Creating an Initial Project Plan: Estimation, Assumptions, and Scheduling

After completing effort estimation, the author explains that estimation alone is insufficient for project planning and introduces the nine process groups of project management to highlight the many factors that must be considered.

1. Ideal weekly development time

Assuming each team member works 40 hours per week, with a 1‑hour architecture meeting, a 10‑minute daily stand‑up, and two hours of daily interruptions, each person effectively has less than 29 hours of productive time per week.

2. Ideal weekly demand completion

The team conducts a consensus exercise, presenting demands one by one and noting when members can no longer commit; the average feasible demand per week is calculated to be about 22 points, suggesting the project could be finished in roughly three weeks under ideal conditions.

3. Realistic weekly demand completion

Considering daily production issues, interruptions, and meetings, the team estimates that 40% of time is spent on non‑project work and another 10% on collaboration, leaving about 50% effective development time, which translates to roughly 11 points per week and a total of 6.5 weeks of development.

4. Handling urgent online requests

The team will keep the main branch stable and create short‑lived feature branches for urgent fixes, merging them back quickly, while also logging these requests in the project backlog for later scheduling.

5. System testing duration

Traditional testing took a month, including functional, performance, stress, and stability tests, with a two‑week “big‑ring” test. With iterative development and continuous testing, the author proposes reducing the overall testing phase to two weeks.

6. Additional overlooked factors

The team acknowledges dependencies on other projects, personal leave, holidays, and team‑building activities, which could extend the schedule to about 9.5 weeks.

7. Adding buffer time

Given the assumptions (full‑speed development of 22 points per week, 40% interruption, and three days of non‑working time), the author recommends inserting a one‑week buffer to monitor risk and adjust the plan as needed.

Summary

The initial project plan combines estimation, realistic capacity analysis, risk and assumption tracking (R‑A‑P‑I‑D), and a buffer to produce a practical schedule of roughly nine weeks.