What is a Work Plan

After meeting with your client, you now know what the deliverables are and what the company wants, so why not just get to work on creating the deliverables?

This is an expansive project! This work plan is a fourteen-week, 500–700 hour-long project that five different people are working to complete. For company projects that require hundreds of hours and must be completed on schedule, companies create work plans and Gantt charts. They lay out all the tasks that must be completed for the project. These projects are too complex to let things flow and create tasks as they come. They take more management and more planning. 

To be effective and create deliverables that will make the most impact, you need to have a work plan. The goal is not to just finish but to access the full potential of your team's skills, time, and combined efforts. It is standard in the professional world to develop a work plan. This is your chance to explore this new skill and develop it enough to put it onto your resume confidently!

A work plan is a roadmap to a successful project. It should include a list of the tasks necessary to meet the project deliverables, and it should list the deliverables according to the critical path process.

A work plan can be represented in the following documents: 

• Task list associated with each deliverable
• Action register
• Gantt chart

We will learn about all three of these documents later in this chapter. 

The Key to Communication

A fully developed work plan is a highly valuable channel of communication among team members and with the sponsor. Utilize the work plan to create transparency in expectations and progress.

Among Team Members: Each member of the team has access to the work plan. As responsibilities and tasks are assigned among the group, the work plan can be used as a record-keeping tool for assignments during meetings. It should be used for accountability checks and status updates as you meet, encouraging awareness and transparency of each member's efforts.

Sponsor and Team: The sponsor will also have access to your work plan. As deliverables are defined, this project plan should be used to clarify to the sponsor that their expectations are being met. Teams with a professional mindset will share their work plan whenever they meet with their sponsor to display the progress made and work done each week. When properly done, little room is left for misunderstandings between the sponsor and the team to develop.

Work Plan Components

• Deliverables: Identify and record every measurable outcome your team is hoping to accomplish. This can be based on your engagement letter.
• Tasks: Include all the high-level action items required to complete your deliverables.
• Sub-Tasks Breakdown: Take all your tasks and break them into smaller lists of tasks. This is to help your team visualize everything that needs to happen.
• Task Assignments: The strongest workflows allow for maximizing each team member's time and also for multiple items to be progressing at once. Determine which team member will take responsibility for each task. Some tasks are done by the entire team, while others need the focus of only one or more members.
• Timeline and Dates: A timeline is key with work plans. Give start/end dates for each task, as well as dates for the midterm and final presentations. How long will each task take? In what order will each task need to be completed? Will we have enough time to complete the current deliverables, or too much? Your timeline projections should give you insights into these questions.

Throughout this chapter, you will learn how to create a work plan, communicate that plan effectively with your sponsor, and move forward with faith when your tasks are unknown or intimidating.