72 | Plans examples of planning risks Omission of plans at the appropriate 7.3.8 document the plan Having completed the schedule satisfactorily, the plan, its costs, the required controls and its supporting text need to be consolidated in accordance with the plan design. Narrative needs to be added to explain the plan, any constraints on it, external dependencies, assumptions made, any monitoring and control required, the risks identified and their required responses. It is a good discipline to keep plans as simple as is appropriate. Consider summary diagrams if the plan is to be presented to the Project Board. It may be sensible to have one plan format for presentation in submissions seeking approval, and a more detailed format for day-to-day control purposes. Also consider different levels of presentation of the plan for the different levels of readership. Most planning software packages offer such options. See Appendix A for the suggested composition of management level(s) Lots of resources joining the project at the same time can slow progress and cause communication issues (plotting an S-curve for the resource profile over time can identify this ­ steep curves should be avoided) The plan includes unnamed resources, causing the productivity of the actual resource to differ from the estimated productivity in the plan The plan contains a high proportion of external dependencies The plan uses untested suppliers or is dependent on new technologies There is a high proportion of activities on the critical path ­ a delay to any one of them will delay the plan The plan does not allow for sufficient