Scope and Planning

• Collaborative Milestone-Driven Planning Process
  What do you do when you have to plan a complex project involving members from different organizations with varying expectations about planning -- level of detail, who does it, whose work has to show up in the plan, etc.? Try this approach to practical collaborative planning that works off visible "business milestones" important to the success of each and every group on the team.
• Projectized Holiday Gift Shopping
  A seasonal and only slightly silly example of how project management frameworks and development processes can be tailored to provide benefits on any type of project.
• Localization Guidelines
  Guideline to help project managers and project teams adapt a product built for release within the U.S. or North America to other international marketplaces.
• Spiral/Iterative Project Phase Approach
  An example from an actual project of how to use an iterative, or spiral, development model along with time-boxing, to plan and execute a project.
• Planning and Managing Multiple Small Projects
  A compendium of techniques for managing a group of small related projects.

• New Project Proposal
  
  Templates providing a consistent format for the capture and evaluation of new product and project ideas.
• Opportunity Screening Worksheet
  This is an Opportunity Screening worksheet used to help determine if an idea is worth enough to the company to commission a product development project. The management team at your organization can use this worksheet to evaluate a number of factors in determining if a new product development project should be undertaken and identify the important issues in making that decision. The worksheet is written for analyzing a specific product idea - with respect to the market, the company's capability, potential market risks, return to the company, etc. With some deletion of items and minor modifications, the worksheet can be used for a benefits analysis for projects other than product development projects.
• Project Definition - Mission Statement
  Advice for constructing a project objective or mission statement.
• Project Definition - Vision Document
  Is your project team having problems seeing the project horizon? Improve their eyesight with this agreement on the high-level purpose and scope of the project using a Vision Document.
• Project Vision Example: Defining a Software Release Life Cycle
  A Project Vision document example from a medium-sized product development company that created a Software Release Life Cycle (SRLC) process to manage million lines-of-code software releases.
• Project Charter
  Once your project idea has been evaluated and approved for further investigation, you need to communicate the major parameters and high-level information. This template for a succinct project charter helps you summarize that critical information.
• End of Concept Phase Checklist
  A checklist of activities and deliverables that should be completed by the end of the Concept Phase.
• Product Definition - Critical Success Factors
  A checklist of critical success factors for defining a product, and a worksheet for assessing the current state of your project's information.
• Software Release Life Cycle - Phase 2: Scope Definition
  One- to two-page definitions of recommended deliverables for the scope definition phase of a Software Release Life Cycle.
• Guidelines - Completion Criteria
  Completion criteria are explicit goals that must be attained to call an element of a project, or the entire project, "complete."

• Development Project Plan
  An outline for a Development Plan document that summarizes the project goals and the major activities across the different functional groups necessary to achieve those goals.
• Discontinuance End-of-Life Planning
  Provides approaches and document outlines for planning ahead for the time when you will discontinue offering a product or service.
• Maintenance Planning Guidelines and Plan Outline
  This guideline will help you identify the appropriate types and timing of maintenance planning for your project, integrate it into your over all project plan, and eventually produce a full-blown maintenance plan.
• Marketing Plan
  An example of a thorough marketing plan outline, highlighting the activities and areas required for an effective marketing campaign. It can be customized for your new product or service, or applied to marketing a product or service already in the channel.
• Creating a Manufacturing Plan for New Product
  Manufacturing Plan with early insight and tracking in mind. Allows Operations and Manufacturing to do adequate preparation for people, capital, facilities and other resources while giving visibility to early back and forth tradeoffs with Development.
• Project Alternatives Tradeoff Table
  Use this template to cut through all the complex decisions that can plague the front end of a project. The table gives your team a concise way to document (and communicate!) the alternatives you are considering for scope and features, and the impact of various combinations on the project's cost, schedule, resources, and risk. Getting it all onto a page or two can really help a cross-functional team reach agreement on a reasonable scope that meets most important customer requirements.
• New Product Business Plan
  A template for a Product/Project Business Plan that describes a new project for inclusion in the corporation portfolio of projects.
• Project Definition - Deliverables
  An "is/is not" worksheet for defining the major deliverables that the project is chartered to deliver.
• Project Definition - Statement of Work
  One approach to documenting high-level project objectives and key parameters in a concise document. This document should be only about 2 pages long.
• Project Flexibility Matrix
  A simple but effective tool that helps guide tradeoff discussions on Scope, Resources and Schedule.
• PM Appointment Letter
  Letter template announcing the appointment of a project manager to a newly-approved project and expressing sponsor support for it.
• Project Plan Example - Small Project
  Are a 20-30 page dense project plan and hefty schedule file just too much for that smaller but important effort you've got to get done? No fear, project plans "lite" can take many useful and practical forms. Check out this example from one company's project to unify its Product Development Life-cycle methodology across 3 sites after an acquisition.
• Software Project Plan
  A thorough and detailed template for creating a software development plan, with annotations. It includes making tradeoffs on scope, resources, schedule and other issues with a quality focus, Excel worksheets for capacity planning, and much more.
• End of Initiation Phase Checklist
  A checklist of activities and deliverables that should be completed by the end of the Initiation Phase.
• Tools and Equipment List
  This template provides a format for thinking through and documenting the tools (e.g. hardware, software) and equipment needed during a project for testing, prototyping, etc.
• Software Release Life Cycle - Phase 3: Planning and Negotiation
  Recommended deliverables for the planning and negotiation phase of a Software Release Life Cycle.
• Software Release Life Cycle - Phase 4: Release Plan Refinement
  Recommended deliverables for Release Plan Refinement phase of a Software Release Life Cycle.
• Integration Plan
  An outline for documenting how the hardware and/or software in a system will be integrated before system test. Great for making sure the integration steps have been thought through (rather than defining an amorphous block of time for integration then hoping everything comes out at the end!)
• System Test Plan
  An annotated document outline for a System Test Plan. Describes how the team will internally verify that the system as a whole functions as planned under a variety of use conditions, before performing any external customer beta or acceptance testing. Also includes System Test Report outline for documenting and communicating results.
• Project Team Organization and Assignments
  A checklist for organizing a project team.
• User Documentation Plan
  A checklist for planning the creation of the user and support documentation for a product. Examples of this documentation include user and service manuals, labeling text, box inserts, training manuals, etc.