During this phase, the project manager would work with the subject matter experts or the people reporting the problem or use case ideas that they would like to solve. It always helps to create a list of the requirements and to define the delivery dates or milestones for a prototype and the final solution.
Sketch a plan with milestones and your 'deliverables' for all involved stakeholders and regularly compare the status quo against the defined plan.
The main stages during planning can be roughly divided into:
- Define clear milestones and delivery dates for service content, prototype, and testing
- Ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the content and deadline of milestones
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Estimate the required resources, costs, time spent, and the benefits
Define clear milestones and delivery dates
The project team and the project leader have to first define the scope and develop the project management plan. As a project leader try to anticipate milestones, complexity, risks, communication, and required costs and person-hours.
- Define a date to deliver your MVP (minimum viable product) and the deadline for the final application
- Set further milestones on the way to MVP and final application (e.g. Template automation complete, logic defined)
- Clarify which elements of your application are the most complex
- Plan the terms and conditions for your application
- Define who needs to contribute to the application and when they need to make time for their contribution
- Estimate how much time/working hours can be expected
Ensure that all stakeholders are aware of content and milestones
Communication is key within the project team. An important part of any project is documenting your project throughout the Application Building Cycle.
- Create a communication channel, for example, use a dedicated MS Teams or Slack channel
- Schedule check-ins ahead of time to discuss the status quo and re-adjusted plans
- Document everything! Create a project folder and save all your project plans, meeting minutes, tutorials, sketches, and all further documents.
This setup can be your template for future projects and applications. The better documented, the easier you can reuse some aspects and results in future projects.
Estimate the required resources, costs, time spent, and the benefits
This will need to be refined once you have mapped the process and created a blueprint of your application. You will need an estimate of costs and required resources for the pitch and to monetize your application properly.
Factors that you should always consider in project budgeting are:
- Specification and scope
- Duration
- Location
- Project team
Specification and scope
Product specification and project scope are two of the key determinants that will directly affect your project costs.
Duration
If you are starting a new project that spans several months or even years, estimating costs will be challenging due to frequent changes in prices. This increases the complexity of budgeting and estimation.
Location
Another factor is understanding if there are any costs of transportation or materials to consider. For software projects, location is typically not a very important factor.
Project team
One of the most important considerations when estimating costs and resources is understanding how many people (in the project team and outside) you will need to complete it.
Cost estimation techniques
Based on your own experience, you might already have cost estimation techniques in place and can reuse them for this project. Other processes and techniques that are used in project management and you might want to consider include the following:
- Compartmentalization: Break down tasks as much as possible to price them accurately.
- Three-point estimation: Specify activity costs by using the best case (B), most likely case (M), and worst-case (W). With the formula E = (B+4M+W)/6, you can calculate a cost estimate
- Examining historical data: Use previous project costs to define cost parameters.