Project Management Plan Template

This Project Management Plan Template is free to copy and use. Please feel free to provide
comments and feedback to help improve this template for future users. This template is to be
distributed only through the PM Documents web site (http://www.pmdocuments.com)

Project Management Plan

[Project Name]

Date

[Company Name]
Address
City, State Zip
Contents
1. Project Description..........................................................................................................................3
2. Project Objectives............................................................................................................................3
3. Project Management Plan Purpose.................................................................................................3
4. Project Deliverables.........................................................................................................................3
5. Project Milestones...........................................................................................................................4
6. Project Roles and Responsibilities...................................................................................................4
7. Project Scope Management.............................................................................................................4
8. Project Time Management..............................................................................................................5
9. Project Cost Management...............................................................................................................5
10. Project Quality Management.......................................................................................................5
11. Project Human Resource Management.......................................................................................6
12. Project Risk Management............................................................................................................6
13. Project Communications Management.......................................................................................7
14. Project Procurement Management.............................................................................................7
15. Authorization...............................................................................................................................8

Note: Select all (ctrl + A) and hit the "F9" key to update all document references and the table of
contents
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1. Project Description
Explain what the project is, and how it will be accomplished. Explain the ultimate intended outcome of
the project. This should serve as a brief introduction. Provide some background about the history of how
the project got to this point.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or Preliminary
Project Scope Statement if available.

2. Project Objectives
Provide clear, actionable and measurable objectives of the project. The objectives should be clear enough
so that the project can be measured against the objectives once completed. The ultimate success of a
project is whether the project achieved its stated objectives. Take time to clearly document the objectives
here.

An example of an objective is:

 The system/product/service will cut response times in half, thus allowing the organization to
process twice as many tickets.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or Preliminary
Project Scope Statement if available.

3. Project Management Plan Purpose

State the purpose of this Plan. The purpose of the plan should be to describe how the project is going to
be managed. Specifically, this Plan should provide guidance to the project team on how to execute the
project against the 9 knowledge areas identified within the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK). This Plan should also identify the key project milestones and document project team roles
and responsibilities, and the governance structure of the project (who is what decisions).

4. Project Deliverables
Identify the products and services that the project will deliver. The intent of this section is to list the
product or system deliverables (e.g., an online shopping site), and not the project management
deliverables (e.g., Requirements Management Plan)

An example of a product deliverable is:

 An online store with a shopping cart and credit card purchasing capability.

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or Preliminary
Project Scope Statement if available.

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5. Project Milestones
Identify the project milestones.

Milestone Date Milestone Name Milestone Description

[Jan 1] System Requirements System requirements version 1.0 are approved and
Complete baselined so that the project can begin design and
development.
[June 1] Development Complete Software development is complete and ready for
integration testing
[Dec 1] Deployed to Production System passes integration and end-user acceptance
testing and is deployed to production

Note: Pull some of the Project Description information from the Project Charter or Preliminary
Project Scope Statement if available.

6. Project Roles and Responsibilities

Identify the key project stakeholders here and their responsibilities on the project.

Role Responsibilities
Project Sponsor Sponsor of the project. Provides the budget and funding for the project.
Sets the strategic goals and objectives.
Project Manager Responsible for the overall success of the project. Delivers the product with
an acceptable level of quality, on budget and on time. Responsible for the
project team, the project schedule and maintaining the project scope.
Responsible for providing status report to the project sponsor periodically
and escalating issues to the project sponsor and program manager as needed.
Project Risk Lead …
Project Schedule Lead …
Project Testing Lead …
Project Quality Lead …
…

7. Project Scope Management

Describe the process for managing requirements. Specifically, describe how requirements are baselined
and maintained. Describe how decisions are made to accept modifications to the project scope.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Scope Management section could be a separate subsidiary Plan
document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation for how
requirements are managed and project scope is maintained.

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8. Project Time Management
Explain how the project schedule is developed and managed. Identify the procedures for monitoring
progress against the schedule baseline and making changes to it. For example, if there are weekly
meetings to monitor progress against the project schedule, provide that information here. Identify who
must attend and what decisions can be made in the meeting. Explain the project schedule format.
Identify specific tools used to develop and maintain the project schedule.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Time Management section could be a separate subsidiary Plan
document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation for how the
schedule is managed.

9. Project Cost Management

Explain how the project cost is developed and managed. Identify the procedures for monitoring project
cost. Identify who has the authority to make spending decisions. Identify who has authority to change
funding for the project. Define the procedures for requesting additional funding. Explain specific
thresholds for cost monitoring and control. For example, if the project begins to incur cost overruns, at
what thresholds must specific actions take place? For example, if the cost variance exceeds 10%, then the
project must undergo a Program review with the project sponsor and the project manager to determine
what actions must take place to bring the project back into alignment.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Cost Management section could be a separate subsidiary Plan
document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation for how project
cost is monitored and project budget (funding) is allocated or modified.

10. Project Quality Management

Explain how quality will be measured on the project in order to ensure that the project deliverables meet a
minimum level of quality. Explain the specific measures that will be used and why the measures were
selected. The collected measures should provide information on whether the project is meeting its stated
objectives. The measures should focus on whether the project is delivering the defined requirements at an
acceptable level of quality to the customer. For example, if the project is intended to improve efficiency
of order fulfillment by 50%, then the project should track the number of orders filled. Also collect
baseline measures at the start of the project for all quality measures that will be tracked. Additionally, if
the project wants to improve the online user shopping experience, then the online shoppers should be
polled before and after the changes to see if the feedback has improved. (Tip: When conducting a survey
of customers, you can quantify the feedback by using a Likert-scale questionnaire).

Define the quality baseline measures here:

Quality Quality Measure Goal Baseline

Measure
Web Site At least 6 second Average Response time is 13.5 seconds at peak load
Response average response time
Time at peak load
Errors Less than 1% response 3 percent page errors due to load issues
page errors

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Customer Customer issues Number of customer issues due to load issues is high. Expect
resolution resolved 50% faster that as the load errors decrease, customer issues will decrease
– thus allowing customer service to respond to issues faster
Deploy Deployment without N/A
Product production downtime

Note: For larger projects, the Project Quality Management section could be a separate subsidiary Plan
document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation for how project
quality is measured.

11. Project Human Resource Management

Explain how resources will be applied to the project. Identify resources here for small projects. For
larger projects, explain the process for ensuring that the project maintains 100% resource allocation,
meaning that there are no activities that should be started but are waiting to be resourced. In a matrixed
project, where the resources are provided by authority from external organizations or divisions, provide
information on who provides the authority. Provide information on where the priority of the project falls
with respect to other responsibilities of the project team members. For example, resources allocated to a
project might have other operational responsibilities that cannot be put on hold. In this situation, the
project needs to be able to have a strategy for how to maintain the momentum of the project if key
resources have to move off the project for a period of time. In such a scenario, a possible strategy might
be to ensure that every activity has a backup resource.

Include a resource calendar, if possible, to show the key roles and when they will be needed.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Human Resource Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation
for how project resources are managed.

12. Project Risk Management

Identify the process by which risks will be managed. A detailed and well defined risk management
process is critical to project success – specifically on larger projects. Document the procedures for
identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, assigning and mitigating a risk. Identify the procedures for
implementing a contingency plan should a risk be realized and become an issue. Identify the tools used to
maintain the Risk Ledger. Define key roles and responsibilities for risk management activities. Define
the escalation procedures for risks. Not all risks are managed at the same level. Think about how a risk
would escalate within the project and even beyond the project to a higher level of authority. What types
of risks would go above the project to the program or organization level? And who would be responsible
for managing the risk? Document how to write risks. For examples on how to write a risk statement, visit
http://www.pmdocuments.com/category/risk-management/

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13. Project Communications Management
Communications management is another key component to project success. Define the lines of
communication and the methods of communication to be used. For example, if an issue is identified
(meaning that something is currently having a negative impact on the project), define how the risk should
be communicated, and to whom. Communications planning requires some foresight and careful planning.
Imagine if everyone was responsible to communicate everything. It would make for a challenging web of
communication patterns. Often, the results of an incomplete communications strategy manifest itself as
excessive meetings attended by the same people with repeated topics. To avoid this, the ultimate goal of
communications management is to ensure that stakeholders receive the information they need to know at
the appropriate time and at the appropriate level of detail.

Identify roles and responsibilities with respect to communications activities. Identify what they each role
is responsible for communicating, how often they need to communicate, what communication tool and
medium to use and any specific triggers for communication. Also identify who should receive
communications and how often. For example, the project sponsor would probably like to receive periodic
status updates on the project. This information should be included here.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Communications Management section could be a separate
subsidiary Plan document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation
for how project communications is managed.

14. Project Procurement Management

Explain the procurement strategy here. Explain the procedures for making purchases and soliciting
requests for quotes (RFQ) from service providers. Explain how the RFQ respondents will be evaluated
against the Statement of Work (SOW).

Explain the strategy for purchases, specifically on longer term projects. For example, if a project takes
three years to launch the final product, then ensure that the final production hardware purchase is made in
year three and not year one. This will ensure that the latest technology is obtained. A good example
would be servers. Purchasing production servers for a project that will launch in three years would be an
inefficient use of the first year funds and would not take advantage of year three technology.

Identify who has purchasing authority. If there are different levels of purchasing authority, identify it
here. For example, the network administrator might have a budget and purchase authority limit that is
different from the program manager.

Note: For larger projects, the Project Procurement Management section could be a separate subsidiary
Plan document. For smaller projects, this section could serve as the main documentation for how
project procurement is managed.

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15. Authorization
If approval is required, provide the names of those business sponsors that must sign the Project
Management Plan.

Approved by the Project Sponsor:

___________________________________________ Date:____________________
[Project Sponsor]

[Project Sponsor Title], [Project Sponsor Organization or Division]

Note: Add other signatories as needed