Intended audience: DataKind Volunteers
The project plan is for internal team project management, so draft it in whatever tool or system will work best for you and your team. When you need to report back and summarize key milestones for the partner organization, update the Project Brief with that information.
Since the most important thing about a project plan is that it is useful for you, there’s a lot of flexibility on what it can look like or what form it can take. That said, there are a few key elements that every DataKind project plan should include:
- Include clear stages (such as exploration, minimum viable product (MVP), refinement, and final product) and associated checkpoints and timelines, noting that your project may require more than the minimum of three execute checkpoints. Decide how many stages and checkpoints make sense for you based on your specific project requirements.
- Make sure all stakeholders are aligned on the project plan before the project begins by checking in with the partner organization and project volunteers. During the check in, be prepared to adjust the plan based on their feedback so that all parties are ready to implement it.
- Divide the project into discrete tasks that can be assigned to volunteers to make it easy for volunteers to quickly engage and contribute. Include mini sprints and partial deliverable goals within stages to identify if the project is on track. Keep the timeline realistic, but short enough to keep volunteers engaged.
- Set a cadence for updating the project plan (for example, every two weeks or at every milestone). Set a reminder and make sure the person responsible for updating the project plan is prepared to do so regularly. If the team is running behind, proactively move the deliverables back to a realistic timeline in the project plan.
Everyone has different preferences on what their project plan looks like, but here are some tips that DataKinders have found useful for project work:
- Consider using our pre-made Google Doc project plan template , rather than creating your own from scratch.
- Create the project plan inside a system you will actually use, for example, GitHub Issue Boards (to minimize logins) or Asana (if the team already uses it)
- Use weekly or biweekly sprints to segment work targets
- Track how project reality compares to the initial project plan to more accurately understand how much time things take, so you can refine the plan as the project progresses
- Use the MOCHA framework to align on who is responsible for what. For example, a data visualization element of a project might have the following MOCHA:
- Manager: the Project Manager
- Owner: the Data Expert with visualization expertise
- Consulted: the other Data Experts
- Helper: the Data Ambassador
- Approver: the Project Champion
- Use the 5 Ws: Who, What, Why, When, and Where to disaggregate larger projects in combination with the MOCHA framework.
- Don’t get to a point where updating the project plan becomes more work than the utility you get out of it. Be aware of the ROI of project plan creation and don’t spend too much time on it.
Contributer(s): Caitlin Augustin, Mitali Ayyangar, Benjamin Kinsella, Devangana Khokhar, Emily Yelverton, Asnat Ghebremedhin, Shanna Lee, Pui Kwan (PJ) Lee, Mallory Sheff
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If you would like to learn more about us, partner with us, or get in touch, email us at community@datakind.org
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