Course 3 — Project Planning
Course 3 of the Google PM Certificate. Turns the signed charter into an executable plan: schedule, budget, procurement, risk plan, and communication plan.
The five phases of planning
Phase 1 — Beginning the planning phase
Why planning matters:
- Map the full project and work needed to hit goals
- Coordinate across teams, contractors, and vendors
- Identify and prepare for risks
- Get buy-in from key team members
- Demonstrate to stakeholders that the team is starting with a detailed plan
The three big outputs of planning: schedule, budget, and risk management plan.
Kick-off meeting. First meeting where the team aligns on vision, goals, scope, and individual roles. Attendees: team, stakeholders, sponsor. Agenda covers introductions, background, goals & scope, roles, collaboration tools, next steps, questions.
Tasks & milestones.
- Milestone — an important point in the schedule indicating progress, usually completion of a deliverable or phase.
- Task — an activity completed in a set period of time.
- Milestones must be completed on time and in sequential order; missing one sets back the schedule.
work-breakdown-structure — hierarchical sort of milestones and tasks.
Phase 2 — Building a project plan
Components of a project plan: tasks, milestones, people, documentation, time.
A project plan is a living roadmap of what we’re building, who does it, when it happens, and how we stay on track. Core components:
- Scope & goals (from the charter) — prevents scope creep
- work-breakdown-structure — tasks, owners, deadlines, milestones
- Budget — money & resources
- Management plans — risk, change, communication
Estimation.
- Time estimation — prediction of total time.
- Effort estimation — prediction of amount and difficulty of active work.
- Teammates give the most realistic estimates — ask them.
- Buffers: task buffers (for tasks outside the team’s control) and project buffers (at the end of the project).
Capacity & critical path.
- Capacity planning — allocating people/resources to tasks; checking feasibility.
- critical-path-method — the sequence of milestones and tasks that must be met on time. Tasks on the critical path have zero float (slack).
gantt-chart — horizontal bar chart mapping the schedule.
Phase 3 — Managing budget and procurement
- Project budget — monetary estimate to achieve goals. It’s a deliverable and success metric.
- Key components: stakeholder needs, surprise expenses, adaptability, reviewing/reforecasting.
- Resource cost rates — labor, tools, equipment, materials.
- Reserve analysis — check for remaining buffer funds.
- Contingency budget — for unforeseen events.
- Management reserves — for unidentified risks, usually 5–10% of total, require sponsor approval.
- Cost of quality — prevention + appraisal + internal failure + external failure costs.
- Budgeting techniques: historical data, leverage experts, bottom-up, confirm accuracy, set baseline.
- Budgeting challenges: budget pre-allocation, inaccurate Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), scope creep.
- Terms: cash flow, CAPEX, OPEX, contingency reserves (identified risks), management reserves (unidentified).
- Contracts: fixed (paid at milestones) vs time & materials (paid monthly on hours + fees).
- Cost control — proactive, not reactive; establish sign-off, manage changes, accept misses.
procurement-process — 5 steps (initiating, selecting, contract writing, control, completing). Agile vs traditional procurement. Key docs: NDA (initiation), RFP (selecting), SoW (contracting). Ethics (PMI values: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness); risks: bribery, sole-supplier, state-owned entities.
Phase 4 — Managing risks
- Risk — a potential event.
- Issue — a known, real problem.
- Risk management — identify, evaluate, address potential risks.
See risk-management-process for the full 5-phase cycle (identify, analyze, evaluate, treat, monitor) and tools (cause-effect diagrams, risk register, probability/impact matrix, inherent risk, risk appetite).
Opportunities — positive risks. Same identify/analyze/evaluate/treat/control framework applies.
Common risk types: time, budget, scope. Plus external risks, single points of failure.
dependency-types — internal/external/mandatory/discretionary and the four relationships (Finish-Start, Finish-Finish, Start-Start, Start-Finish).
Mitigation strategies: avoid, minimize, transfer, accept (the 4 Ts).
Decision tree — visualize a decision’s wider impact.
Communicating risks. Medium/high risks require early and frequent stakeholder communication.
Phase 5 — Organizing communication and documentation
- Effective communication is clear, honest, relevant, frequent.
- communication-plan — documents the process, types, and expectations of communication. Covers what/who/when/why/how/where.
- Knowledge management — ensuring project data can be accessed in the future.
- Need-to-know basis — share only what’s needed, when needed.
- PII — Personally Identifiable Information (email, address, phone, location, full name/usernames). Must be protected.
Connections
- course-2-project-initiation — previous
- course-4-project-execution — next
- All planning-phase concept pages linked above.