Project Management Tutorial How To Create A Project Plan

Now, let's talk about what project management is.

Step 1 of 117

Now, let's talk about what project management is.

Step 2 of 117

You may have seen job listings for a project manager, or maybe even report to someone whose job title is project manager or program manager.

Step 3 of 117

Project management is the way a person organizes the resources necessary to complete a project.

Step 4 of 117

Typically, project management involves these responsibilities.

Step 5 of 117

Identifying work, planning it out, communicating with a team member and stakeholders, keeping things moving smoothly, delivering projects on time, and delivering projects within a set budget.

Step 6 of 117

But you don't have to be a professional project manager to use these steps. Anyone can use this process to make projects run more smoothly, from a birthday party to a yard sale, from a community fundraiser to a business conference.

Step 7 of 117

Some other kinds of projects you might manage include maybe you have a health or fitness plan, home improvements, child care, product launches, job hunts, research, and event planning.

Step 8 of 117

You may have already managed these kinds of projects before with or without digital tools.

Step 9 of 117

First, let's talk about planning a project. A good project manager begins with project goals or an objective.

Step 10 of 117

No matter what kind of project you're working on, you can make it go smoothly by getting an idea of what your ideal project will look like when it's finished.

Step 11 of 117

To organize all these thoughts and ideas about your project, you can create a project proposal.

Step 12 of 117

A project proposal is a single document you can use to lay out the vision, aims, and motivations for a project.

Step 13 of 117

The image on the right shows a sample project proposal for a farm-to-table restaurant called Batch.

Step 14 of 117

Project proposals are useful for reminding yourself of what you need to get done, just as important why you want to do it.

Step 15 of 117

The image on the right shows a Google Doc page with a completed project plan template.

Step 16 of 117

You can use a document like this to make sure you and any collaborators are on the same page.

Step 17 of 117

You can share it with a partner you're working with, for example, or even with a potential investor.

Step 18 of 117

You can write these out yourself in a format that you like, or you can use the templates to design and coordinate your project goals, as well as your milestones, your deadlines, and even work with your collaborators.

Step 19 of 117

Like we said before, Google Docs provide templates that will get you started with planning your project.

Step 20 of 117

The image on the right shows a user creating a new project proposal from a template in Google Docs.

Step 21 of 117

A template is a sample document or other project that already has some of the formatting in place.

Step 22 of 117

Templates save us time and help your documents look more professional.

Step 23 of 117

Google Docs has a whole template gallery, including several project proposal templates.

Step 24 of 117

If you like, you can explore these templates on your own. This image will show you how to open a project proposal template.

Step 25 of 117

First thing you would do is click new, and then from there you would select Google Docs and from a template.

Step 26 of 117

Next scroll down to the work templates and choose one of the project proposal templates by clicking it.

Step 27 of 117

So let's look at the major components of a project plan together.

Step 28 of 117

For almost any project you begin by providing an overview.

Step 29 of 117

This section should define what you want to do. It should be as specific as possible and should clearly explain the purpose of your project.

Step 30 of 117

All right, so once you've had the name of your project and an overview of what you want to do, you can ask yourself what are the goals of the project.

Step 31 of 117

Instead of thinking of one huge task like planning a wedding or designing a new product, you can use goals to break down your project to remember why you want to do it.

Step 32 of 117

For example, if you're starting a restaurant, one goal might be to make fine dining accessible to more people.

Step 33 of 117

You might want to offer a place for people to gather with their friends and family.

Step 34 of 117

Let's say if you're looking to start a hair salon, one goal might be to help people feel more confident about themselves.

Step 35 of 117

Or another goal might be to create a new hairstyle trend. If you're a musician, you're making an album, one goal might be to write a new kind of song you've never written before.

Step 36 of 117

Another goal would be to collaborate with an artist that you admire. These goals are not the same as tasks though.

Step 37 of 117

For example, a goal of your project is not to send an email to the landlord of your of your hair salon.

Step 38 of 117

We'll get to task in a moment, but when we start thinking about how to track your project over the long term, but for now, think of your goals as part of the motivation for taking on your project.

Step 39 of 117

Next, you want to add specifications to explain the parameters for your project.

Step 40 of 117

For example, how many people does it involve? Where will the project take place? When you have your goals in mind, you can start to plan out milestones.

Step 41 of 117

A milestone is a significant event that marks progress towards an overall goal.

Step 42 of 117

Milestones are a great way to keep your project on track.

Step 43 of 117

You can set these milestones to evaluate the progress, share your results with other people, engage whether you need to make any changes as you complete your project.

Step 44 of 117

For example, if you're starting a hair salon and one goal is to help people feel more confident, one milestone might be to find a space that's warm and welcoming.

Step 45 of 117

Or a later milestone might be to eventually get a thank you note from one of your clients.

Step 46 of 117

Let's take the album example. If you're making your own album, one goal is to collaborate with another artist you admire.

Step 47 of 117

One milestone might be writing a recording of a song with that person.

Step 48 of 117

A planning project is the first part of making it successful. A project plan helps you to cover the big picture topics and identify those end goals.

Step 49 of 117

You might share this plan with your team, stakeholders, and investors. But now we're going to focus on the second phase of project management, which is tracking progress.

Step 50 of 117

To track progress you have to consider these three things. What are the tasks that need to get done, by when they need to get done, and of course who is in charge of those tasks.

Step 51 of 117

To keep track of all this, most project managers use a project tracker.

Step 52 of 117

This slide shows a completed project tracker in a spreadsheet. The main purpose of a tracker is to shift from the big picture of a project plan, outline of the purpose, resources, and people to the actual tasks and requirements of accomplishing the project.

Step 53 of 117

You might have already set goals in your project proposal to identify your objective or the result you want to get from your project.

Step 54 of 117

It can help you work towards your goals by breaking them down into manageable tasks.

Step 55 of 117

Most projects have a lot of tasks to track. You might set up a spreadsheet differently from one project to the next, but most projects have some basic elements you might want to track.

Step 56 of 117

Like we said before, tasks, who's responsible for those tasks, and the due dates.

Step 57 of 117

Just like you saw with the project plan, there are lots of spreadsheets that can help you to track the details involved in the project.

Step 58 of 117

This slide shows Google galleries, sheets, and the actual templates available for you.

Step 59 of 117

With the project tracker, we started with a document template.

Step 60 of 117

There are lots of spreadsheet templates for project management as well.

Step 61 of 117

To look at the templates available for project management, you want to navigate to the template gallery in Google Sheets.

Step 62 of 117

The images on the slide show the steps for opening a new project management template.

Step 63 of 117

Starting at your drive, you create a new Google Sheet and then choose a new template, and here's how you do this.

Step 64 of 117

So first you click new, right, and then you click Google Sheets from a template.

Step 65 of 117

And then you scroll down until you see the project management template.

Step 66 of 117

The image on this slide shows an event marketing timeline template.

Step 67 of 117

You might use this spreadsheet to manage a project that involves a lot of marketing or public facing tasks.

Step 68 of 117

You can track social media posts, market research, and types of advertising using the categories built right into the template.

Step 69 of 117

And the spreadsheet includes a visual representation of different phases so you can time your marketing properly.

Step 70 of 117

You can use the template to track which social media ads were most useful or to coordinate content across multiple platforms.

Step 71 of 117

If you want to track an entire project like a product launch, you might use this spreadsheet called project timeline.

Step 72 of 117

The image on the slide shows a project timeline template. Like the previous template, it includes a visual timeline, which you can you can see on the right.

Step 73 of 117

And it includes sections that lay out the life cycle of a product launch timeline.

Step 74 of 117

This one allows you to build in the project plan as part of the whole process.

Step 75 of 117

And it gives you some structure for the project, even reminding you to do a post-mortem debriefing to discuss how the whole thing went.

Step 76 of 117

For projects that are more focused on budgets and data, you can use a project tracking spreadsheet like the one shown on this slide.

Step 77 of 117

It includes columns for estimated costs and time. And it has a built-in column for tracking a task priority with useful drop down lists.

Step 78 of 117

You can use the features in this spreadsheet like formulas for hours and budgets spent to track your spending on a project.

Step 79 of 117

Finally, Gantt chart, like the one in the Gantt chart template displayed on this slide, combines many of these elements.

Step 80 of 117

Gantt chart is a tool that organizes tasks by date.

Step 81 of 117

And Gantt charts are useful for showing the relationship between the many moving parts of a project.

Step 82 of 117

This one also shows different owners. It could help you to manage a project with multiple collaborators.

Step 83 of 117

Notice that this one includes formatting like color code in the middle.

Step 84 of 117

These cells that change color based on how far along a project is.

Step 85 of 117

A completed task is bright green, but in progress ones are lighter.

Step 86 of 117

So you can immediately see how much progress you've made on a particular task.

Step 87 of 117

All right, so we've addressed the first two parts of project management.

Step 88 of 117

How to plan a project from its outset and then how to track it if you're working on it.

Step 89 of 117

But you also may be managing other people. And you might need to share your results with stakeholders and investors too.

Step 90 of 117

Sharing starts when the project starts. Working with your team to develop the project objectives, the project goals and milestones help them to feel more invested in the process.

Step 91 of 117

And of course they can give you great ideas along the way. When team members help to create tasks and deadlines, they'll be more likely to give input in the process.

Step 92 of 117

They'll feel ownership over it and be more responsible for completing those tasks.

Step 93 of 117

Even if you develop the project plan and inside the task on your own, it's still important to communicate with your team regularly.

Step 94 of 117

Digital collaboration is an easy thing to do with Google Docs or even in Sheets or Slides.

Step 95 of 117

In this last section of the workshop, we'll take a look at how to share a document or spreadsheet and how to share feedback quickly using comments.

Step 96 of 117

So to start collaborating digitally with your team, give them access to important files.

Step 97 of 117

You can share any Google document, spreadsheet or presentation with other people and you can choose how much they can do with it.

Step 98 of 117

This slide shows how to share a project tracker with a teammate. So first you would click share in the upper right hand corner, then type that person's email address.

Step 99 of 117

If you want them to only see the progress of that project, you might give them viewer access.

100

Step 100 of 117

Investors and stakeholders may only need to be able to see and add comments, so you give them comment only access.

101

Step 101 of 117

If you want a teammate to update the sheet with their progress, they may need edit access.

102

Step 102 of 117

When you share the document, you and your team can collaborate digitally at the same time on your project.

103

Step 103 of 117

They can open a spreadsheet on their own computer or device and you can also simultaneously make edits from anywhere in the world.

104

Step 104 of 117

Using comments in a project tracker is another way to give your team input on the overall goal.

105

Step 105 of 117

The animation on the right shows the user selecting a cell in the spreadsheet tracker.

106

Step 106 of 117

They insert a comment, type a short message, and mention the teammate.

107

Step 107 of 117

They then assign the comment to that teammate. To add a comment, you select a place where you want the comments to appear and then you of course type in those comments.

108

Step 108 of 117

If you want to direct your comment or question directly to a team member, you can plus them in by adding a plus sign before their name and then typing in the comment.

109

Step 109 of 117

If you want to turn the comment into an action item, you can click on assign to assign that comment to that team member.

110

Step 110 of 117

You can also use this feature in other Google apps, you know, like Docs, to work collaboratively with big groups of people.

111

Step 111 of 117

You can communicate regularly with teams to unblock them or make sure they're not hung up on a particular challenge and to let them know of any changes on the project goals or its processes.

112

Step 112 of 117