In today's fast-paced business world, proper project planning can often take a backseat to other objectives. Employees are asked to leap into the project before the scope or Work Breakdown Structure is even defined. Does this scenario sound familiar? Your frazzled boss comes running into the room with a hot new project that needs to be completed ASAP. He tells you that there is no time to waste on discussing the project and wants you to get to work on it pronto. Essentially he is asking you to skip the most critical phase of the project--planning.

I have worked with many different project teams in many different industries and have discovered that the majority of project teams make the same mistake when developing project plans: they typically begin with determining how the work will proceed prior to defining the project itself or the Work Breakdown Structure that will be required. In other words, most project teams "put the cart before the horse."