Project planning and control
All ULF Projects have to achieve a number of objectives over a fixed period of time. Most people find that having some form of project plan from the start really helps, as having a plan keeps everyone focused on the project objectives and provides clarity of purpose and roles for different members of the team.
Your project plan can be in whichever format is most helpful to you: generally the more complex the project, the greater the detail you will need. Your plan should allow you and the steering group to be able to judge if the project is progressing as expected or if some sort of corrective action is needed.
Plans usually outline the key things that need to happen to meet different project aims and objectives, the timescale for completing these tasks and activities, who is responsible for each, plus some markers (milestones) to check progress. See a sample action plan template, an operational plan template, a timeline chart and quarterly task list.
Below are a number of other tools that may help you to track your project’s progress. These are here to help you – choose the ones that make sense to you and that you think will help. ULF won’t ask to see what you use, though you may be asked to describe the ways you check your project is on track.
Milestones
Milestones are mini-deadlines that allow you to check your progress and share that progress with your team. If you list all the project milestones and arrange them in date order as a milestone chart, you will be able to see at a glance what needs to happen and when. If you’re behind schedule, you can have a look at the next milestones to see what needs to happen, and start planning how you will get back on track. A milestone report might be helpful.
Risks
All projects carry uncertainty and therefore risks. If you identify what are your key risks you can decide what you will do if they happen, and allocate responsibility to a particular person to ensure everything is going to plan. You can use a risk register to record each risk and give it a score to see to which you need to pay most attention. This allows you to look at the likelihood that something will happen (e.g. 1 - very unlikely, 2 - likely and 3 - highly likely), as well as the impact (cost, on people etc) if it does (e.g. 1 - low impact, 2 - medium and 3 - high). You can now decide which are your key risks:
- Low impact/Low chance will happen – you can often ignore these
- Low impact/High chance – if these things happen you can usually cope with them and move on. However, try to reduce the likelihood that they'll occur
- High impact/Low chance – do what you can to reduce the impact these will have if they do occur, and have plans in place just in case
- High impact/High probability – these are your top priorities: pay them close attention. You might want to nominate someone to manage each of those risks
Issues
Reviewing your project workplan and noting issues as they arise, and the impact they’re likely to have on your project, can help you be prepared for potential problems in the future. You can then monitor those things and decide what action you will take if they happen. You could use a traffic light system where red = serious/ high impact, amber = medium impact, green = low impact to help you identify those issues to which you need to pay most attention. An issues template might help you to note and manage issues that arise.
When you next bid for funding, you can use the information to make a better bid next time by knowing what didn’t go quite as you had hoped. It’s always easier to do this as you go along, rather than trying to recall something from last month - never mind last year!
