All the previous project planning articles summarized into a checklist.
Project Planning Checklist
Pre-Planning
- Identity your stakeholders
- Identity the goal you’re trying to accomplish
- Get familiar with the code
- Set up a local environment to try things out
Beginning to Plan
- Identify the rough scope of the work
- Identify the milestones of the project
Project Kickoff
- High-Level Timelines
- Call out timelines you haven’t figured out yet, and when you will figure them out
- Identify Roles and Responsibilities of people involved with the project
- Identify Dependencies on other teams
- Lay out the requirements for what you need from others to be successful
- Identify Goals and Outcomes for the project
- Identify how you want people to work together on the project
- Identify next steps after the kickoff is complete
Overall Technical Design
- An overview of the problem
- A breakdown of the individual milestones and how they’re related
- High-level process / workflow diagrams / designs / etc
- Any other notes that might be relevant to folks who will be working on the project
Breaking Down the Project into Milestones
- Are the milestones clear on what they’re delivering?
- Do you have a plan for communicating updates and setbacks?
- Do you have time for writing/reviewing milestone specific tech specs?
- Do you have time devoted to metrics / data / monitoring what you built?
- Do you have time devoted to testing?
- Do you have time devoted to paying down tech debt in the area you’re working on?
- Do you have a sign-off process?
- Did you add time for fast-follow work?
- Does your milestone fit into your overall timeline?