Twelve Tips for A Successful Project Execution Plan
Having an innovative idea for a new project with lots of potential is great — but it’s only half the battle.
You wouldn’t embark on a challenging road trip without a clear idea of where you’re going and how you’re getting there. You need an itinerary, a route, and for everyone to be familiar with their responsibilities.
The same can be said of executing projects. Without a clear plan to commit to, even the greatest ideas will struggle to come to fruition.
So make sure you have a clearly outlined project execution plan before setting out. It’ll help you stay focused on key goals and minimize the negative effects of any unforeseen circumstances (and there are always a few).
Not sure how that’s done? Keep reading — we’re going to explain everything you need to know about project execution plans, along with our top tips for ensuring they’re successful.
What is a project execution plan?
To break the concept down into its constituent parts, project execution relates to the actions a team takes to achieve stated project goals and the quality and effectiveness of those actions.
Project execution encompasses the tools, systems, project sponsor, project charter, project schedule, project deliverables, team arrangement, responsibilities, and budget.
Given its broad scope, project execution demands a finely-tuned governing outline that specifies the intended route to project completion that includes all the elements mentioned above with great attention to detail.
This is the project execution plan — a document that states the overarching goals of a project and guides its operational workflow.
Without one, in all likelihood, the project is doomed to fail. In business, there is little room for error. And as well as avoiding a sense of directionlessness, a project execution plan can help create cost and time efficiencies that will accelerate the project’s success — especially in the eyes of the managing team of directors.
A typical project execution plan details the following elements of a given project:
- Project overview: Goals and objectives, client information, terms and contractual obligations, the scope of operations, meeting agenda, strategic direction, cost, and timeline.
- Management: Organizational workflow and hierarchy, early-stage planning, development, and evaluation of strategy
- Administrative overview: Communication systems, procedural workflows, data and information platforms, and progress reporting
- Budget & cost estimates: Cost estimation and controls, review, and approval
- Change/risk management: Contingency planning and change protocol
- Quality management: Project auditing and review
Top tips for a successful project execution plan
Ultimately, the project’s strength depends on the attention you give to planning in the early stages.
To make sure you get things right, we’ve collated the top 12 most spoken-of tips to use when designing your project execution plan, in no particular order.
Outline project scope
Not all projects are created equal.
There are significant differences between launching a new marketing campaign and establishing an organizations projects design requirements.
Accordingly, one of the first considerations you need to make when designing a project execution plan is determining the project’s scope.
How many operational teams are required? Will you use any contractors or exclusively internal employees? How long do you estimate it will take to bring the project to the point of completion?
You could make thousands of considerations to determine the project’s scope, but perhaps the most important are time and budget. Nailing these two factors in the early stages will allow higher-ups to get a grip on the operational demand, hopefully improving your chances of it getting greenlit.
Set specific goals and objectives
You brought the project idea to the table because you believe it can add significant value to the company. But in what ways, specifically?
Adding value is great, but it’s too abstract. You need to specify the areas and ways the project will generate the outcomes you think it will, and to do that, you need to set goals and objectives.
There are many ways to go about this, but every project needs a singular, overarching goal before you reach the project execution phase.
This could be:
- Triple sales coverage by Q3 through expanding locations to a neighboring country
- Internally establish a new operational team this sales period to account for new demand
When in doubt, be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Use an explainer video to make your goals clear!
Create a seamless collaborative workflow
Mapping out a cohesive, reliable workflow will save you time and probably money later down the line.
There’s nothing more frustrating than having solid goals in place, only for progress to be completely halted by a team member unsure of their responsibilities or place in the workflow.
It helps to represent workflows visually, and countless digital tools can help you achieve this.
Ensure that the tool you use allows you to upload workflows in the cloud so that each member of your team can understand their responsibilities regardless of location.
You might want to invest in a VPN service like Surfshark to ensure that your data is secure and protected online.
Set dependencies to encourage accountability
Now that your workflow is established, you should have a sense of what needs to be done by whom, and in what order.
On the one hand, this is great, as the goalposts are set, just waiting for your team’s collective execution. However, you are also leaving the project’s timely completion to chance.
Whether you’re using a digital workflow tool or doing things the old-fashioned way, you need to set and remind your team of the various dependencies key to the project’s progress.
Even if you trust your team to complete their tasks on time, understanding the project’s dependencies provides additional motivation and highlights the importance of their work.
Be motivating
If your team is the car, then you’re the engine.
You may or may not have been the original creator of the project, but if you’re the project manager, you have a challenging responsibility to proactively drive progress toward the goal and stay vigilant for things that could go wrong.
Managing people goes beyond just delegating tasks.
You need to be an effective motivator, conflict resolver, and path-corrector. If you have significant management experience already, this will come as no surprise to you.
But those new to managing a team may be shocked by the powerful effect that great leadership has on project success. Study up, and don’t get caught off guard.
Monitor progress in real-time
Following our previous point, we should also underline the importance of regular progress monitoring and performance evaluation.
We recommend establishing regular project progress evaluations with your team. This will help reorient them toward the stated goals and encourage everyone by detailing the progress made so far.
Aside from that recurring, perhaps weekly meeting, you also have a responsibility to oversee task and sub-task completion.
Note the project dependencies and tune in during the execution phase. Gather feedback on task success as regularly as you are comfortable. It will help you stay on track and on budget.
Don’t ignore the value of content curation
In today’s day and age, chances are your project plan will involve some form of content production — whether in social media, advertising, or organic search capacities.
When it comes to outlining the content plan, don’t ignore the value of content curation — the process of searching and selecting worthwhile, relevant existing content to republish on your channels.
It’s a great way to deeply connect with your audience without the labor or financial investment of producing content yourself.
If you’re not sure where to start, check out some content curation examples or simply start searching around your company’s niche topics from customers’ perspective. You’ll quickly be able to tell the difference between authoritative, worthwhile content and lesser content.
Be mindful of budget
It’s all too easy to overspend on a project, especially one you care about and are deeply involved in.
In the early stages, get clearance for a preliminary budget, which someone in financial service audits. They can assist in tapering the figures to achieve your goals without compromise but within the confines of reality.
And as with progress monitoring, it’s also wise to set up regular budgetary and financial evaluations.
These will help you reel in spending at critical intervals to ensure there’s enough to bring the project home. Set a regular date for this, and make sure to inform your project team of the financial situation to keep their spending controlled, too.
Centralize and streamline team communication
With multiple operational teams, sub-groups, and possibly even external contractors, it can be easy to get lost in the landscape of digital communication.
In time-dependent projects, nothing is more important than being confident in your communication systems.
This is why we would recommend centralizing your team’s communication to a single channel or tool like Slack or Nifty.
You can create groups to organize sub-teams or different operational topics to organize communications. But the important thing is that all team communication happen on one platform. It makes receiving a notification on said platform a lot more urgent, which is better for the project’s health in the long term.
Balance workloads accordingly
Throughout a project, which could be anywhere from a financial quarter to multiple years, things change as it relates to a team member’s workload and responsibilities.
If you aren’t able to keep tight oversight on the amount of work your team members have to perform, it’s almost inevitable that someone will end up with too much on their plate, and someone else not enough.
Continually monitor workloads and get feedback from your team in the progress monitoring meetings you scheduled.
In the planning stages, work on some possible strategies to offload work to external parties or other team members if it seems like workloads may increase significantly at various points throughout the project.
Create contingency plans
We know it may seem like much, but the expression remains as true as it has ever been — if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This includes failing to account for contingency plans.
Contingency plans are the plans B to Z of project execution plans. They specify the immediate actions that need to be taken if predictable circumstances do not fall in your favor.
Not only do contingency plans continually prove invaluable for getting out of sticky situations in a typical project life cycle, but they also have a strangely calming effect.
Knowing that the worst possible eventuality is already understood and accounted for means, you won’t be blindsided if it actually happens. No brainer.
Integrate changes ASAP
Turn and face the strange, but do so quickly.
Change management is a field of academic and organizational inquiry in its own right. Still, you don’t have to be an expert to implement some smart change request management practices in your project execution plan.
The only certainty in project planning is that the variables you design the entire project management plan around will be, if not totally indistinct from what they were, then at least quite different.
When these changes occur (and they will), you need to act accordingly and determine whether they will affect the workflow you’ve established. Reflect on those changes as soon as you can to avoid disaster.
Planning for success
Project execution plans may not be thrilling, but they are one of the highest ROI undertakings for ensuring project success.
Not only does it provide a roadmap for project completion, but it also keeps you and your team focused on the goal, avoiding any obvious and not-so-obvious pitfalls along the way.
Our biggest recommendations would be to start by clearly outlining the project scope related to time and budget. Once this is cleared, you can rely on your own managerial prowess to bring it home.
