Most publications about project management put considerable emphasis on planning aspects. It is important to emphasise that planning does not stop when projects start or receive funding, but is a continuing activity. It makes perfect sense to allocate time throughout the life span of the project to revisit the project plan and, if appropriate, to adjust it as part of monitoring progress. Projects do not under-perform because they adjust or re-focus their objectives, but because they neglect to do so in changing environments and circumstances. Responsibilities and authority related to planning activities (including changes to priorities, specifications and timetable, or requests for these) must be clearly defined. They should be communicated to and understood by the whole project team, including researchers, support staff and project managers.

In situations where project management is not approached in a formal way, benefits can still be obtained from careful planning, organisation and monitoring of resources and progress. This allows appropriate intervention if progress towards aims is not as planned, new opportunities arise or the cost of achieving progress exceeds the original allocations in terms of time, budget, or resources. Fundamental to good management is the attempt to understand at an early stage the potential risks to successful completion (on time, within budget and according to plan or specification). This makes it much easier to anticipate adverse situations in the various stages of digital resource creation projects, and to manage the risks involved. Within the context of this guide, it is important to note that the use of information technology, essential to digital resource creation, is often considered a major contributor to project risks, in particular if the technologies on which the project depends are new or unfamiliar to the project team.

Project planning goes beyond planning the contents and structure of the digital resource and the accompanying documentation. It includes allocating available resources (computers, software, office space, staff etc.) to the various interdependent activities, which together constitute a project, and scheduling these activities. In order to do this effectively, projects are often divided into 'manageable' phases or stages, which in turn can be broken down into tasks or activities. The allocation of resources can be done on the level of individual activities. It is considered good practice to do this in such a way that dependencies between activities are minimised, where possible. The main advantage of this approach is that problems and delays in some tasks will only affect a limited number of other tasks, on the basis of known dependencies. Making dependencies explicit, helps to identify the critical path, encompassing those activities for which delays will result in delayed completion of the project. It also facilitates parallel execution of tasks, and makes it easier to distribute responsibility between members of a project team. Many techniques and visualisation and analysis tools exist to assist in these and other aspects of project planning. Some of them are briefly introduced in Harvey and Press (1996, 75-80) and Day (1995, 11-28).