Why do so many projects go wrong? Why do project managers repeatedly make the same mistakes?

When drawing up a business case for a project always include a 'do nothing' option.

Business analysts and project managers usually assume that the business will understand the need to implement a new project.

Without a 'do nothing' option executives feel as though you’ve got a gun to their heads and they have no option but to go ahead with your project.

VIEW THE ACCEPTANCE PLAN TEMPLATE

The key to a successful project is gaining acceptance from the customer that each deliverable produced meets (or exceeds) his/her requirements. To clarify the criteria used to judge each deliverable for customer acceptance, an Acceptance Plan is produced.

Here are the 10 steps you need to create an effective project communications plan.

Step 1: Situation Analysis

The first step to take when creating a Communications Plan is to perform a Situation Analysis. This is a fancy term for researching your existing communications environment.

Review the performance of all communications within your project and identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

VIEW THE COMMUNICATIONS PLAN TEMPLATE

The key to a successful project is gaining acceptance from the customer that each deliverable produced meets (or exceeds) his/her requirements. To clarify the criteria used to judge each deliverable for customer acceptance, an Acceptance Plan is produced.

VIEW THE PROJECT RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN

The project Risk Management Plan helps you to identify risks and implement a plan to reduce them. 
 
Using the risk plan, you can monitor and control risks effectively, increasing you chances of achieving success.

This Risk Planning template will help you to:

VIEW THE QUALITY PLAN TEMPLATE

The Quality Plan sets quality targets for your project to ensure that the deliverables produced, meet the needs of your customer.
 
You can then use it to schedule quality control and quality assurance activities, to assure your customer that the quality targets will be met.

You use the Quality Plan to set quality targets by: 

VIEW THE FINANCIAL PLAN TEMPLATE

The Financial Plan enables you to set a "budget", against which you measure your expenditure. To deliver you project "within budget", you need to produce the project deliverables at a total cost which does not exceed that stated in the budget.

The Financial Plan helps to identify the:

VIEW THE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TEMPLATE