We all know what a plan looks like. Objectives & scope locked down, funding secured, work breakdown structure defined, schedule in place, governance established, reporting kicked off, project team engaged – easy….. Right?
How did you get to that point, where you’ve successfully managed to get to that point?
How did you manage the expectations of stakeholders, customers & team members, whilst you were figuring out what you need to get done to achieve the desired business outcome?
How did you take the napkin page of desires and develop it into a detailed scope, which reflects the stakeholder’s objectives AND also made it achievable?
All the while, managing the expectations of your stakeholders, where they believe you should be off and running, completing deliverables, and getting closer to final delivery. In many situations, the weeks, and sometimes couple of months of planning required, is seen as a luxury that “we can’t afford”. How many times have you heard, “just get on with it and delivery me the benefits”?
One way of managing this often hectic time and the desire to demonstrate progress, I call “The Plan for The Plan or P4P” (at this point I must recognise the Managing Director of TBH who use this a point for any project TBH Was engaged on. Since that time I have claimed it as mine). As with many of my concepts, it is a simple, and if executed well, it can be very effective.
Sit down and think about your program, talk to your stakeholders and key people. What do you need to get done in the coming 3-4 weeks, and what can you realistically achieve in that timeframe? Create a list of actions/deliverables that will help you get your program organised; frame them all around things that you can report to your stakeholders and project team. Things like:
- Objectives defined and agreed with stakeholders
- Milestones identified and targets timings for each
- Governance committee identified, and meeting established
- Work breakdown structure
- Detailed Delivery Project Schedule
- Roles and responsibilities drafted
- Detailed schedule developed
- Risks identified and classified
- Architecture drafted, etc….
Develop the logic and resourcing for each item which will give you a target date. Think about how long it will take to arrange, do you need to hold some workshops, meetings? When will people be available? For your schedule, you will need a few sessions with your team, reviewing and re-working the dependencies. Can you get that done in 2 weeks, or 3 weeks? It will depend on how busy the team are, and what time they can dedicate?
Refine your schedule into a list of 6-8 clear items that give the stakeholders clear understanding on what you are working on and when they will get the completed project schedule. This can be presented to your project team as the focus for the first few weeks of the project. This can presented to your stakeholders as a progress or status report. Failure to achieve some of these key items will indicate your project has some risks that need to be addressed early and help the overall delivery of the project.
This schedule is “The plan for the plan”. Once you complete this mini-plan, you will have an understanding of your project objectives, deliverables, schedule and risks. You will have a detailed plan you can execute and track progress against.
“The plan for the plan” gives you something you can present to the wider organisation that shows your targets for the coming weeks, you can demonstrate progress and control while you are getting the program organised.
Just make sure that during this process you ensure that the team is focusing on the bigger picture and planning the whole project. You don’t want to get to the end of the P4P and not have a clear delivery methodology (Including Risks, Assumption etc.) and project plan to baseline your project to manage the rest of the project performance by.
Think about it!
Good luck with your projects….