Planning Methodology

As a project manager, planning is an important part of my job. Unfortunately, not everyone plans as well as they are capable of. Being a methodical person, I like methodology. Here is the simple planning method that works for projects of various sizes that I have employed for a few years, complements of David Allen.

Allen calls his informal methodology the natural planning method. Informal does not mean incomplete. Rather this system encompasses an entire project. You would need more complicated models to run a city or plan a space mission, but this method should help unstick most projects for most people. Allen’s Getting Things Done provides richer detail on the method, but hopefully this will help get you started.

1. Purpose and Principles The first step in starting or unsticking a project is defining why to undertake the project. This seems like a very obvious place to start, and most people do this all the time. But my experience has shown that most projects could use either a clearer definition of purpose, or the explicit communication of this purpose to the entire project team. Projects progress more quickly once everyone fully understands the reason the project exists. Defining principles is an equally important foundation to project planning. Setting the ground-rules that everyone will play by allow team members to work independently, creatively and more efficiently with less stress.
2. Outcome Visioning Step 1 is the why of the planning methodology. This step is the what. This is the opportunity to define what the perfect completed project would look like. This definition sets the finish-line, creating criteria by which to judge success.
3. Brainstorming This stage appears in nearly every project, and every team meeting. Brainstorming is one of the greatest creative and collaborative exercises we have. There are two problems with most brainstorming sessions:
   1. Too little definition of steps 1 and 2 provide team members too little information for idea generation.
   2. Pre-judging ideas.

   Brainstorming has one goal, idea generation. Anything that stifles creativity is evil at this stage. The key is to capture everything and sort out good and bad later. Even ideas that you will never consider again can spark great ideas that you might never have thought of. Our team really likes a large marker board for this.

4. Organizing Once your team understands why they are working on a project and what they are trying to accomplish, and have generated a large stable of ideas, paring and organization can begin. Order, structure and value become a lot easier to spot at this level. Additionally, new concepts and the first real actions jump out at you. At this point the project comes together in a manner that most people can recognize.
5. Identifying Next Actions Finally, your team should be able to use the work from the previous four steps to identify the next physical actions that can be taken to move your project towards completion. The most important thing is to make sure that these actions are clearly defined and have been assigned to a team member. Just knowing that something must get done is not very helpful if everyone expects someone else is handling it.

Hopefully having a systematic approach will help you whenever your projects need help getting off the ground or getting unstuck.