Looking for a free and simple project plan template

Looking for a Free and Simple Project Plan Template?

Let me kick off this article by letting you know that if you’re looking for a schedule template or Gantt chart template, you’re looking in the wrong place. And of course I don’t want to waste your time!

While this might increase my bounce rate for this article, it will also tell me straight away, exactly how many people really understand what a project plan is in the first place.

A Real Project Plan Template You see, many people tend to think the project plan is just a schedule. In actual fact, the schedule is just the third or maybe fourth task that needs to be completed as part of the overall project plan.

The project plan contains so much more than just a schedule and by understanding exactly what a project plan should contain, you can significantly increase the chances of getting a project right and reducing the amount of things that may go wrong.

This topic is near and dear to our hearts here at Grapple, because we have spent all of our time and resources trying to develop an online tool that helps you develop the perfect project plan, with as little effort as possible. In fact, our overall mission here at grapple is to improve the quality of project management and simplify the lives of project managers everywhere.

So let’s get started. Let’s go through the main aspects of the project plan, and give you the kind of template you might be looking for.

A Project Plan Template For ANY Purpose It is important to point out though, that no matter what type of project you’re doing, the project plan template stays roughly the same. It doesn’t matter whether you are running an event, doing engineering design, construction, IT, change management or business process improvement. A good project plan template has the same elements, but the content of the project plan will be adjusted to suit the particular type of project.

A good Project Plan Template should include the following major sections. 

Project name



Project Team (including Project Manager)



Description of project



Purpose and business case



Scope statement



Stakeholders



Key deliverables



Key milestones (Schedule)



Budget



Procurement



Quality



Resources



Communications

In some cases, the project plan will be specific to industry, and may require additional sections that talk about how to manage those particular aspects. In which case you may require additional aspects for the project plan that cover things such as 

Engineering



Construction



Information technology

Each section above should contain enough information to explain what has to be done for each section, how it needs to be done, and who is responsible for doing it.

For example, in the scope statement, you should document all of the things that are expected for this particular project. If there is a particular way that the project needs to be completed, this also should be included here.

For example, if you are building a house and you were documenting the kind of kitchen that needs to be installed, it may also be relevant to document key features of the kitchen, restrictions about what can be included, restrictions about when installation can be conducted or expectations around particular installation techniques. The kitchen may require things like gas fittings, plumbed refrigeration and easy access to some particular cupboards or amenities. This level of detail helps the project manager all the project team understand exactly what is required in relation to the kitchen.

All other aspects of the project plan template should also be considered in the same vein. The budget, procurement, quality, resources sections all have relevancy to the kitchen installation.

Some Final Notes (and Industry Backing)

Provided these aspects of the project plan template are met, you will achieve a high quality, industry standard project plan. In fact the sections outlined above, are those sections required by PMBOK v5 and ISO 21500.

If your project is relatively small or not very complex, you simply won’t require too much information against each of these aspects listed above.

As your project becomes more complex or larger in scale, each of the sections outlined above may become a complete plan of their own.

If you’re looking to get a project plan template completed quickly, try our free version of a project plan template located here.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for maximum automation of your document and project plan template, Electronic approval, and automated version control, try the Grapple App located here.

If we still haven’t met your requirements or given you what you’re looking for, please let us know and would be happy to provide more information to you. regards, Aaron Aaron Hudson is the co-founder of Grapple, the simplest and easiest online project planning tool on the market.