Planning is necessary to avoid the consequences of crisis and conflict management of projects. Planning involves research, analysis, and communicating the results of planning. Planning increases motivation and successfully helps accomplish project goals. The WBS is used to associate activities in the plan and schedule with the scope definition. IPMS recommends the precedence diagramming method for preparing networks and computing schedules to identify the critical path.
Scheduling is used to identify critical and near critical activities.
IPMS also advocates the use of performance measurement to assure project activities are being accomplished to meet time and budget requirements. IPMS can provide various levels of planning and scheduling expertise.