Before the Build: Why the Planning Phase Makes or Breaks a Project

Before the Build: Why the Planning Phase Makes or Breaks a Project

There's a question I get asked often: "When does a project really begin?"

Most people say it starts when the team is assembled or the first sprint kicks off. In my experience managing multi-million dollar initiatives in telecommunications.

The honest answer is: long before any of that.

A project begins the moment someone sees a problem or an opportunity. The project manager’s job is to make sure that spark survives the planning phase.

The Sponsor's Homework Comes First

Before a project reaches the project manager, two things must already be done.

They belong to the sponsor: a solid business case and market insights.

What problem are we solving? What's the expected return? Who are we solving it for?

If these aren't answered before planning begins, the first conversation needs to be with the sponsor. Everything else is building on sand.

Start with the "Why"

I've walked into kickoffs with rooms full of product managers, architects, and technology teams, all excited, all with a different version of what we were building. That energy is valuable. But without a shared "why," it dissipates fast.

Before assembling anyone, anchor the team to a clear problem statement. It becomes the compass for every decision that follows: scope debates, priority calls, late-night fire drills. Most of those can be traced back to an unclear starting point.

Align Stakeholders Before You Need Their Signatures

Stakeholder alignment is not a meeting. It's a process.

On one of my projects, the sponsor and product owner had conflicting expectations that only surfaced after planning was underway, one had made external commitments, the other had a completely different approach in mind. Once I facilitated a single focused conversation between them, it was resolved quickly. Both got what they needed, and the solution turned out to be simpler.

The goal isn't universal agreement. It's making sure no one is surprised later.

AI in practice: Experienced project managers are using AI to build an initial stakeholder register, feeding in a scope description and letting it suggest impacted functional areas that might otherwise be overlooked. It also helps draft tailored communications for different audiences from the same source material. The relationship work stays with the project manager. AI just makes sure the right people are in the conversation from the start.

The Tentative Timeline: A Stake in the Ground, Not a Contract

Once the "why" is clear and key stakeholders are aligned, one of the first things I put together is a timeline — and I use that word deliberately. Not a schedule. Not a plan. A timeline.

At this stage, it is intentionally high-level. It marks the major milestones - discovery, requirements, design, build, testing, launch - based on what we know today.

What it is not is a commitment. This timeline will be refined once requirements are defined. Presenting an early timeline as final is one of the fastest ways to create pressure that was never necessary.

Put the stake in the ground. Be honest about what it is. Revisit it the moment the requirements work is done.

AI in practice: Given a scope description, AI can propose a logical phase sequence and flag common dependencies, giving project managers a structured draft to react to rather than a blank page. Using it to pressure-test sequencing assumptions before sharing anything with stakeholders has proven valuable, often catching gaps that might otherwise surface too late.

Assemble the Right Team: Last, Not First

The team you need to discover a project is often not the team you need to deliver it. Wait until scope and stakeholders are clear before finalizing who does the work. Only then can you match the right people to the right workstreams.

One More Thing: Don't Forget Risk

Every risk you catch in planning is one you won't be scrambling to contain at launch.

AI in practice: Risk identification is one of the most skipped steps in early planning, and one of the best applications of AI available to project managers today. Feeding project context into an AI tool surfaces a surprisingly thorough list of risk patterns for that type of initiative. It won't know your organization's politics or history, but it gives the team a far richer starting point than a blank whiteboard full of optimistic people.

The planning phase isn't the preamble to the project. It is the project. The quality of your execution reflects the quality of your plan, and increasingly, AI is helping experienced project managers get to a better plan, faster.

I'm curious : how are you using AI during the planning phase of your projects?

What's working, what isn't?

Share your experience in the comments. I'd love to learn from what you're seeing.

If you're wrestling with this decision, let's connect and talk through it or join us at our next free session around this very topic.

Smriti Sridhara is an execution-driven telecom leader with over a decade of experience at Verizon, where she has led high-impact, revenue-generating programs from strategy through national launch. She has spearheaded major pricing and value-proposition transformations, including large-scale Unlimited plan initiatives that drove hundreds of thousands of new accounts and strengthened customer growth.

Known for aligning cross-functional teams across Marketing, Network, IT, Finance, Customer Care, and Supply Chain, Smriti brings clarity and momentum to complex programs. Her expertise spans product strategy, go-to-market execution, AI-enabled delivery practices, and large-scale operational rollouts—consistently translating vision into measurable business results.