When planning a project, breakdown all the work that needs to be completed into a list of tasks. This may be complicated or simple depending on the type of project and the number of people working on it. It is not a simple to-do list since there will often be many dependencies and priorities which need to be taken into account. How should a project manager go about planning tasks for a project?

First of all, talk to all people involved in each part of the project and find out exactly what tasks must be performed. Project managers need to have a good working relationship with the range of staff and clients they are working with in order to get the help when planning tasks in the initial phase. Never guess what needs to happen and never be dismissive of your colleague's opinions. Once a task list is completed, order the tasks in priority and find out which ones need to be completed before other tasks can be started. As a simple example, imagine a project to build a dolls house. One person has the responsibility of building the doll's house which will take three hours. The second person has the responsibility of decorating the doll's house which will take two hours. The decoration can only commence once the building is complete. The building is therefore the first priority. It may be that some tasks can be completed at the same time since they are not dependant and different people are working on them.

It is important to be realistic when assigning the time given for each task. If an expert in their field explains that building the doll's house will take three hours then listen carefully to the explanation and plan time for it. Clients always want their projects completed yesterday and will not always understand why things take so long. Be honest and consistent in your approach and always beware of making promises you cannot keep. It is sometimes tempting to give in and say that a team will try and have the project finished by an earlier date than is realistic. This will merely put your team under undue pressure and may cause inferior performance since they will not have time to finish the work to a high standard.

When planning tasks for a project it is a good idea to place them all into a project plan. There are software packages available such as Microsoft Project which can hold all the tasks along with the priority and order of them. You will be able to view the data in different ways such as Gantt Charts which will help organise and clarify the project plan. This project plan should be distributed to all people involved so that everybody knows what they should be doing and when. As a project manager it will be your responsibility to ensure that the work is progressing and deadlines are kept. Do not be afraid to ask people if they have begun or finished a task. If something has not been completed then this will delay the project completion and may lead to angry and frustrated clients.

When confronted with a difficult client, calmly explain the tasks that need to be performed. Be transparent and offer a complete breakdown of the tasks. Some clients will still argue that too much time is taken on a particular task and it is your job as a project manager to explain why the task takes the amount of time it does. If you have been realistic in planning the tasks and the time it takes to complete them then you will be confident when justifying the tasks and time scales.

Remember how important it is to plan time for the User Acceptance Testing. Internal testing as well as client testing should be included. The internal testing should be done first and then the client should be given the chance to complete their own set of testing. This was added to the task list and planned for accordingly. Once the testing has been completed it may be necessary to make further changes to the product in order to fix any issues that arose during the testing stage. A suitable amount of time should be estimated to complete this. Once all changes have been made a second set of testing should be completed to ensure the changes have worked correctly. Ensure to plan initial UAT along with secondary UAT as tasks to be completed on your project plan. Any time necessary for the client to complete anything should also be carefully planned into the project. Tasks may have to be completed on the client side as part of the project plan and these tasks should be planned in the same way. One project to install a new set of software included various tasks to be performed by the client by a certain date such as them installing the latest version of Windows on all relevant PCs.

It is important that the client understands why these phases are important. I have had many clients complain about the amount of time or request the project includes less testing time. On the rare occasions this has been agreed to it has often led to missed deadlines or issues further down the line due to lack of sufficient testing. Explain to the client why these phases are vital to the success of a project and make it policy to include this structure as part of the project. Once clients see that the finished project is delivered to a high standard within the estimated deadlines they will have no reason to complain.

When you have a list of the tasks along with the priority and order then you can begin to plan the project time. A big mistake would be to simply add up all the time estimated for the tasks, for example a total of ten days and tell the client that the delivery will be in ten days. Remember that even if you know exactly how long the project will take, your colleagues may be working on other projects and may not be able to begin yours for some time. It is also likely that they will be working on more than one project and will have many tasks. It is the responsibility of the project manager to find out when colleagues can work on tasks. If for example, a project will take five days to complete then it may be that an employee can only work on it in the mornings due to other commitments. This will mean that although the project will take five days to complete, the project will not actually be completed until ten days later. When planning task time request details on staff holiday time since this may affect when they can work on the tasks.