Begin a new project with a clear head
Begin a new project with a clear head
Starting a new project can feel overwhelming, especially without sufficient planning. We built this project planning template based on hundreds of examples to help you get started — and make sure you have all the bases covered. With this template, you can define goals, measure success, as well as outline cost, participation, and obstacles to success.
A project plan outlines all major areas of a project, including resources, possible risks, and communication protocols, and may also include summaries of cost and schedule baselines. A project planning template serves as a visual guide, improving alignment and engagement as you track every essential element of the project.
A project plan is easier to manage and maintain using a MURAL template. However, if you create your own, there are some key elements to any project planning template that make it more effective:
A great start to any project; a warm-up exercise is a good way to get teams communicating from the start. Facilitators will find the timer feature useful for this activity.
What do you hope to achieve with this project? It’s the central question before you begin any plan.
How will you know you achieved it? Brainstorm for 5-10 minutes, and then vote on the results.
Pro Tip: Use anonymous voting to increase participation and get more accurate feedback.
How big a project is this? Will every detail of this project be handled by one team?
A 10-minute exercise that asks the team: What do we have? What are we missing? What could block us? and What will this cost?
This is a good place to put things down like responsibilities, who’s responsible for what, reporting cadences, or anything else in the project that requires collaboration from other teams.
Another 10-minute exercise that lets the team map out when they think projects, or segments of projects, will be completed.
Pro Tip: You can delete the timeline and use the monthly calendars in the Frameworks section to plan with specific dates and timelines
Take 10 minutes to have the team discuss what action items need to be completed. You can even segment the responsibilities by type (Product, Marketing, Leadership, etc.).
We recommend that you collaborate with anywhere from 2 to 10 team members, but there is no perfect number of people needed to create an effective project plan.
For the most part — anyone you want. However, to keep your agenda focused and discuss the core elements of your projects, start with a project manager, team members assigned to the project, department managers, and in some cases, the customer (the entity you are creating the project for). Map out your key project stakeholders to make this easier.
It’s really up to you — and, more importantly, your needs and budget. The ETC (or estimated time to completion) for any project depends on a number of factors. The size of your team, historical data (how long it typically has taken your team to do a similar project in the past), and your budget will help you determine the length of your project.