You Can

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You Cant Afford NOT to PlanAlexia P. Idoura
Tri-Doc 2005
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Problem

• We dont have enough time to do it right just
  enough time to do it over.
• Senior Executive of Global Fortune 1000 company,
  2003
• Planning is making decisions you have to make at
  some point anyway, but doing so early,
  methodically, and with a purpose.

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Assumptions

• Weve done this before, so we dont need to plan
• Planning isnt part of our corporate culture
• Were a start-up, we cant plan
• They wont give us time to plan
• No one reads the plan anyway
• We dont have any control over anything
• What other assumptions have you run into?

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What does the planning process look like?

• Creating the plan
• Reviewing and revising the plan
• Dont stop here!
• Maintaining the plan
• Closing the project

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Who gets involved in planning?

• Manager
• Team lead
• Team members
• Contributors from various functional areas
• Reviewers from various functional areas

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When do you plan?

• Usually depends on your project lifecycle
• As early as possible, even if you dont plan to
  start working yet
• When supporting information is available (if its
  not, document it)

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What makes a good plan?

• Depends on your audience, goals, etc., same as
  any other type of document you write
• Write plan to goal, not just random collection of
  information information with a purpose
• The right balance of information not so much
  that its too hard to create and maintain, and
  not so little that its essentially useless as a
  tool
• A plan can be a single document or a collection
  of documents, depending on the complexity of the
  project, level of detail, disparity of the
  audience, etc.

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Creating the plan

• Whos your audience?
• Decision makers
• Stakeholders
• Responsible parties
• What are your goals?
• Based on those answers, what should you include?
• See list of ideas
• Whats missing?
• Organize into one or more documents, usually
  based on
• Project management (schedules, resources, etc.)
• Content management (file formats, architecture,
  media, etc.)

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Reviewing and revising the plan

• Who should review the plan?
• What should happen during the review?

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Maintaining the plan

• This is where we start neglecting the planning
  process
• See, I planned and X, Y, and Z still happened
• Weekly, review and update as necessary
• Scope changes
• Schedule changes
• Deliverable changes
• Variances
• Open issues and risks
• Progress report
• Change control
• What else?

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Closing the project

• When the project is done, do a final review and
  update of the plan
• Highlight major changes in scope, etc.
• Summarize lessons learned and share that
  information

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Questions?
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For more information

• Greer, Michael. The Managers Pocket Guide to
  Project Management. Amherst, MA HRD Press, 1999.
• Hackos, JoAnn T. Managing Your Documentation
  Projects. New York John Wiley and Sons, Inc.,
  1994.
• Tremmel, Martina A. Developing a Documentation
  Planning Template. intercom, May 2004 22-23.