Subsidiary Management Plan: Best Practices for Project Success

The Project Management Plan (PMP) is the key document that contains the overall Planning, monitoring, and implementing activities to be done on a project. The PMP acts as the foundation and compass of the entire project lifecycle. It contains both the core plan and a set of detailed subsidiary plans. A well-crafted PMP increases the chance of on-time, on-budget, and quality delivery.

A Project Management Plan is a formal, approved document that defines how the project is executed, monitored and controlled. It can either be at a summary level or detailed and maybe composed of one or more of subsidiary plans depending on the requirements of the project. Mudassir Iqbal, the COO of AnaConEx Solutions, oversees operations across Pakistan, UAE, KSA, and the USA. With over 50 successful Odoo implementations since 2020, he ensures tailored solutions for businesses across industries.

With more than 20 years of experience in leadership, project management, and business consulting, Mudassir is passionate about empowering others. He offers PMP Certification courses with a 100% success rate, along with leadership coaching to help professionals unlock their potential.

As a mentor, Mudassir supports aspiring leaders in building essential skills, including team building, communication, and soft skills. His mentorship prepares professionals to tackle career challenges confidently. Beyond consulting, Mudassir is a dynamic speaker and host. He conducts webinars, conferences, and podcasts, including *TechTalk with Mudassir* and *Elevate to Leadership*, sharing insights on technology, leadership, and career growth.

Through his writing platform, *My Corner!*, he reflects on two decades of professional experience, offering practical advice and thought leadership on topics like ERP, digital transformation, and project management. Mudassir is also the founder of Know Your Project (KYP), an IT consulting and training firm.

Why is a Project Management Plan Important?

Nearly thirty-seven per cent of projects fail because of a lack of clearly defined project objectives and milestones. The Project Plan is crucial for successful project delivery. Project planning is essential for several reasons.

• It allows the project manager to gain a better understanding of the project and its objectives.
• It helps to identify potential risks and issues that may impact the project.
• It ensures that all stakeholders are aware of their roles and responsibilities.

The project plan defines how the project is executed, monitored, controlled, and closed. Project planning as a process is output oriented. The project plan integrates and consolidates the subsidiary plans and baselines from the planning processes. Project plans form the foundation for future actions, using the planning document as a guide.

Key Benefits of a Well-Crafted PMP

• Clarifies goals, roles, and deliverables
• Streamlines change and issue management
• Acts as a reliable guide for the team
• Improves control over cost, time, and quality
• Enhances stakeholder communication

Subsidiary Management Plans

In addition to the subsidiary plans, the Project Management Plan also integrates and consolidates all the baselines from the planning processes. It can be further customized (Tailoring) them as required as per project requirements.

Core Components of Subsidiary Management Plans:

• Scope management plan: Establishes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and validated.
• Requirements management plan: Establishes how the requirements will be analyzed, documented, and managed.
• Schedule management plan: Establishes the criteria and the activities for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule.
• Cost management plan: Establishes how the costs will be planned, structured, and controlled.
• Quality management plan: Establishes how an organization´s quality policies, methodologies, and standards will be implemented in the project.
• Resource management plan: Provides guidance on how project resources should be categorized, allocated, managed, and released.
• Communications management plan: Establishes how, when, and by whom information about the project will be administered and disseminated.
• Risk management plan: Establishes how the risk management activities will be structured and performed.
• Procurement management plan: Establishes how the project team will acquire goods and services from outside of the performing organization.
• Stakeholder engagement plan: Establishes how stakeholders will be engaged in project decisions and execution, according to their needs, interests, and impact.

Project Baselines

These baselines let you measure performance and manage deviations.

• Scope Baseline: What’s being delivered
• Schedule Baseline: When it’s being delivered
• Cost Baseline: How much it will cost

Key Project Baselines:

• Scope baseline: The approved version of a scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), and its associated WBS dictionary, which is used as a basis for comparison.
• Schedule baseline: The approved version of the schedule model that is used as a basis for comparison to the actual results.
• Cost baseline: The approved version of the time-phased project budget that is used as a basis for comparison to the actual results.

Additional Components

Most components of the project management plan are produced as outputs from other processes, though some are produced during this process. Those components developed as part of this process will be dependent on the project; however, they often include but are not limited to:

• Change management plan: Describes how the change requests throughout the project will be formally authorized and incorporated.
• Configuration management plan: Describes how the information about the items of the project (and which items) will be recorded and updated so that the product, service, or result of the project remains consistent and/or operative.
• Performance measurement baseline: An integrated scope-schedule-cost plan for the project work against which project execution is compared to measure and manage performance.
• Project life cycle: Describes the series of phases that a project passes through from its initiation to its closure.
• Development approach: Describes the product, service, or result development approach, such as predictive, iterative, agile, or a hybrid model.
• Management reviews: Identifies the points in the project when the project manager and relevant stakeholders will review the project progress to determine if performance is as expected, or if preventive or corrective actions are necessary.

Data Analysis Techniques

Data analysis is crucial for effective project management. Here are some key techniques:

• Earned Value Management (EVM): It integrates the scope baseline with the cost baseline and schedule baseline to form the performance measurement baseline. EVM develops and monitors three key dimensions for each work package and control account
• Earned Value Analysis (EVA): It compares the performance measurement baseline to the actual schedule and cost performance.
• Planned Value (PV): It is the authorized budget assigned to scheduled work. The total of the PV is sometimes referred to as the performance measurement baseline (PMB). The total planned value for the project is also known as budget at completion (BAC).
• Earned Value (EV): It is a measure of work performed expressed in terms of the budget authorized for that work.
• Actual Cost (AC): It is the realized cost incurred for the work performed on an activity during a specific time period.

Variance Analysis:

• Cost Variance (CV) = Earned Value (EV)-Actual Cost (AC)
• Schedule Variance (SV) = Earned Value (EV)- Planned Value (PV)
• Variance at Completion (VAC) = Budget at completion (BAC) - Estimated at Completion (EAC)
• Schedule performance Index (SPI) = Earned Value (EV) / Planned Value (PV)
• Cost Performance Index (CPI) = Earned Value (EV) / Actual Cost (AC)

• Trend Analysis: It examines project performance over time to determine if performance is improving or deteriorating.

Steps to Create a Good Project Plan

Creating a good project plan is essential to the success of any project.

1. After creating a project charter and identifying the key project stakeholders, gathering requirements is essential.
2. In this step, you’ll need to determine the scope of your project. What is the project’s purpose? What problems is it trying to solve? What are the goals you hope to achieve? What are the deliverables you need to produce? The scope statement forms a strong base for the rest of the project.
3. The step will help assign resources to different project parts based on the skills needed.
4. Break down work packages into a list of project tasks. Consider this an action plan. You’ll need to identify the tasks that need to be completed to reach your goals. Then, for each activity, you’ll need to estimate how long it will take to complete.
5. When planning a project, it’s important to sequence the tasks so that you can complete the project efficiently and effectively. To do this, you’ll need to create a project schedule. This schedule will detail all the tasks that need to be completed and when they need to be completed. For example, if you’re working on a design project, you might want to start by sketching out some ideas, then move on to refining those designs, and finally, create a prototype or mock-up.
6. Estimating activity duration, costs, and resources are essential when creating a project plan. This will give you a good idea of what is needed to complete the project and whether the plan is viable.
7. Once you have your timeline and tasks finalised, it’s time to start assigning roles and responsibilities. For example, who will be responsible for each activity? When do they need to have it completed? Resources may include humans, materials, equipment, space, and technology. Any organisation has limited resources. Defining roles and responsibilities from the beginning is necessary to avoid vagueness over roles.
8. You might be an expert in project planning, but you cannot ignore twists and turns that occur in a project, and that’s what makes it challenging.
9. Develop an integrated scope-schedule-cost baseline for the project work, which will serve as a control tool for your project. Then, compare the execution of the project to your baseline to measure and manage performance. Performance should be measured throughout the project lifecycle. This way, you can identify issues and take corrective action before it’s too late. It’s equally important to measure performance upon completion of the project.
10. Developing a comprehensive and realistic project plan requires time and effort.
11. Document the scope, schedule, and cost of the project.
12. In some organisations, project managers document and share their plans when it is mandatory.

Essential Skills for Project Managers

A project plan is an essential skill for any project manager. It allows you to track your progress, identify risks and potential problems, and keep your team on track.

• Make a list of all the tasks that need to be completed.
• Collaborate with your team and key stakeholders on creating a project plan.
• It takes time and effort to write project plans.
• In the process of project planning, you might want to write and rewrite your project plan to write a perfect one.
• Regularly review and update the plan as needed.

Subsidiary Management Plans in Detail

In addition to the subsidiary plans, the Project Management Plan also integrates and consolidates all the baselines from the planning processes.

Scope Management Plan

Documents how the project scope will be defined, developed and verified / controlled. It also provides the framework in creating and defining the work breakdown structure (WBS) to a certain detail that will confirm that the project requirements are met, managed and controlled.

Schedule Management Plan

Documents the selected scheduling methodology with the corresponding scheduling tool and techniques. The Plan defines the format and establishes criteria or thresholds for controlling the project schedule. It also outlines the development of the project schedule taking into account the processes to define activities, sequence activities, estimate activity resources and durations.

Cost Management Plan

This plan sets out the format and establishes the criteria for planning, structuring, estimating, budgeting and controlling project costs. The Cost Management Plan sets out the level of accuracy of cost estimates; units of measures for resources; the control account or WBS component used for project cost accounting; control or variance thresholds typically expressed as percentage deviation from the baseline plan; earned value management (EVM) rules of performance measurement; and, reporting formats.

Quality Management Plan

Documents how the project management team implements the Client’s Quality Policy. The Quality Management provides the benchmarks how quality assurance will be performed for the project. In the absence of a Quality Policy, the project management team should develop one for the project and ensure that the project stakeholders are fully aware of the policy used for the project through proper distribution of information.

Human Resource Management Plan

Identifies and documents the staffing/or organization plan delineating project roles, responsibilities and required skills, reporting relationship including the timetable for staff acquisition and/or mobilization and release. The Plan also includes identification of training needs, team building strategies and plans for recognition and rewards program.

Communications Management Plan

The Communication Management Plan outlines the stakeholder communication requirements, the information to be communicated including the format, content and level of detail, the reason for the distribution, the time frame and the frequency of distribution, the person responsible for communicating the information and the recipients including the methods or techniques for conveying the information. The Plan shall also set out the process of identifying and escalating issues.

Procurement Management Plan

Documents the activities relative to purchasing or acquiring services from outside the project team or entity.

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