How should plans be created?

Planning is the process of creating one or more plans.  As Pres. Eisenhower  noted, planning is essential.  Not to plan is to surrender our future to those who do. No plan ever works as designed but a good plan allows for that.  Planning produces a set of plans for as many contingencies as will probably be encountered. The probability of a contingency occurring is an entirely separate branch of planning known as Risk Management.  Clearly, we should only plan for those contingencies that are likely to happen.

Planning is so important and so misunderstood at the same time, that it is rare to find it done well.  To be really successful, a planner must be part psychoanalyst, part spy, part technician, part internist, part surgeon, a teacher, a parent, a child full of curiosity, a rhetorician, a philospher, and an engineer.  Detail is important, but knowing when it is enough is perhaps more important.

Planning Process

1. Assemble the available information
• What vision provides the overall context?
• Determine business directions
• Determine the overall objectives?
• Identify the (prioritized) goals?
• What resources can be allocated?
2. Now we're ready to get to work.
• Based on the Goal(s), identify the deliverable product(s)
• What knowledge, skills will be required?
• Assemble a team (for each deliverable or set of deliverables)
• Obtain product development plans from each team.
• Fold them all together
• Identify the inter-dependencies
• Feed back the inter-depencies and constraints to the teams and re-plan
• establish and agree on controls and metrics
• establish communications mechanisms to gaurantee necessary visbility of progress across teams

If you have ideas you would care to share that relate to the implementation of vision, goals, or objectives ,comments, suggestions and questions may be addressed to: WhiteLake Data Management.

Submissions will be posted here.

Last modified: Jan-09