A simple planning process for middle-sized projects
It is best to think of planning as a cycle, not a straight-through process. Once you have devised a plan you should evaluate whether it is likely to succeed. This evaluation may be cost or number based, or may use other analytical tools. This analysis may show that your plan may cause unwanted consequences, may cost too much, or may simply not work. In this case you should cycle back to an earlier stage. Alternatively you may have to abandon the plan altogether - the outcome of the planning process may be that it is best to do nothing! Finally, you should feed back what you have learned with one plan into the next.
The following process brings together all aspects of planning into a coherent, unified process. By planning within this structure, you will help to ensure that your plans are fully considered, well focused, resilient, practical and cost-effective. You will also ensure that you learn from any mistakes you make, and feed this back into future planning and decision making.
Using this process will help you to plan and manage ongoing projects up to a certain level of complexity - this will depend on the circumstance. For projects involving many people over a long period of time, more formal methodologies and approaches are necessary.
Planning as a cyclical process:
The stages in this planning process are explained below:
1. Analysis of Opportunities
The first thing to do is to do is to spot what needs to be done. You will crystallise this into a formal aim at the next stage in the process.
2. Identifying the Aim of Your Plan
Once you have completed a realistic analysis of the opportunities for change, the next step is to decide precisely what the aim of your plan is. Deciding and defining an aim sharpens the focus of your plan, and helps you to avoid wasting effort on irrelevant side issues.
The aim is best expressed in a simple single sentence. This ensures that it is clear and sharp in your mind. If you are having difficulty in formulating the aim of your plan, ask yourself:
- What do I want the future to be?
- What benefit do I want to give to my customers?
- What returns do I seek?
- What standards am I aiming at?
- What values do I and my organisation believe in?
You can present this aim as a 'Vision Statement' or 'Mission Statement'. Vision statements express the benefit that an organisation will provide to its customers. For example, the vision statement for Essence Consulting is: 'Helping you to succeed'.
Mission statements give concrete expression to the vision statement, explaining how it is to be achieved. The mission statement for Essence Consulting is 'To provide first class training, expert advice and support with implementing business solutions'. This tells our clients what we can do to support them in their efforts to achieve results.
For further information on how we can help your organisation to set strategic, results-driven corporate aims you can visit the Performance section of our website, or contact us.
3. Exploring Options
By this stage you should know where you are and what you want to do. The next thing to do is to work out how to do it. At this stage it is best to spend a little time generating as many options as possible, even though it is tempting just to grasp the first idea that comes to mind. You can do this by brainstorming the various options, preferably with a diagonal cross-section of colleagues from within your organisation.
By taking a little time to generate as many ideas as possible you may come up with less obvious but better solutions. Just as likely, you may improve your best ideas with parts of other ideas.
4. Selecting the Best Option
Once you have explored the options available to you, it is time to decide which one to use. If you have the time and resources available, then you might decide to evaluate all options, carrying out detailed planning, costing, risk assessment, etc. for each. Normally you will not have this luxury.
5. Detailed Planning
By the time you start detailed planning, you should have a good picture of where you are, what you want to achieve and the range of options available to you. You may well have selected one of the options as the most likely to yield the best results.
6. Evaluation of the Plan and its Impact
Detailed planning is the process of working out the most efficient and effective way of achieving the aim that you have defined. It is the process of determining who will do what, when, where, how and why, and at what cost.
When drawing up the plan, techniques such as use of Gantt Charts and Critical Path Analysis can be immensely helpful in working out priorities, deadlines and the allocation of resources. Alterantively, you may wish to use software, such as Microsoft Project to produce a scheduled list of tasks. Eitherway, while you are concentrating on the actions that need to be performed, ensure that you also think about the control mechanisms that you will need to monitor performance. These will include the activities such as reporting, quality assurance, cost control, etc. that are needed to spot and correct any deviations from the plan.
A good plan will:
- State the current situation
- Have a clear aim
- Use the resources available
- Detail the tasks to be carried out, whose responsibility they are, and their priorities and deadlines.
- Detail control mechanisms that will alert you to difficulties in achieving the plan.
- Identify risks, and plan for contingencies. This allows you to make a rapid and effective response to crises, perhaps at a time when you are at low ebb or are confused following a setback.
- Consider transitional arrangements - how will you keep things going while you implement the plan?
For further information on how we can help you to effectively plan you projects, you can visit the Projects section of our website, or contact us.
Once you have worked out the details of your plan, the next stage is to review it to decide whether it is worth implementing. Here you must be objective - however much work you have carried out to reach this stage, the plan may still not be worth implementing.
7. Implementing Change
In previous articles we have explained the importance of integrating Change and Project management early on at the planning stage. Whilst completing your project plan, also consider the human aspects and dynamics within your organisation. You can use the above techniques such as the Force Field analysis to help to establish why the changes are necessary with colleagues. You should then undertake a Stakeholder analysis to determine who is likely to be interested in the changes and who has the power to resist them. Then determine your overall approach and communications pathways accordingly. Finally, it is vital that your plan enables you to measure and manage new ways of working and behaviours. It should also detail the controls that you will use to monitor the execution of the plan.
For further information on how we can help you to manage change you can visit the Change section of our website, or contact us.
8. Closing the Plan
Once you have achieved a plan, you can close the project. At this point is vital to carry out an evaluation of the project to see whether there are any lessons that you can learn. This should include an evaluation of your project planning to see if this could be improved.
If you are going to be carrying out many similar projects, it may be worth developing and improving an Aide Memoire. This is a list of headings and points to consider during planning. Using it helps you to ensure that you do not forget lessons learned in the past.
An aide memoire is a standard list of points or headings that show what you should consider while you are planning to solve a problem. By using an aide memoire you ensure that you do not forget important factors. Aide memoires should be improved continuously. If you find that have not included an important point, then update the list appropriately. This ensures that the next time you use the aide memoire you will remember to think about the point. This will improve the quality and depth of future planning that you carry out.
Key points:
The above process will help you to make good, well-considered, robust plans.
The first step, the analysis of opportunities, helps you to base the plan firmly in reality. The second, definition of the aim, gives your plan focus. The third stage is to generate as many different ways for achieving this aim as possible. By spending time looking for these you may find a better solution than the obvious one, or may be able to improve the obvious solution with parts of other ones.
Next select the best approach, and make a detailed plan showing how to implement it. Evaluate this plan to make sure that it will be worth implementing. If it is not, return to an earlier stage and either improve the plan or make a different one. If no plan looks like producing enough benefit to justify the cost, make no changes at all.
Once you have selected a course of action, and have proved that it is viable, carry it out. Once it is finished, examine it and draw whatever lessons you can from it. Feed this back into future planning.
For further information on how we can help you to lead and manage projects (small, medium and large), you can visit the Projects section of our website, or contact us.
