Is There a Complete Project Plan? A Model-Based Project Planning Approach

Project planning and control are the essentials of project management. The first steps of the project planning require some knowledge of the concept of the product that the project is expected to deliver. The initial project plan, scope of work, Work Breakdown Structure, and allocation of resources rely on understanding of at least the top-level product functionality, architecture, and concept of operation. The project planning and control is an iterative process of derivation, refinement, and simulation of the product model, while maintaining traceability and coherence between the product model and the project plan at all levels. Nevertheless, existing representations or views for project planning, such as Gantt, PERT, and DSM, contain only a portion of the entire set of relationships among project entities. This paper outlines a model-based approach to project planning, in which a joint project-product OPM model is the basis for the various project management views.