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This article examines project planning and management as determinants of organizational performance, drawing on a qualitative documentary review. The aim is to systematize, on the basis of the indexed literature, the relationships between project initiation and planning processes and four dimensions of organizational performance: financial, operational, stakeholder, and learning and innovation. The research design is non-experimental, descriptive-analytical, and documentary in nature, without statistical treatment. The study applied purposive documentary sampling: from the searches conducted, a final sample of 25 sources was retained, 23 peer-reviewed journal articles and reference books, and 2 normative standards of the discipline (the PMBOK Guide, 7th edition, and ISO 21502) published mainly between 2015 and 2025 and retrieved from the Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO, and Redalyc databases. The data-collection instrument was a documentary analysis matrix (see Appendix A), organized by theoretical categories (definitions, project types and life cycle, project initiation, stakeholders, requirements, objectives, business case, and project charter) and by performance dimension. The results show that the quality of initial planning particularly the identification and prioritization of stakeholders, the definition of requirements, and the development of the project charter is consistently associated with better operational and financial outcomes and greater stakeholder satisfaction; of the four dimensions, stakeholder satisfaction is supported by the largest number of sources (5) and financial performance by the fewest (3). It is concluded that structured planning functions as a governance mechanism that reduces uncertainty and aligns resources with strategic objectives, contributing theoretically to the project-management literature and, in practice, to managerial decision-making across sectors.