One of the most significant parts of preparing a Horizon Europe proposal is planning out the project details and developing your project’s work plan. The best way to go about this is by breaking the work down into easier manageable pieces. Once you have your list of tasks, you can start by estimating who will work on those tasks, how long they’ll take, how much they’ll cost, etc. Creating a productive schedule will require you to consider which tasks depend on one another, and what those dependencies are. You’ll need to keep in mind how many resources will be available and when to schedule each task properly. A successful Horizon Europe Proposal work plan can be used throughout the project’s lifecycle. It will be used to track progress and help you direct the people working on the project. In this article, we go through the main steps of developing a work plan.
Step 1. Set the project’s goal and objectives
A vital first step in creating an effective work plan is defining the overall goal of your project. Simply put, the project goal is the result that you would like to deliver. The project goal should be a problem to solve or an opportunity to be acted upon.
Keep in mind that your project goal must align with the Horizon Europe program’s missions. The goal must advance the political agenda of the Horizon Europe Program. The project goal needs to drive everything in the project, so it’s essential to allocate enough time to develop a solid goal that aligns with the program’s missions.
Since the goal serves as the foundation by which everyone can see whether the project is on the right track, major stakeholders and partners must be actively involved in the development and final decisions regarding the project’s goal. Once the project’s goal has been set, it can be further fleshed out by identifying more detailed objectives. These objectives will help define the project’s scope, deliverables, and success criteria. Both you and your partners must keep the project goal in mind throughout the project’s lifecycle to determine whether it’s still feasible.
Step 2. Identify the project’s deliverables
After setting the overall goal of your project, it’s time for you and your project team to evaluate which steps are necessary to achieve it. This can be done by planning your project deliverables.
Project deliverables are the results that a project will deliver and/or outputs that must be produced at a given moment over the course of the project. Keep in mind that deliverables can be tangible or abstract. Some examples of tangible deliverables would be a technical diagram, a brochure, a new product, or a research manuscript. Abstract deliverables can include improved results.
Deliverables will help you define what to include and leave out of the project. They will also help you measure the project’s progress once it’s underway.
Pro tip: Start by documenting your project deliverables by listing them at the end of the project. You’ll find it much easier to begin the documentation process by thinking about the results your project will deliver.
Step 3. Create work packages
Once you and your project team have identified and documented your deliverables, you’ll need to consider how the deliverables can be achieved, and start to discuss the scope of the work. The best way to proceed with this step is to identify the activities that need to be done and create project tasks with your project teams.
This time, you’re going to start at the top with top-level tasks and work your way down to build the work breakdown structure. The best way to go about this is to use deliverables to identify the top-level summary tasks.
Keep in mind that collaborative Horizon Europe projects can consist of hundreds of tasks, and that some of those tasks will be interconnected or depend upon the success or completion of other tasks. This is why you group and organize your tasks into work packages (WPs). WPs help you to divide up project work and tasks into more manageable parts.
WPs are usually high-level tasks that help summarize work and describe different parts of the project. For example, they could represent phases of your project or other areas of work (e.g., research, management, and dissemination, or work done by other project teams). Once you have your WPs, you’ll need to break them down into tasks. If the work of any one task is very detailed, you’ll need to break these tasks down further into subtasks. This work breakdown structure of Work Package > Tasks > Subtasks will help you plan, track, and manage the project. The main benefits of this structure are:
- An easier estimation of time and costs, particularly for smaller sections of work.
- A clearer view of who should be assigned what work and to which team members.
- Built-in checkpoints to measure the progress of the project.
It’s essential to engage all major project stakeholders in identifying the top-level tasks/WPs. Projects have many moving parts and are a lot of work, so it’s easy to overlook something. By including stakeholders in the WP and top tasks process, you’ll ensure that everyone and everything are appropriately included and that no work is ignored. Being inclusive will also foster an environment that’ll help partners and teams remain motivated throughout the project by having a participatory role and voice in the work planning process.
Once the top-level tasks/WPs have been chosen, you can work in smaller groups to break them into smaller pieces. This process will likely have several iterations as new activities are identified, grouped, or broken down into smaller tasks. The process may also result in re-aligning the entire work breakdown structure. At the end of this process, it’s essential to bring everyone back together to review the structure and address any issues.
As you’re in the final stages of the task breakdown process, you’ll need to start thinking about the expertise and skills each task and your project requires. You’ll need to identify which expertise is needed for different parts of the project and how many people with those skills you need, so you can build a foundation to estimate resources and personnel costs. Once this has been done, you’ll have the information you need to start assigning tasks to specific project participants, teams, and partners.
Teamwork is a vital part of developing a successful Horizon Europe proposal work plan. By ensuring that teams and stakeholders actively participate in the work plan development process, you’ll have a higher chance of creating a schedule that realistically reflects the work to be done, timing, resources, estimated costs, and the project’s end or delivery date. In addition to increasing motivation throughout the project, teamwork in the development stage will require less planning and communication during runtime, as everyone will have a clear idea of what needs to be done.
Pro tip: Describe the work that needs to be done in detail to all your team members. Task work descriptions should be detailed as clearly as possible and have a clear objective. It’s always better to provide a bit more information than not enough about the work that needs to be done. The more information you give, the fewer questions you will get.
A work package plan does more than describe the work; it also specifies how you know the task is complete and whether it was completed correctly.
Pro tip: Consider breaking the work down to match the frequency of your status reports. This will allow you to have measurable progress and completed tasks for every status report.
Step 4. Build a project schedule/timeline
Now that you’ve identified the work that needs to be completed and who should complete each task, you’ll need to discuss how long each task will take and turn your list of tasks into a schedule.
Start by putting the tasks into the correct sequence with your work package leaders. Then add any dependencies or links to tasks to identify which tasks must finish before another task can start. You’ll also be able to see which tasks finish at the same time. The links between tasks aren’t just about which task begins first. A task dependency is when one task controls the timing of another. The task in control is called a predecessor, and the one being controlled is the successor or parent activity.
Once dependencies have been identified, work with each assigned participant to estimate the time required for each task. This will allow you to build a project timeline. Let each assignee forecast the duration of their activities accurately, based on their expertise and experience, starting at the lowest task level and working upwards. This is important because every activity estimate is added to the overall project duration, and it will determine whether you need to revise the work plan to keep the project within its scope and meet its deadline. Estimates don’t have to be perfect the first time. As you learn more about the project during the planning stage and your project stakeholders become more closely involved, your estimates will become more accurate. It may take several iterations to develop a realistic work plan that achieves its goal before the deadline.
There are several good techniques you can use to make estimations, but for large projects, like the majority of Horizon Europe, you should use top-down time estimation. You start by estimating phases or principal components, then break those estimates into smaller pieces until you reach individual tasks. The most widely recognised way of creating a cohesive work schedule is to use a Gantt chart.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to account for official deadlines and your project duration when creating a schedule. If your schedule doesn’t work, you can tweak it by shortening the schedule or evening out people’s workloads.
Step 5. Plan milestones
The last significant step in your Horizon Europe proposal work plan is to schedule your project milestones properly. Milestones should show when you will complete key objectives or portions of a project. They serve as a snapshot of the project, allowing you to look back and review your success and progress towards your goal. Milestones need a measurable means of verification, such as a KPI, to confirm their achievement. The best way to do this is to use the SMART approach – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
Milestones are often planned and combined with a progress and financial report and/or a review meeting with all stakeholders. Milestones help highlight the progress you’ve made in between the project’s start and finish. They also help EU agencies to review what has happened during the project.
When all the work leading up to a milestone is done, you’ll have the satisfaction of marking another milestone as complete. If you’re waiting for someone to deliver something, add a milestone to flag that delivery. The achievement or failure to meet milestones will help the project manager, teams, and sponsors make the right decisions and take actions to reach the project objective, even if that means redesigning the schedule, bringing new partners on board, or realigning the project deadline or objective.
The work plan is one of the most critical aspects of your project. It tells you what work needs to be done, who is responsible for it, and how long it will take. This is why it’s essential to make your project work plan realistic, with tasks occurring as close as possible to the dates you’ve planned.
Expert tips on planning deliverables and milestones in a Horizon Europe proposal
This article offers expert tips on planning deliverables and milestones in a Horizon Europe proposal, explaining the differences between the terms and providing guidance on when to use a deliverable and when to use a milestone.
