Do Business Well

A project programme or plan is quite a sophisticated tool. It converts the words of your agreement into a detailed sequence of interdependent actions and activities. That plan, however, is far more than just a list of those activities. For, during its creation and use, it will also provide:

A common understanding, for all involved, of what actions and resources are required

• a basis for co-operative effort between you and the other side
• a base-line for the monitoring of the implementation project
• an overarching view of that project.

In order to provide these the plan must be:

• clear and specific in its content
• easily understood by all who use or see it
• agreed by you and the other side
• capable of accepting changes at both a detailed and broad level, and
• capable of being used to monitor what’s actually happening.

Your journey towards the creation of this plan starts with the steps of identifying:

• what activities are to be undertaken
• when those activities are to be started and finished, and
• what people, equipment, tools or other resources are needed.

For example, if your negotiation has generated an agreement about a raise in rates of pay for some of the people who work in your organization, then its implementation will involve the activities of:

• identifying all of the individuals who are to be paid more
• changing the base-rate data used to calculate their wages
• trial running and checking calculations
• calculating any back-pay
• generating realistic target dates for start and completion of these activities.

Similarly, when you’ve agreed the price that you’ll pay for your new house, the plan for implementing that agreement will contain such actions as:

• identifying fixtures and fittings to be included in the sale
• finding out about legal constraints on the use of the property
• checking to see if there are any developments planned — such as a new by-pass or a high-rise block of flats — in the area adjacent to the property
• generating any finance needed
• generating draft and agreeing contracts
• exchanging and completing contracts
• generating target dates for the start and finish of these and other activities.

These activities will be undertaken by yourself or people that you employ who have the required skills and knowledge. They will involve the use of resources such as computers, software, pro-forma contracts etc.

The act of listing these activities and their people and resource demands will begin to give you a sense of how your implementation project might be planned and controlled. It is worth, for example, asking yourself whether the activities listed are in the right order or whether you could save time or money by doing them in a different order or by using different resources. The next step in the planning process is to:

• estimate the time taken for these activities
• identify their dependency patterns.

At this, the initial stage of your planning, your estimates of the time taken for the activities involved need only be concerned with the relative duration of the activities. Experience, or the advice of other people who’ve done it before, will tell you which are the activities with the longest durations and which activities are linked together in dependency patterns. A simple example of these dependency patterns can be found when you look at the activities that must be completed before you can boil water in an electric kettle. The water cannot boil until the kettle has been:

• filled with water
• plugged in, and
• the electric power has been switched on.

That is, the activity of ‘boiling the water‘ is dependent upon the completion of the activities of ‘filling the kettle‘, ‘plugging in the kettle‘, and ’switching on the electric power’ — all of these have to be completed before it can take place. Once you’ve worked out these dependency patterns and made an initial estimate of the durations of the activities, you can generate the first draft of your plan — a draft that you’ll revise and update as more and better information becomes available. What you have to decide next is what sort of plan you are going to use.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Business Programmes and plans

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• Planning a House
• Previewing the Business Plan: The Best Type for You
• The Strategy: Playing Historian and Futurist
• Making a Plan: how to construct a simple and workable business plan part 6
• How to generate the capital you need simply and painlessly continue...
• Financial Issues: How Are You Doing? continue..
• Evaluate Your Business Resources
• How Your Business Situation Helps Shape Your Plan
• What All Plans Must Cover
• Get Your Business off to a Quick Start Week 1

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