Planning: scope, schedule, cost, risk, response
What you'll be able to do
Planning sets the route, the milestones, and the rules — and you replan whenever the map changes.
- Outputs: project management plan + baselines (scope/schedule/cost).
- Progressive elaboration: refine the plan as more info arrives.
- Rolling-wave: detailed near-term plans, high-level far-term plans.
The Planning focus area defines the course of action: it establishes scope, refines objectives, and develops the plan needed to deliver. Outputs include the project management plan (an integrated document or set of documents) plus the project's baselines: scope baseline, schedule baseline, cost baseline.
PMBOK 8e is explicit that planning is iterative. The phrase to memorise is *progressive elaboration*: the plan starts at the level of detail you can support today and is refined as more information arrives. Adaptive projects do less up-front planning and more continuous planning ('rolling-wave'); predictive projects front-load it. Either way, replanning is normal and expected.
The PM plan is more than schedule + cost. It includes subsidiary plans for scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risk, procurement, stakeholder engagement, and change management — plus the configuration management plan that says how versions and baselines are governed. Tailoring (Section 4) decides which of these subsidiary plans actually get authored.
Key points
- Outputs: project management plan + baselines (scope/schedule/cost).
- Progressive elaboration: refine the plan as more info arrives.
- Rolling-wave: detailed near-term plans, high-level far-term plans.
- Replanning is normal, not a failure signal.
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