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The project management plan processcoversall activities that identify and direct

the actions of many other processes in the planning process group.

Developing the project management plan includes coordinating the develop-

ment of the subsidiary plans and incorporating them into the complete project

plan. The main purpose of the project management plan is to define how the

project is to progress from its beginning to completion.

In short, the project management plan provides the high-level game plan for

how the project moves through its lifecycle. PMI defines many potential sub-

sidiary plansthat make up the overall project management plan. These subsidiary

The first process in theactivity planning section is define activities. This process

starts with the WBS and identifies the activities required to produce the vari-

ous project deliverables. Activities are viewed from the perspective of the work

packages. You ask the question, “What activities are required to satisfy this

work package requirement?” Next, the resulting information from this process

is used to organize the activities into a specific sequence. Table 3.5 shows the

inputs, tools and techniques, and outputsfor the define activities process.

Sometimes it is difficult to know everything about a project during the plan-

ning stage. It is common to learn more about the project as you work through

the project life cycle. This is calledprogressive elaborationand affects the plan-

ning process. If you don’t know everything about the project, you can’t plan

the whole project to the necessary level of detail.

For large projects, it is common to plan the entire project at a high level. The

project starts with detailed plans in place for the work packages that are near

the beginning of the project. As the time draws near to begin additional work,

the more detailed, low-level plans for those work packages are added to the

project plan. The planning process is revisited multiple times...