The Planning Cycle

The Planning Cycle

The Planning Cycle will explain the process of planning for small to mid-size projects.
Having a Planning Methodology will enable your company to build quicker and more
efficient plans. It will provide a repeatable process for planning, prioritizing, approving,
executing and measuring.
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The Planning Cycle

People

Product Process

The Planning Cycle is about the intersection of people, process and the product that will be
produced. Managing the efforts of this intersection is what the planning cycle does.

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The Planning Cycle

Do not think of planning as a
straight-through process.

Planning

Analysis Design Construct Implement Feedback

Most people when they think of a plan, they think of a step by step by step approach.
Good plans have built in flexibility but never are step by step.


The Planning Cycle

It is best to think of planning as a Cycle.
Every time we initiate an action in the
planning cycle, it is then implemented with
feedback provided on that action. In this
way, it is a very active process that requires
action on a continuous basis. Planning using
this cycle will help you to plan and manage
ongoing projects. Once you have devised a Initiate Implement
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, Feedback, use what you Feedback
have learned with one plan with the next.


The Planning Cycle

Ingredients
 Well focused
 Practical
 Cost-effective
 Measurable
By planning within this structure, you will ensure that your plans are well focused, practical,
cost-effective and measurable. You will also ensure that you learn from any mistakes you make,
and feed this back into future planning and Decision Making.


The Planning Cycle Ingredient

Focus: Stakeholder based

Plans that are not stakeholder based will seldom meet deadlines or finish within budgets
constraints. A stakeholder based plan requires interaction between all parties including the
customer or receiving party.



Practical: Systems based

Planning must be done based on the systems,
processes and people that you have in place.
Creation of any of these items is a plan or project
in itself. Success is largely determined by working
within your existing capabilities.



Cost-Effective: Within your Budget

Adhere to a budget. If there is not one, create one. Money is seldom not an issue but by
forcing yourself to be realistic with a budget adds prudence to overall plan.

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Measurable: You have to keep score

If you can’t measure it, how will you know when you succeed. Keeping score will
provide measurable results and will let you know how well the plan is being carried
out. People act on how they are measured. Good measures will result in good plans.


The Planning Cycle

Secret Sauce:
Consider the worse alternative


The Planning Cycle Secret Sauce continued

Take action to prevent the alternative:
Before it happens!

Fighting fires is very heroic, but typically costly. Preventative action should be decided
upon in the feedback steps. Good firefighters go to a fire with a plan.


The Planning Cycle
The planning cycle consist of these steps:
1. Initiate
2. Identify aim
3. Explore Options
4. Selection of best option
5. Details planning
6. Plan evaluation
7. Implementation
8. Closure
9. Feedback


The Planning Cycle

It looks like a step be step by step…
but let me take you through the
explanation of each step then
analyze the actual planning cycle.


The Planning Cycle

1. Initiate
The first thing to do is to do is to spot what needs to be done. You will turn this into a formal aim at
the next stage in the process. One approach to this is to examine your current position, and
decide how you can improve it. There are a number of techniques that will help you to do this
with the most popular being a SWOT Analysis or Risk Analysis. Alternatively, other people
(e.g. clients) may be pressing you to change the way you do things. Alternatively your
environment may be changing, and you may need to anticipate or respond to this. Pressures may
arise from changes in the economy, new legislation, competition, changes in people's attitudes,
new technologies, or changes in government. A different approach is to use any of a whole
range of creativity tools to work out where you can make improvements:

1. Reversal - Improving Products and Services
2. SCAMPER - Generating new products and services
3. Attribute Listing-Creating new products, services & strategies
4. Brainstorming - Generating many radical ideas
5. Reframing Matrix - Looking with different perspectives
6. Concept Fan - Widening the search for solutions
7. Random Input - Making creative leaps
8. Provocation - Carrying out thought experiments
9. DO IT - A simple process for creativity
10. Simplex - A powerful problem-solving process


The Planning Cycle Success Ingredient: Begin with the end in mind

2. Identifying Aim
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:
1. What do I want the future to be?
2. What benefit do I want to give to my customers?
3. What returns do I seek?
4. What standards am I aiming at?
5. What values do I and my organization believe in?

You can present this aim as a 'Vision Statement' or 'Mission Statement'. Vision statements
express the benefit that an organization will provide to its customers and Mission
statements explain how it is to be achieved.


The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: You owe it to all stakeholders to research different options.

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. The Creativity Tools listed in step
one can explain a wide range of powerful creativity tools that will help you to
generate options.

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. 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.


The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: If there is only 1 go back to step 3.

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.

Three useful tools for selecting the best option are Grid Analysis, Evaporating
Clouds and Decision Trees. Grid Analysis helps you to decide between different
options where you need to consider a number of different factors. Decision Trees
help you to think through the likely outcomes of following different courses of
action. Evaporating Clouds is my favorite decision making tool and an extensive
study is available through the Goldratt Institute founded by the author of the “The
Goal.”


The Planning Cycle Success Ingredient: It’s more than a schedule

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. 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. 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:
1. State the current situation
2. Have a clear aim
3. Use the resources available
4. Detail the tasks to be carried out, whose responsibility they are, their priorities and
deadlines.
5. Detail control mechanisms that will alert you to difficulties in achieving the plan.
6. Identify risks, and plan for contingencies. This allows you to make a rapid and effective
response to crises.
7. Consider transitional arrangements - how will you keep things going while you implement
the plan?

The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: Be realistic about your ingredients

6. Evaluation of the Plan and its Impact
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. This is frustrating after the
hard work of detailed planning. It is, however, much better to find this out now than when you
have invested time, resources and personal standing in the success of the plan. Evaluating the
plan now gives you the opportunity to either investigate other options that might be more
successful, or to accept that no plan is needed or should be carried out.

Depending on the circumstances, the following techniques can be helpful in evaluating a plan:
1. PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting)
2. Cost/Benefit Analysis
3. Force Field Analysis
4. Cash Flow Forecasts
5. 6 Thinking Hats
.
If your analysis shows that the plan either will not give sufficient benefit, then either return to an
earlier stage in the planning cycle or abandon the process altogether.


The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: A schedule is as important in the beginning as in the
end.
7. Implementing
Once you have completed your plan and decided that it will work satisfactorily, it is time to
implement it. Your plan will explain how! It should also detail the controls that you will use
to monitor the execution of the plan. Steps that will help you complete the project:

1. Adhere to the schedule and especially to the milestones.
2. Start as soon as possible on each task
3. Work on one task at a time.
4. Determine status with time remaining not with % completed.
5. Use critical path analysis to determine what to work on next.
6. Follow the game plan:
1. Huddle up each morning and after breaks.
2. Check resources for the right play.
3. When in trouble, add resources.
7. Emphasize communication


The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: Simple if you began correctly.

8. Closing the Plan
Closing a plan is only possible if it was defined at the beginning. Identifying you aim and having
a measurable objective will allow easy acceptance at the end even if it is not was so easy at the
beginning. Closure is relatively an easy task when done correctly. However, it does mean
everything. Paperwork, release of personnel to other projects, budget analysis are just several of
the items that need to be completed. A closing checklist once developed can serve as a guideline
for numerous projects.


The Planning Cycle
Success Ingredient: The savings will show up next time.

9. Feedback
Once you have achieved a plan, you can close the project. At this point is often worth carrying
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 aid memory. 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.


The Planning Cycle
The planning steps than are simply plugged
in through a cycle that provides constant
feedback and as one process goes in another
goes out. The old adage of garbage in and
garbage out can be very true.

Initiate Identify Explore Options

Best Option

Feedback

Initiation leads to identification which leads into the options available. Always look at the
preceding step and reach consensus before proceeding. It will be a struggle at first but soon it
will be second nature to all of the stakeholders. Feedback insures the best option.


The Planning Cycle

Best Option Planning Evaluation

Implementation

Feedback

Would you like to go into each and every plan with the best option available? Would
you like to implement every plan with an agreement between all people and processes
and a consensus on the final product.


The Planning Cycle

Implementation Closure Product

Feedback
Feedback

After closure, you will have a final product or service developed. Than distributing feedback to
the stakeholders will insure that steps can be taken during the next planning cycle on what was
learned during the process.


The Planning Cycle

People

Product Process

Each and every step includes the intersection of people, process and the product. A
constant remembrance of this will insure that you are not isolated in your decision
making and a clear line of sight will be maintained.


The Planning Cycle

Plan Now!
Ref: Lean Project Management: Eight Principles For Success by Lawrence Leach

Business 901
“if it’s worth doing, its worth doing Now”
www.business901.com info@business901.com

The Planning Cycle

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