the inevitable things will go wrong staying curious and championing your plan first you'll want to ensure that you've carefully reviewed the project's deliverables milestones and tasks during the initiation phase you'll recall that you created a project charter with important information regarding your project like your goal scope and deliverables when a project enters the planning phase your plans become more granular let's discuss this in the context of your project at officegreen in your plan you need to break this information down further you're creating a new website for this service so you'll need to break that deliverable down into smaller milestones like kicking off a meeting with the web developer and gaining stakeholder approval and those milestones will break down into smaller tasks like mocking up a design of the new website and developing a landing page each of these tasks will be assigned to a teammate and given a start and end date now a new website isn't the only project plant powers deliverable you will need to break down every deliverable into milestones and tasks to ensure that you and your team have a clear picture of what needs to be done to meet your project's goals your plan revolves around completing each and every tiny task so you should take your time to get this piece right this brings me to my second tip give yourself time to plan there's a reason that planning is its own phase of the project life cycle it's a time intensive process especially for larger projects with multiple deliverables planning gives you and your team some time to think realistically about what your team can and cannot accomplish within a certain time frame you're not a machine and neither are your teammates there are limits to the amount of work any one person can do in a given time frame using the strategies that we've shared earlier like effort estimation and capacity planning can help you and your team get a realistic sense of how long the project will take and when you'll be able to hit your milestones it's also important to allow for buffer time since projects rarely go exactly as planned later in the project you'll be grateful that you initially plan for some built-in flexibility around timing that leads nicely into my third tip recognize and plan for the inevitable things will go wrong even with thorough planning your projects will still experience unexpected setbacks and bumps in the road you can't plan for every problem but the team can identify the risks that will most likely occur and create plans to prevent or mitigate those risks as we mentioned before buff is a helpful tool for mitigating issues related to slowdowns in progress you'll learn more about how to create a risk management plan that goes into your project plan later on in this course on to my fourth tip stay curious though you may be the sole expert on your project overall it's extremely unlikely that you're an expert on every task of the project that's why it's so important to sit down with your teammates during a planning phase and ask lots and lots of questions as we mentioned earlier asking your teammates questions about their work can give you deeper insights into their tasks for the project their input will help you build a stronger plan and the back and forth dialogue will help you build trust between you and your teammates to keep the project running smoothly it's also important to understand the expectations priorities risk assessments and communication styles of your stakeholders and vendors for example you might ask stakeholders how to best keep them in the loop on the project's plans and you might ask your vendors about their availability to complete work for the project now on to my fifth tip champion your plan while deciding how to organize your plan you'll want to ask yourself a few questions like can your teammates use the tool you used to build your plan is the information clear enough for your stakeholders will using this plan as a single source of truth save your team and stakeholders the time and energy when they need to find information on the project if the answer to each of these questions is a strong yes then you're on the right track to achieve buy-in from your teammates and stakeholders on your project plan champion it tell your team why it benefits them to stay on top of the plan by doing so you may influence your teammates to stay on track and update the plan regularly [Music] nice work let's recap what we've just covered first we took you through why it's necessary to create and manage a project plan at the center of the project plan is a project schedule and we discussed methods for determining realistic time and effort estimates for each task you also learned more about the power of soft skills to help you gather time and effort estimates from members of your team we also introduced you to a gantt chart which is a useful tool for visualizing a project's schedule and i shared my best practices for creating a project plan that will serve as a useful source of information throughout the planning phase and execution phase coming up we'll take you through managing costs and budgets see you soon congratulations on finishing this video in the google project management certificate access the full learning experience including job search help and start to earn your official certificate by clicking on the icon to view the next course in this video click here and subscribe to our channel to learn more from google career certificates

Channel: Google Career Certificates

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Keywords: Grow with Google, Career Change, Tech jobs, Google Career Certificate, Google Career Certificates, Job skills, Coursera, Certification, Google, professional certificates, professional certificate program, Project management, Project management 101, Project management fundamentals, Project manager, Program management, Agile, Agile project management, Scrum, critical path, critical path method, critical path method in project management, critical path analysis

Id: hHPAc0LFfZA

Length: 37min 19sec (2239 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021