Planning is a tough subject to teach. Written descriptions of the planning process tend to be dry and boring. Case studies and examples, while more interesting than a plain process description, tend to be too general and off topic. There don't seem to be any really good movies made or novels written about teams completing their critical “Annual Planning”...and all the planning pantomimes I've seen have been....well...let's just say they were “disturbing” and leave it at that.
So the rest of this posting will attempt to describe planning words......for you to read. Try not to fall asleep.
As I said, planning is one of the most critical management tasks. For many people, it's planning that they think of when they hear the word “management”. “The Plan” is often the most obvious (dare I say “only”?) evidence that a manager has actually done any work at all.
A typical development project has three planning stages / phases that must be completed before work can start:
- Concept development
- Specification development
- Work & resource scheduling
Others will have their own ways of describing these steps, and some experts might add or delete a few from my list, but this is how I have come to think of it.
Concept Development is all about possibilities. This is the time to let imaginations run wild, to look at “crazy” ideas and to have fun thinking. The beginning of this phase is also the time to ignore all the operations, financial and other constraints that will become so critical later in the planning process. During the early stages concept development, getting the team's imaginations going is critical.
As managers, it's our job during this phase is to make sure that all viable possibilities are explored, and to make sure options aren't dropped from consideration prematurely. It amazes me how often an idea that is initially ignored or ridiculed by the team turns out to be the optimal solution. Customer desires / needs should be used to guide work done during this phase of the planning.
At the end of the concept development stage you should have a clearly defined conceptual framework within which the final remainder of the project will be developed. This framework should be as flexibly defined as possible, but it needs to have sufficient detail and structure to allow designers, planners and operational personnel to figure out what they will need to do to turn the concept into a reality.
Specification Development is the next step in the process. In this stage, the concept starts to become more than a good idea. This is the stage where the final deliverable items are defined, where quality standards are developed, and where risks and restrictions are used to modify and refine the concept.
It is here that those real-world operational, customer, financial, technology and other constraints that we happily ignored during most of the concept development phase start to wield their power. Here is where the final product, process, deliverable or system starts to take shape.
During this stage the first design decisions made, budgets are developed and approved and specific personnel requirements are defined. In detail. For everything that needs to be done.
At the end of this stage you should have a completed, detailed technical specification and/or Statement (or Scope) of Work (SOW) that has been reviewed and approved by all stakeholders. It is typical (and highly desirable) to have an approved budget at the end of this stage.
Work and Resource Scheduling - the final phase in planning, this is where the final “Who, what where and when” details of the project are worked out. This is what most people think of when they think of planning.
Here we decide the specific tasks (down to the one week or one day detail) that need to be done in order to successfully complete the project. We decide how many people we will need with what skill sets and experience levels. We figure out what resources, materials, equipment and facilities we will need. And, of course, we figure out when we will need all these people, places and things...and how we can get them and not break the budget.
The output of this phase should be a completed schedule showing every task to be completed, who's going to complete it, what they need in order to complete it and when / how long it will take. Preferably this schedule will be input into some sort of information system and “automated”.
Programs like Primavera, Microsoft Project and others have become very good tools for developing and tracking project tasks, resources and personnel.
One final thought.
Before we go, though, there is one thing you need to keep in mind about planning:
the act of planning is often of greater value than the plan itself!
Remember, most plans are obsolete before they're even published. Competitor's actions, customer tastes, technological advances and simple personnel turnover can all force the plan to change.
But if we've done a thorough job of planning, if we've gotten to know our environment, if we've identified the risks and gotten a solid understanding of our options, these changes will have fewer and less severe impacts on our business. And that, after all, is the whole point of planning, isn't it?
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I'd love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave a comment here or e-mail me at: TomFawls@Council4SmallBiz.com.
