Planning

Every task will have a certain number of unknowns. The later those unknowns are discovered, the more potential they have in impacting the project schedule.

TLDR; - The following are required for the last to be moved from the Planning Phase to the Planned Phase
Project Lead

Once a project is initially opened, it will be in the Planning status. While it’s in the planning status, work will be completed to prepare the task for execution.

The following are the types of items that need to be completed/documented to the task being ready to be worked on in order to be placed in a Planned status.

  1. A review of the tasks should initially be completed by the subject mater expert, since a number of these meetings are done remotely it may be a good idea to record the meeting (make sure you ask everyone for permission). Then a link to the recoding can be added to the ticket.

  2. A Task Lead must be assigned, this is the person that ultimately owns the task and will be responsible for making sure the task information is kept up to date.

  3. At this point a Primary Contributor can also be assigned but it’s not required.

  4. Due Date for the task is assigned, before a task is started we should attempt to identify a target date for completion. A due date is not always necessary for internal tasks when in the planning stage.

  5. Project Team is assembled - the people that are working on the project should be assigned to the team, this includes the manager which will likely be the same person as the team lead, contributors, or the people that need will be doing the work on the project, the SME or Subject Mater Expert which is the person that knows the most about the task to be completed as well as the testing or QA resource, the person that will be verifying that the task was successfully completed.

  6. Determine Verification Criteria - In some cases

  7. Expected Outcome is established - this will form the acceptance criteria or a list of things that need to be accomplished and can be verified when the task is completed. The expected outcomes also provide the basis for the creating the verification/testing plans.

  8. Risks are identified - Risks are things that we realize we don’t yet understand as to the work to be completed, it’s important to identify these early on in the process to help minimize any potential churn or wasted time onces the project work has begun.

  9. Identify task attributes:

    1. Priority How important is this task, in most cases this is likely going to be Medium, however some tasks may be of critical importance and need to be done as soon as possible and other may be tasks that can be worked on when free time is available and of a lower priority.

    2. Complexity Some tasks are harder or larger then others, hard tasks generally carry more risk and may have more unpredictable timelines. Complex tasks likely need to be monitored closer and may merit additional upfront time to do planning, where as simpler tasks are ones that may require less attention and specifications.

    3. Scope of Effort We should identify how large the task is, as with complexity, larger tasks may merit additional upfront time doing planning and need to be monitored closer. Small tasks also may be ones that can be picked up and worked on between other tasks.

  10. Attachments - A number of our tasks will be software development related, for software development tasks we amy need to update the user interface of an application. If the task requires updating user interface, mocks ups can and should be created to help the developer or the contributor understand what needs to be built.

  11. Help Resources
    1. Development Environment - If this is a development project, information on how to configure and setup the development environment should be in the
    2. Repository - Link to source repository where project files can be accessed. 3. Database table - Reference to database and tables where this work may need to get done 4. Branch - Branch should be completed on 5. Source File - If there are specific files that we think need to be edited, they can be added as a help resources. Once the above steps have been completed, the task can be transitioned to the planned status.