Project Management Plan Template

What’s so important about the Project Management Plan? It’s the ultimate project roadmap! Depending on project needs, it may house numerous subsidiary management plans, project baselines, and a variety of project documents. Because this template is developed to support a wide range of projects, it contains placeholders for each of these.

This Project Management Plan template is designed by a PMP certified Project Manager to align with commonly recognized good practices in project management.  Specifically, our template:

• begins with a section that captures relevant project information;
• provides for the identification of project roles and responsibilities;
• prompts the Project Manager to describe the project lifecycle, the product development approach, and the management reviews;
• includes sections for housing subsidiary management plans, the scope baseline, the schedule baseline, the cost baseline, and the performance baseline;
• specifies procedures for change control;
• includes a section for attaching and approving project documents; and
• provides a section for plan approval and work performance authorization.

Who Creates the Project Management Plan?

Typically, the Project Manager has primary responsibility for developing the Project Management Plan. Of course, effective planning accounts for the input of various project team members, other stakeholders, and the project sponsor.

What Are the Inputs?

There are numerous inputs to developing a Project Management Plan, including the project charter, government or industry standards, legal requirements, organizational culture and management practices, experience and expertise of the Project Manager, historical information, and more.

The Project Management Plan varies greatly, depending on project needs. For some projects, the Project Management Plan is a voluminous document that is developed in detail and becomes formally approved before the start of project work. In those situations, numerous subsidiary plans, baselines, and project documents could be included in the Project Management Plan.

For other projects, this highly detailed and rigid approach to project planning would be disastrous. In these situations, the Project Management Plan is often developed more loosely and from a high-level perspective. As the project progresses, the Project Management Plan may become more elaborate. In these instances, far fewer subsidiary management plans and documents would be used to initiate development of the Project Management Plan.

Make Work Easier

We know this template will make your work easier. Want an even a better solution? Consider getting The Practitioner’s Book of Project Management Templates. Our e-book contains a complete set of editable, project management templates. It expedites development of project management plans and supports project managers throughout the project life cycle. By the way, it includes this Project Management Plan template.

Consider a Set of Templates