What are the components of a sound project plan? Why is it worth making the effort to develop a sound project plan?

What will be an ideal response?

Projects have three interrelated objectives: meeting the budget, finishing on schedule and meeting the performance specifications set by the client. Project plans provide the information about:

-Mission and deliverables
-Specific goals and objectives supporting the mission and its deliverables
-Tasks required to meet the goals and objectives
-Technicalities of who, what, where, when, why and how
-Schedules, the time needed to support each aspect of the plan
-Resources, what is needed to support each aspect of the plan
-Cost analysis
-Value analysis
-Personnel, who is needed to support each aspect of the plan
-Personnel, responsibilities and assignments
-Evaluation measures for keeping the project on track
-Risk analysis, what could go wrong and how will it be dealt with?
-Project change management process

A good project plan enables an organization to accomplish all three. Though a project plan may be modified several times during a project, effective project plans remain key to organizational success because no project always goes according to plan, but well planned projects are less likely to go astray.