Working in a task plan is a process that involves keeping close track of costs, resources, and time in a way that ensures that every task in the task plan is completed within the right timeframe, with the right amount of work, and of the right level of quality. The process that is used to manage any task plan can be broken down into five major periods:
- Initiate Use this period to define the scope of the project, including deliverables, dates (start and finish), goals, stakeholders, team members, costs, and what the expected outcome of all work done should be.
- Plan Use this period to define the actual work that needs to be completed, the resources that will be required to complete that work, the individual tasks to which individual resources will be assigned, and the order in which work will need to be completed. Take steps during this phase to ensure that you have a good understanding of what it is that you want to complete. Ensure that the task plan is organized, including the sequence of tasks (the order in which they are scheduled) and that you have the right resources lined up. This will help to ensure that the task plan is completed on time, that tasks are scoped accurately, that the right resources are assigned assigned to the right tasks, that you have the budget to complete all of the tasks, that risks are anticipated, and that there is a plan to deal with issues as they arise.
- Execute Use this period to finalize the plan (getting executive approval, finalizing the communication plan, saving the initial task plan baseline, and so on) and then starting work on the tasks outlined in the task plan.
- Control Use this period to manage the day-to-day aspects of the task plan.
- Close Use this period to ensure that all of the work outlined in the task plan was done to the satisfaction of stakeholders, team members, executive sponsors, and customers.