ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a methodology for planning that has been used for many different projects of many different sizes. A good plan will require anywhere from several days to many weeks to develop, depending on the size and complexity of the project. There are several steps in the planning process. They are: perform a work breakdown analysis; perform a detailed activity analysis; perform a critical path analysis; and develop a milestone schedule. The purpose of the work breakdown structure is to identify all of the tasks to be performed. Once the project has been scoped, it must be broken down into tasks and subtasks for further analysis. The activity analysis is the longest part of the planning process, and the one that is too often skipped. The critical path analysis is simply a matter of looking at the tasks to be completed and determining what needs to be done in what order and which tasks can be done in parallel.
