When you are given a project plan to review, here are ten things you should look for to determine the quality level of the plan.
1. Calendar Setup
If you are looking at a plan, check to see when the next statutory holiday will be and see if any of the tasks are scheduled to be done on that date. Also, check that the project calendar has the proper number of working hours per day. If these two aspects of the project calendar are not set properly, the project schedule will be incorrect and lead to problems managing the project. Make sure that the project calendar is set to include statutory holidays and that the number of working hours per day is set to the number of hours per day used when estimating.
2. Resource Setup
Check the task list to see if tasks have a cost associated with them. Task cost will reflect the resource cost of materials and sometimes people as well.
Material Resources: Ask to see a resource list and check to see that each material resource has a cost assigned to it. If cost is not assigned to each material resource or material resources are missing, there needs to be some other way to track project costs - ask to see that method.
People Resources: For people resources, it is also important to check that the group that the resource is part of (ie. the department) is identified. If a people resource is not part of a group, it will not be possible to report tasks by department in order to secure resource commitments from functional managers. Add these two aspects to each resource if they are missing.
3. Task Length Too Long
Tasks need to be broken down to a size where an accurate estimate of task duration is possible. For example, for a project longer than three months, a five day task duration maximum allows tracking to be done each week. Issues can then be caught earlier. Check to see if there are tasks that have a duration longer than five days. A task with a duration longer than five days will be hard to track accurately and may lead to a significant issue when the task goes off track and it is not realized until the end of the original estimate. For projects less than three months long, you should be looking for shorter maximum durations (three days for 2-3 month projects, 2 days for 1-2 month projects and 8 hours for projects less than one month long). If you see tasks that are longer, ask to have them broken into sub-tasks that have durations of five days or less.
