Step 5: Review and Approve the Plan

You planned the scope (Step 2), the risks (Step 3) and the schedule and budget (Step 4). Before executing, one step is missing that many people skip — and regret: reviewing and approving the plan. It is the most important step of planning, because it integrates and consolidates everything that came before.

The Project Management Plan

First, determine how the project will be executed, controlled, monitored and closed, considering all the performance domains and how they integrate into the Project Management Plan. Planning well lets you set objectives and how to reach them, eliminate or reduce uncertainty, improve process efficiency and anticipate future problems.

One point I always stress: whoever plans should be whoever executes. Projects where one person plans and another executes generate arguments about what was planned and less commitment. Involving the team in the review and the approval reduces resistance and increases commitment during execution.

Approving means capturing the baseline

Approving is not just saying “go ahead”. The most critical stakeholders approve the plan (electronically or in writing, according to the formality you need) and then you save the baseline — on ProjectAdm, capture the board’s baseline. The baseline is the photograph of the plan at the moment of approval: it is against it that you will compare the actuals and notice, early, when plan and reality diverge — which is the foundation of monitoring (Step 8).

Critical success factors of planning

• Define the scope and make sure the deliverables are well defined;
• Define the right team and secure the availability of resources;
• Assess the risks and create a response plan;
• Define the communication strategy;
• Save the schedule, cost and scope baselines — and define how to monitor them;
• Create an environment where the stakeholders can contribute.

Predictive × Agile

In the Predictive approach, approval is formal and the baseline becomes the control reference.

In the Agile approach, approving the plan is less about signing a document and more about agreeing how the team will work. The central agreement is the Definition of Done: the criteria every item must meet to be considered complete — which kills the “almost done”. Add to it the working agreement, with what the team agrees on cadence, communication and quality.

Review the plan — and we check part of it for you

Now it is on you: reviewing and approving the plan is your responsibility. To help, when you run Step 5 we run a few checks automatically — the script reads your board and points out what it finds. But the machine only reaches what can be checked mechanically: you are the one who reviews the whole plan and decides what is still incomplete. We check automatically, for example:

• OKR integrity — every objective with its Key Results, and every KR with a measurable target (number + unit);
• Coverage — every Key Result has at least one deliverable that reaches it;
• Scope — every WBS package with a date, an owner and an acceptance criterion;
• Risks assessed — every threat and opportunity with probability, impact and priority;
• Risks treated — every serious risk with a response and an owner; every assumption with someone who confirms it;
• Budget — the lines add up to a total, there is a contingency reserve, and the total agrees with the order of magnitude from Step 1.

And there is what no automatic check can reach — and which stays yours: whether the response to a risk is good enough, whether the deadline is realistic, and whether something is missing that nobody put on the board (like a image release form for the participants). The checks help with completeness; the review and the decision to approve are always yours — and, if you like, your sponsor’s.

📲 Help us improve these checks. If you spot something we do not check yet — or that we could check better — get in touch so we can add it or improve it. This list of checks grows with the people who use the method in practice.

🎯 Your turn — Review and approve the plan

🎯 Objective: review everything with the stakeholders and get the approval and the commitment to execute.

✅ Before you start: OKR, WBS, Stakeholders, Risks and Budget filled in (Steps 1 to 4).

🗃️ On your board: review every list on the board with the team.

📋 Checklist:

1. Run Step 5: we run the automatic checks (OKR, scope, risks, budget) and point out the gaps — review the result and resolve whatever is still incomplete.
2. Review the lists with the team and confirm the plan is realistic — the judgment the machine does not make.
3. Get the sign-off from the stakeholders.
4. When you complete the step, the board’s baseline is captured automatically — it is against it that Step 9 measures every change.

🎁 Your deliverable: the plan audited, approved and with a captured baseline, ready for execution.  ⏱️ Time: at least 2 hours.  🛠️ Tools: ProjectAdm + expert judgment (quality review).

💡 The AI’s role here: the mechanical completeness checks already run on their own (above) — do not ask the AI for those; it only sees the summary and ends up pointing at a hole that does not exist, or inventing a number. Use the AI for judgment: paste your plan and ask “what would a sponsor NOT approve in this plan, and what is the biggest risk that is still not on the board?”. In the Agile approach, Step 5 asks the AI for only one thing: the Definition of Done — the conditions every increment meets to be considered complete.

💬 Tip: involving the people who will execute in the review and the approval reduces resistance and increases commitment.

🎁 Your artifact — the Project Management Plan, generated from your board

When you finish Step 5, Project Together consolidates your board into the Project Management Plan (Word .docx) in _saida/documentos/: scope, schedule, budget, risks, stakeholders and the change flow, in one document, with the baseline recorded. Adjust the cards and press D in the menu to regenerate it.

Plan approved and baseline saved: the project comes off the page. Execution begins by engaging the people — Step 6.