Mind Tools - Planning Skills - Detailed Planning

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Detailed Planning

By the stage 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 available to you as the most likely to yield the results required.

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.

Identifying Key Activities

The first stage in the process is to identify the key actions that need to be performed in order to achieve the Aim of the plan. If these actions are large and complex, reduce them down to a number of smaller key actions.

For each of these key actions, plan out how they will be achieved, working out the time that will need to be taken and the resources that will need to be allocated to achieve the action. This will allow you to calculate the cost of that action.

Prioritising Activities

Once you have done this, prioritise the actions in order of importance so that you do not waste time on low priority tasks. It can also be helpful to set mock deadlines (allowing appropriate contingency time for overruns and unavoidable delays). This gives a target to work towards.

If some of the actions being carried out depend on the completion of other activities, it may be useful to carry out a Critical Path Analysis. This will show you the minimum length of time that will be needed to achieve the plan, and will help you to decide task priorities. It will also help you to identify the key activities to keep moving when your resource requirements conflict with other managers using the same resources.

Control Mechanisms

While you are concentrating on the actions that need to be performed, ensure that you are also considering the control mechanisms that will allow you to monitor the performance of the activity. 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.

Exploring Options

Planning Effectively

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