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Simple Implementation Plan Template For Project Management
Simple Implementation Plan Template For Project Management
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Simple Implementation Plan Template For Project Management

Establish a clear project strategic plan and implementation process with this implementation plan template
Laila Robinson
Task Name
Assigned
Priority
Status (%)
Required resources
Criteria for success
1
Kickoff meeting
Alan Chowansky
Low
000
25
Conference room
Meeting held
2
Collect questions
James Booth
Medium
000
75
​
15 questions sourced
3
Find additional SMEs
Maria Marquis
High
000
25
Initial research on SMEs
5 SMEs found
4
Formatting deliverable
Felix Marlin
High
000
50
Brand guidelines
Identify reviewer
Not big formatting mistakes
5
Communicate to stakeholders
James Booth
Medium
000
100
​
Email sent to stakeholders
6
Submit project
Maria Marquis
Medium
000
25
​
Project submitted by deadline
There are no rows in this table
⁠

If you’ve spent any time in project management at all, you know that planning is a huge part of everything project managers do. That’s because, without solid management plans in place for managing projects, you’ll quickly find yourself in the weeds, as things you could have planned for start happening, throwing everything into chaos.
That’s why there are even plans for implementing the plans you’ve made. Without an implementation strategy, projects can be successful, but you run the risk of slamming into walls and discovering problems that could have been avoided with the right, well, plan.
Project implementation plans are a great example of this.

What is an implementation plan?

Implementation plans are plans that create an outline of an entire project, broken down into smaller pieces in ways that help define the length of the project, the teams you’ll be working with, and the tools they’ll need to properly complete the project.
With an implementation plan, you'll be looking to create a clear plan of action that defines the what, why, and how of the project. Implementation planning also helps organize everything related to a project into a single place, so you, your team, and stakeholders can easily find any information that you’re looking for.

Benefits of Coda's implementation plan template.

A strong implementation plan template helps you easily define all the critical pieces of information required to help you successfully implement your plans. Our template was put together in a way that is easy to follow, creates a timeline for people to follow, helps define the metrics of success for the project, and provides information on who is responsible for what during the course of the project.
Templates help because they basically walk you through everything you need to consider during the projects you run, although you’ll likely have to customize it slightly to match the exact workflow for your projects.

Steps for creating an implementation plan template.

Our implementation plan template makes life easier for you when planning the implementation phase of your project, but it doesn’t do all the work for you. The good news is that you’ve probably already defined most of the core pieces of information, you just need to plunk them into the template. This can help a lot during the planning process before you’re ready to move on to the actual implementation phase.

Establish measurable goals

What are you hoping to accomplish with this project? This is usually a pretty obvious question to answer, since the end result is often something like launching a new product, building a new feature, or otherwise growing your business.
Defining these project goals in ways that are measurable helps you show stakeholders what they can expect at the end of the project in a meaningful way.

Assign roles to all team members

Just like you can’t run a project without your team, your team can’t do their jobs without knowing exactly what you’re expecting of them. Even if everyone knows what they should be doing at all times, having it clearly laid out in your implementation plan, helps keep everyone focused on the work they should be doing, not wandering into someone else’s lane.
It also helps provide visibility for stakeholders, so that they know who to go to when they have specific questions about the project, which can improve buy-in from anyone who may be reluctant.
You might think some people have obvious roles within a project, but don’t take anything for granted when creating your implementation plan. Include as much detail about the various roles each member of your team plays in the project as possible.

Create a step-by-step action plan

Action plans are the plans that define what needs to happen to reach your desired goal. Basically, they specify the work that needs to be done. The more specific you can be in this stage, the better. You’ll want to make sure you capture as many steps throughout the project as possible, so that everyone is on the same page each step of the way. Even seemingly obvious steps, like project kickoff, need to be on here, so that the workflow is clear for everyone and that crucial steps aren’t missed. You can use action plan templates to create these, if you haven’t done so before.

Set clear implementation schedule & milestones

Schedules and milestones help create a solid timeline for your project. The schedule defines when work should begin, while the milestones highlight the critical moments during a project and help you understand at a glance whether you’re on schedule or behind. As with most aspects of the implementation plan, the more specific you are here, the better. A good schedule should also take dependencies into account.
If you need help defining the milestones of your project, we have a
project milestone template
⁠
that you can use.

Define a budget & allocate resources

Starting a project without a well-defined budget and resource allocation is a great way to spend too much money on a project. That’s why you want to include this information in your implementation plan. Your budget may change as you get deeper into the project, but providing as much information as possible in your implementation plan, including a detailed list of where the money is going to be spent can help you keep costs in check.
You may want to run cost management on the project first to help you properly budget for the project (don’t worry, as you probably expect, we’ve got a
template
⁠
that can help with that). One of the big reasons for including this information is to provide further visibility on the project to stakeholders.

Have a contingency plan in place

As much as it’s not fun to plan for the worst-case scenario, you should always have a backup plan ready, just in case. You might find that you don’t need to use the whole plan, but if you lose a key member of your team or one of the tools you’re using suddenly stop working, having a contingency plan that you can turn to when things don’t quite work out can save your hide. Try to consider all variables, like people taking time off, potential network downtime, holidays, and have plans in place just in case you need them.

Conduct a review after 6 months

Always take the time to review your plans after the fact. You’ll be amazed at how many little things you can change or optimize to help you create more efficient implementation plans for the next time. Post-mortems should be done after each project anyway, but don’t forget to leave time to review the plan itself.

👉 Get started with this implementation plan template
Copy this template
⁠
⁠

After you copy this template, you can start editing the implementation plan to fit the needs of your project management organization. This template mixes the best of documents and spreadsheets so that you can write paragraphs of information about your implementation plan, but also include a smart table of tasks and milestones that need to be completed.

How to use this implementation plan template in Coda

Step 1: Define project details

The first step is writing high-level information about your project in the
Your Project Name
⁠
page. You should replace the page title with the name of the project. After that, you will add information like who is preparing this implementation plan, the date that this plan is prepared, and the version number of this implementation plan. The information you write here is similar to what you might write in a
project brief
⁠
.

Step 2: Identify team and tasks

As you scroll further down the implementation plan template in the
Your Project Name
⁠
page, you’ll see headers for “Team” and “Tasks.” After copy this template and share it with your teammates and project stakeholders, their names will show up in the dropdown list in the
Team
⁠
table. Write the roles for each person so that anyone that reads this implementation plan knows who is responsible for what part of this project.
The
Tasks
⁠
table contains the tasks and scheduled implementation dates. As you add more tasks to this table, fill out the other columns in the table related to that task. Other important columns to fill out include the Est. Days, Resources required, and Target Completion Date. The implementation schedule timeline/gantt chart you see further down on the page is a view built off of the tasks you add to this table. As you change the dates and estimated days for a task, it changes the gantt chart too.

Step 3: Write implementation plan

Now that you have the goals, team members, and implementation schedule and tasks defined, it’s time to write a more details implementation plan. This section of the template contains headers like “Approval process” and “Description of implementation.” These sections give you more freedom to describe how you plan on carrying out this implementation plan and project with the team and resources available to you.
Beyond the implementation plan, fill out the Glossary and Additional Research sections to give your project stakeholders additional context about the project.

Implementation plan template FAQs

What is included in an implementation plan?

We’ve already covered a lot of what you should include, but a good implementation plan covers details like:
Goals
Major tasks
Deliverables
Due dates and timelines
Milestones
Team members and their responsibilities
Budget
Tools needed for the project
Well-define success metrics
Research materials
Backup plans
Basically, it’s anything and everything related to your projects. We can't say this enough, but there is no such thing as too much detail here. If you’re worried about bogging down your team with too much information, create a tl;dr that highlights the mission-critical information.

What is the difference between an action plan and an implementation plan?

An implementation plan is a complete look at everything required for the project, including budget, resources needed, team members required, and schedules. An action plan is how everything in the implementation plan is going to be, well, implemented. It’s basically a detailed outline of the steps required to reach the end of the project.

What is the difference between an implementation plan and a project plan?

For all intents and purposes, implementation plans and project plans are the same thing. They both describe the scope, timelines, budget, and resources needed for a project. And, they both are necessary aspects of the planning process. Whether you call something an implementation plan or a project plan is up to you.

What are the benefits of having an implementation plan?

Implementation plans help your entire team and all stakeholders understand what the project is going to look like from start to finish. It defines goals, success criteria, and everything else that’s needed for people involved in the project. They build trust in the process (and within the teams), as well as providing increased visibility across the entire project.


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A few of the 40,000+ teams that run on Coda.

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