Project Planning: Building a Plan That Actually Works
Experience how planning creates shared understanding through collaboration and adaptability, not perfect documents
🚀 Welcome to Your Interactive Learning Journey
One of the biggest lessons I learned early in my career came from a well-intentioned failure. I was leading a planning session for a major project and thought I was doing the right thing. I loaded a Gantt chart with hundreds of lines on the big screen. Instead of buy-in, I got blank stares, frustration, and a few early exits.
This mindcast is different. It's not about mastering MS Project or Primavera. It's about the real work: building plans that create shared understanding, communicating across different audiences, and developing the judgement to know when plans need to evolve.
🎯 What you'll discover:
- How to create plans teams actually understand, not just technically perfect documents
- The 8-step planning process that works in the real world
- When to adapt your plan vs when to hold the line on realistic timelines
- The psychology of planning and why it matters beyond schedules
- Your current planning style and where to improve
How this works:
- Start with the planning session story about what went wrong
- Experience planning decisions through realistic scenarios
- Learn the 8-step process and real-world application
- Practice choosing the right tools for different contexts
- Test your knowledge and assess your planning reality
📱 The Planning Session That Changed Everything
It was a major infrastructure project worth millions. I'd been working with a project planner who'd built what we thought was a comprehensive plan in MS Project. Hundreds of tasks, dependencies carefully mapped, critical path identified. I was proud of it. So I booked a full-day workshop, got all 8 key stakeholders in one room, and loaded it onto the big screen.
Within 30 minutes, I knew something was wrong. The site engineers looked confused. The operations manager was checking her phone. One of the delivery leads actually said, 'I have no idea what I'm looking at here.' By lunch, half the team had excuses to leave early. My 'comprehensive' plan had alienated the very people who needed to deliver it.
The problem wasn't the plan itself. The logic was sound, the sequencing made sense, the timeline was realistic. The problem was that I'd made it about the tool, not the people. I'd assumed everyone could read a Gantt chart. I'd prioritised technical perfection over shared understanding. I'd forgotten that planning is communication, not just calculation.
That failure taught me everything I know about effective planning. Since then, I've never started with the tool. I start with the audience. I translate plans into formats people connect with. I test understanding before diving into details. This interactive experience lets you navigate three critical planning moments where these lessons matter.
Relive the Workshop
Step into that planning workshop. You've got 8 stakeholders in the room: each with different needs, different levels of PM knowledge, different priorities. Your decisions will determine how many people stay engaged, how well they understand the plan, and whether you get genuine buy-in or just polite compliance.
📐 What Planning Really Means
Planning a project can feel overwhelming, especially if you're new to the role. Where do you even begin? And what does a good plan actually look like?
Is it a massive Gantt chart with 5,000 lines? A Kanban board with cards moving across columns? A simple spreadsheet tracking tasks and dates? Or even sketches hand-drawn on a whiteboard during a team session?
The truth is, planning isn't about the tool. It's about creating a shared understanding of how you're going to deliver something together.
Why Planning Actually Matters
According to PMI's 2018 Pulse of the Profession, the most common causes of project failure are: shifting priorities, unclear requirements, changing objectives. These are often symptoms of poor or incomplete planning. It's not a nice-to-have. It's foundational.
Project planning brings structure and clarity to what would otherwise be chaos. It helps answer critical questions:
- What are we delivering?
- Who's involved?
- How long will it take?
- What could go wrong?
As the APM explains, planning provides the foundations to define scope, identify risks, estimate durations, and prepare for delivery. But it's more than that. It's a process of aligning people, priorities, and resources.
Good planning allows teams to understand complexity, foresee risks, sequence work sensibly, and make better-informed decisions.
What Is a Project Plan, Really?
Let me clear up a common misconception: a plan is not the document.
A 50-page schedule, a beautiful PowerPoint roadmap, a Kanban board are just representations. They're visual ways of showing the plan, but they're not the plan itself.
A plan is the team's shared compass. Its format only matters if it brings clarity and supports decision-making.
Your plan could be a detailed schedule in Primavera P6 for a regulated rail upgrade, or it might be a Trello board for a startup MVP. What matters is: Do people understand it? Is it helping the team move forward? Is it being used to make real decisions?
The Hard Truth
I've seen perfectly formatted plans fail because no one looked at them after day one. And I've seen scrappy plans drive successful million-pound infrastructure projects.
The difference? One plan was actively used, discussed, and updated daily. It lived and breathed with the project. The other sat untouched in a folder, technically perfect but practically useless.
🛠️ The 8-Step Planning Process
Project planning isn't a one-off task. It's a layered, evolving process. Here's how to approach it, drawn directly from real-world experience.
How It Works
The 8 Steps
Click each step to explore the details:
1️⃣ Define the Scope and Objectives
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Start by being crystal clear on what the project is trying to achieve. This sets the boundaries for everything else. Without defined scope, your plan will drift beyond control.
Ask yourself: What does success look like? What's in and what's out?
2️⃣ Break Down the Work
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This is where techniques like Work Breakdown Structures come in. You're breaking the project into components that can be estimated, tracked, and delivered.
Think of it like planning that family holiday to Italy. You don't just say "go to Italy," you break it down: book flights, arrange hotels, plan which cities to visit, research restaurants.
3️⃣ Sequence the Activities
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Once you've identified the tasks, order them logically. What needs to happen first? What can run in parallel? Understanding dependencies here is crucial.
On a construction project, you can't pour concrete until the foundations are dug. You can't install windows until the walls are up. Each step depends on the previous one being complete. Obvious when mapped out, but these dependencies are easily overlooked when you're eager to get started.
4️⃣ Estimate Time and Resources
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This is where experience matters. Use data from previous projects, input from delivery teams, and be realistic, not optimistic. Include contingency.
As I learned the hard way, everything takes longer than you think, especially the first time.
5️⃣ Identify Constraints and Dependencies
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These are the things that trip you up later. External approvals, third-party deliveries, access windows. Document them all.
On that train upgrade, our biggest constraint was track access. Miss that in planning and the whole schedule falls apart.
6️⃣ Assess Risks and Assumptions
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No plan survives first contact with reality unchanged. Document your assumptions and build in regular risk reviews.
What could go wrong? What are we assuming will be true? Challenge everything.
7️⃣ Build the Schedule
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Bring it all together. Whether it's a detailed Gantt or a simple timeline, your schedule should be a living reference, not a filing cabinet artefact. Make it accessible and understandable to those who need to use it.
8️⃣ Communicate and Maintain
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A plan that sits on a shelf is dead. Share it widely. Keep it updated. Planning isn't a phase, it's continuous. The best plans evolve with the project.
The Reality
You can't plan in isolation. Talk to others. Learn from similar past projects. Speak to delivery teams, sponsors, and partners. If you don't, you risk repeating mistakes others have already solved.
🌍 The Real-World Side
Planning in theory is one thing. Planning in reality is another. Here's what nobody tells you about making plans that actually work.
Learn from Others
One of the smartest things an early-career project manager can do is find a colleague who's done something similar and ask: "What would you do differently if you planned that project again?" Their answers will save you weeks of pain.
Plans built in silos might look good on paper, but they crumble under pressure. The best plans aren't perfect. They're built collaboratively, challenged early, and adjusted often.
Realism vs Wishful Thinking
Here's a hard truth: too often, project managers squeeze plans to fit a predetermined narrative. They promise impossible deadlines to keep stakeholders happy, hoping somehow it'll all work out. It never does. You end up firefighting from day one, and everyone loses trust in the plan.
A realistic plan might not win you friends initially, but it gives you credibility.
Use it to have honest conversations about why timelines are what they are. Then explore innovative ways to deliver within those constraints such as: parallel working, phased delivery, and smart resource allocation. And if it's not in the art of the possible? Better to know that early and reset expectations than pretend otherwise.
That's real project management, not wishful thinking.
Different Formats for Different Audiences
Plans need different formats for different audiences. What works for the team won't work for the board.
Planning doesn't have to be dry. Get creative with formats:
- Use visual boards
- Run planning poker sessions
- Make it engaging for the team
Consider who needs to see the plan:
- Dashboards for senior management
- Milestone charts for sites
- Post-its for team sessions
- Same plan, different lenses
Planning Horizons Matter
The further out you plan, the less accurate it becomes, especially for complex, unique projects without precedent.
That's why adaptability matters more than precision at distance.
🔄 Adapt & Evolve
The Eisenhower Principle
Eisenhower said it best: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
The value is in the thinking, mapping work, exposing assumptions, asking better questions.
Plans as Hypotheses
Don't confuse the plan with certainty. Your plan is a hypothesis to test and adjust.
What helps:
- Develop planning habits, not one-off events
- See planning as shared thinking
- Treat your plan as something to test and refine
- Visualise plans to aid understanding
- Use past experience for both estimates and understanding team dynamics
The best project managers balance structure with adaptability. Your plan should guide, not constrain.
The Psychology of Planning
Planning is part logic, part psychology. It gives us a sense of control in uncertain environments. But don't confuse the plan with certainty.
Planning helps make things happen. It brings clarity, surfaces risks, and enables better decisions.
Planning as a Life Skill
Planning isn't just for project managers. It's transferable to everything. Launching a side business, organising a wedding, changing careers, managing personal goals. The same principles apply. Break it down, understand constraints, build a roadmap, adapt as you go.
The ability to plan well opens doors beyond project management.
Remember:
- A plan is not a document. It's shared understanding
- Planning brings clarity, surfaces risks, and enables better decisions
- Tools only matter if teams understand and use them
- Plans should evolve. Aim for adaptability, not perfection
🔧 Tool Selection Lab
Now you understand what planning really is, let's practice choosing the right tools for different situations.
Different projects need different tools. The key is matching the tool to the context, not the other way around.
The Planning Tools You Can Use:
- Microsoft Project: Detailed scheduling with critical path analysis
- Primavera P6: Enterprise-grade for construction and infrastructure
- Asta Powerproject: UK construction standard, integrates with existing workflows
- Jira: Agile backlog management and sprint planning
- Trello: Simple Kanban-style visual planning
- Asana: Team task management with timeline views
- ClickUp: Flexible planning across multiple methodologies
- Miro: Visual collaborative planning workshops
- Power BI: Dashboard creation for stakeholder reporting
- Simple sketches/Post-its: Quick team alignment and workshops
If you can choose your tool, consider what's likely to serve your purpose. Ask yourself: Who needs to see this plan? How often will it change? What level of detail do stakeholders need? Does it need to integrate with other systems?
But here's the reality: in most cases, organisations already have an established strategy that dictates the tools. It's worth learning to use them effectively and adapting your plans for different audiences. Dashboards for senior management, milestone charts for sites, Post-its for team sessions. Same plan, different lenses.
Practice Scenarios
Three different planning situations need your expertise. Select tools that fit each context (click tools to see feedback):
Scenario 1: Regulated Infrastructure Project
Context: You're planning a rail signalling upgrade. It's a 2-year project with strict safety regulations, multiple contractors, and detailed governance requirements. The client needs monthly progress reports showing critical path and dependencies.
Select tools that could help:
Scenario 2: Startup MVP Launch
Context: You're launching a minimum viable product for a tech startup. The scope changes weekly based on user feedback. Your team of 8 works in 2-week sprints. Speed and flexibility matter more than detailed documentation.
Select tools that could help:
Scenario 3: Cross-Functional Planning Workshop
Context: You need to run a half-day planning session with 20 people from different departments. Many aren't familiar with PM tools. You need to capture ideas, dependencies, and rough timelines in a way everyone can contribute to.
Select tools that could help:
✅ Knowledge Check
Test your understanding with these real-world scenarios. Each question explores a key concept from effective planning.
Question 1:
Scenario: You've created a detailed project plan in MS Project showing all tasks, dependencies, and the critical path. At the first team meeting, several members look confused and one says "I don't really understand what I need to do."
What's the main issue here?
Question 2:
Scenario: Your project sponsor asks for a detailed 12-month plan with exact dates for all deliverables before the project starts. It's a complex digital transformation with lots of unknowns.
What's the best response?
Question 3:
According to what you've learned, what is a project plan?
Question 4:
True or False: The best plans are created by the project manager working alone, then shared with the team once complete.
Question 5:
What did Eisenhower mean by "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything"?
🌟 Your Reality
Where are you on your planning journey? Use these sliders to assess your current approach. There are no right or wrong answers - this helps you understand your style and where to focus your development.
Assess Your Planning Approach
Move each slider to the position that best describes your current practice:
Your Planning Maturity
Low scores (0-5): You're tool-focused. Consider: Who needs to understand this plan? How can you make it more collaborative?
Mid scores (6-10): You're balancing structure and flexibility. Consider: Are you translating plans for different audiences?
High scores (11-15): You're people-focused. Keep practicing adaptive planning while maintaining enough structure for control.
Your Action Commitment
Reflect on your planning journey and commit to one concrete action:
Question 1:
Based on your assessment, what's one thing you'll change about how you plan projects?
Question 2:
Who will you learn from, and what will you ask them?