Planning is a major aspect of proper project management. Plans are used by project management to direct the project and to monitor if the project is progressing in the right direction. To run a project successfully, you need to have a plan that describes what needs to be done. Without at least an idea of what needs to be done, it is impossible to determine if the project is successful. Hence we need a plan. However, there are many differences in the way that the project plan is used in different project management approaches. The status and role of the plan is not consistent across approaches, which can lead to miscommunication in project teams and to different views on how unexpected situations should be dealt with.

Central to this discussion is the matter of the "purpose of a plan". As a working definition I use: "A plan is intended to give guidance to the activities executed as part of a project". This is a rather generic description of a plans' purpose and is intended to be applicable to any kind of project management style. It is not the reason for making a plan that differentiates different project management styles, it is the intent of the plan and the way it is used to govern the project that is distinctive.

Many project management approaches use a plan to specify what actions need to be taken at what point in time and which deliverables are expected when. This is a prescriptive approach, which seeks to fix the steps and milestones of the project upfront. The appeal of this approach is that everyone knows upfront what to expect. For a manager it is very convenient, since he can manage against the plan and tell project team members what and when to deliver. Stick to the plan and you'll be alright.

The alternative approach would be not to fix the deliverables, but to limit the plan to a project vision. This vision describes the goal of the project, the high level requirements that should be met and maybe some constraints on how the eventual solutions should be achieved. The project vision is then used during the project to guide decisions that need to be made. This is a criterion based approach.

Both of these approaches fulfill the need for the guidance a project plan is supposed to deliver. However, their implementation and applicability is very different. The prescriptive approach is useful when the activities that make up of the course of the project can indeed be predicted up front. This requires thorough knowledge of the project conditions, its problem domain and the optimal solution the project is expected to deliver. Furthermore effective management of the environment is of vital importance to prevent outside influences that might cause deviations from the project plan. The criterion based approach is useful in situations where there are a lot of uncertainties and no concrete solution can be defined up front. It requires that the people involved are able to continuously translate the project vision to the actual situation and to determine what actions contribute best to the optimal end solution. If the project members are not able to do this, this approach will not work.

In an environment that continually changes - and what environment does not - a plan should never be used as a rigid list of steps that needs to be executed. If this happens, the plan tends to become more important than the result it was intended to deliver. The criterion based approach admits that not everything can be predicted and controlled. This has consequences for the project plan and how it is used. As reality evolves, the plan should evolve with it. Where the project reality has a time aspect, so should the plan. Experience and lessons learned during the project should be integrated into the plan. Thus the plan keeps changing. Last months planning is not valid today, since today’s reality is not the same reality as the one last months planning was based upon.

As stated before, the purpose of a plan is to provide guidance. This can be accomplished in multiple ways. Different situations call for different approaches towards the plan. However, a plan should never become more important than the goal it was made for. A plan should be based on reality.

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