The Project Management Plan establishes project management's interpretation of the why, what, how, who, how much, and when of the project. It's the Bible, Quran, Tanakh (select your religious text of choice) for all aspects of the project.

It is a baseline tool used as a reference for managing the project. It is one of the most important document in the overall planning, monitoring, and implementation of a project and is owned by the project manager and his/her team. The plan should include: A definition of overall objectives, statements on how these should be achieved (and verified) Estimates of the time required. This defines how the project executed, how it is monitored and controlled, and how it is shutdown in a controlled manner.

The project management plan should include the following aspects:

• Project processes
• how the processes will be executed
• tools and techniques to be used
• essential inputs and outputs and how they will be used to manage the project
• dependencies and interaction of the processes used to manage the project
• methods for executing the work to fulfil the objectives
• methods for monitoring and controlling changes
• methods to perform configuration management
• methods for determining and maintaining the validity of performance baselines
• communication needs of the stakeholders and how those needs will be fulfilled
• project life cycle
• project phrases for multiphase project
• management reviews of issues and spending decisions

There will be many subsidiary plans, which may remain separate, for small project may be combined into one document.

According to the MPBOK, these are the subsidiary plans:

• Project Scope management plan
• scheduling management plan
• cost management plan
• quality management plan
• process improvement plan
• starffing management plan
• Communications management plan
• risk management plan
• procurement management plan

When developing the subsidiary plans, there are components of each of the processes that should be considered. These are as follows:

• Milestone list
• resource calendar
• schedule Baseline
• cost Baseline
• quality Baseline
• risk register

Remember. All plans are subject to changes, and the above list will need to be referenced on a regular basis and updated as required.

Senior management will be required to approve these changes.