Step-By-Step Guide
Resources
Step-By-Step Guide
How to Create Your Work Plan for the Project
Armando Russo, the Director of the Ug99 task force, has asked you to develop a work plan to document your process and manage your tasks and time more efficiently. Although you may have been informally planning your work all along, creating a work plan provides a structure to document the process.
The following step-by-step will guide you in creating a work plan for your team.
Revise your Outline
Before your begin your work plan, you should take time to revise your outline. While the outline is not a deliverable in this task, an outline is an important planning tool.
- Review your mentor’s feedback on the outline you submitted in Task 2.1: Create an Outline. Discuss any questions with your mentor.
- Conduct additional research, if necessary. Your mentor may have asked you to include a section you didn’t originally plan on or may have pointed out that some areas of your outline needed more information. You may need to conduct additional research in order to address your mentor’s feedback.
- Update your outline based on any new research and your mentor’s suggestions.
Create a Work Plan
- Prepare to complete this task.
- Review the email from Armando Russo. Be sure you understand what you are being asked to do. Contact your mentor with any questions.
- Download and review the Work Plan Template available on the Resources page of this task.
- Assign team managers.
- Assign a project manager. In addition to making an individual contribution to the team, the project manager’s responsibilities also include:
- Leading team discussions
- Revising and updating the work plan on an ongoing basis
- Checking in with team members regularly for updates on the status and progress of their work.
- Keeping team members on track throughout the project.
You may have assigned a project manager at an earlier point in this rotation. If you did, that person may want to continue as project manager, or you may want to give someone else on the team an opportunity to manage.
- Assign a quality manager. In addition to making an individual contribution to the team, the quality manager’s responsibilities include:
- Making sure the team’s work has met the objectives of the task.
- Reviewing the team’s final deliverables in each task.
- Conducting a quality review of the final team paper.
- Review the Creating a Work Plan Skill Tutorial and the work plan template for more information on how to plan, organize, implement, and monitor a work plan.
- Complete the Work Plan Template. In his email, Armando gave you the major stages of this project. They are:
- Gathering and analyzing information
- Writing recommendations in a report
- Presenting findings
- Working one stage at a time, you should create a work plan, which outlines the tasks, subtasks, timelines and assignments within each of these stages.
- Your outline may be a helpful tool in determining the tasks and subtasks for each stage. It should give you ideas about the kind of information you will need in each stage, from which you can plan how to get that information.
- As you fill out your work plan, note how much time you have for each stage of work and plan accordingly. Contact your mentor if you have any questions about the amount of time allotted for each task.
- At this stage of the project, certain tasks, timeframes, and assignments may not be very clear to you. You may know, for example, that you have to create a presentation, but don’t yet know everything involved in creating a presentation. Do your best to think through these issues, but remember that the work plan can and should be updated as the project progresses.
- Review your completed work plan and consider the following:
- Have you assigned team managers?
- Check your work plan against your outline. Have you planned the work necessary to complete each section of the report?
- Check your work plan against the rotation schedule. Does your work plan lead to completion of the project on time?
- Have you completed at least a draft work plan for each stage of this project?
- Submit your work. Review the checklist found in the Submit Your Work section of this task and submit the work plan to your mentor.
Resources
Workplan Template
This link will take you to the workplan template necessary to complete this task.
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