Template Projectplan

Dit onderdeel staat vermeld in het Handboek voor onderzoeksjournalisten. Voor een vertaling naar het Nederlands kunt rechts van deze tekst via Google Translate de pagina laten vertalen.

Coco Gubbels

A good investigative journalism project starts with a good plan. Although many journalists prefer to just start with the investigation, discussing and drawing up a projectplan is the most important part of the collaboration. In putting this plan together, you and the team have to think about what you are going to do, with whom, when and what your result will be. In addition, you also need this data to request an appropriate budget.

Writing down a projectplan makes you as a team think about what you will and will not investigate, what your goal is, how you want to get there and what you need. In addition, you will notice that there may be various interpretations in the team of what constitutes an investigation of a publication.

Assumptions or not properly discussing expectations and interpretations can really hinder an investigation later on and even drive teams apart. There are important points examining communication and interpretations. All the more important to take the time to properly review your research and process with everyone on the team.

Only if you have discussed all these elements with each other and if there are still uncertainties or questions, then you can continue with your research. An additional advantage is that you can use it as a template for the applications you want to make for grants. So you have already done the preparatory work for both the planning and the budget.

The project plan:
• Who’s on the team
• What is the aim of the research
• What is the story/hypothesis
• What has already been published and what are you adding
• How do you go about publishing
• Publication: form, number, planning, where and by whom
• What do you need in terms of software and other resources?

You can download this English version of the project plan template. It may be too elaborate for you small team, but a cross-border team may very well need to fill in every part to cover all agreements within the team. My personal advise is to write down something anyway: have you thought about it, did you agree to skip it and why? Because that may also be an answer.

In the project plan you can refer to the risk management log and the project planning.