The process of planning projects can be broken down into these simple steps:

1. Identify the tasks to be completed.
2. Determine the best sequence in which the tasks should be completed.
3. Determine the due dates for each task.
4. Select who should complete each task.
5. Identify the resources that will be required.

Along with identifying tasks that need to be completed, it is often helpful to identify strategies and tactics that will help you and your team to successfully complete a project plan. Strategies are high-end action plans that will help you reach your objectives in completing your project. Some examples of strategies could include:

• Reduce the organization’s debt by 50% by reducing needless spending through budgeting more carefully.
• Maintain the holdings in your investment portfolio to be 30% global equity stocks and 60% Canadian equity stocks.
• Jeremy plans to develop a successful career in business in the energy sector after successfullly completing a BBA and MBA degree.

.  .  .  .  .

Tactics are much smaller action plans that focus on helping you achieve your strategies. They may consist of completing just one or two of your tasks. Some examples of tactics could include:

• Each purchase must be reviewed and approved by a line manager.
• Avoid purchasing U.S. bank stocks.
• Jeremy plans to achieve an A grade in each of his courses by completing and submitting all of our assignments at least one day before their due dates.

.  .  .  .  .

There are several tools that can be used for planning projects. Collaboration tools, like the applications in Google Drive, are very commonly used. Ganttproject is a free and open source tool designed specifically for project planning that you can download from http://www.ganttproject.biz/ and install it on most computers. Several free tutorials available on how to use these tools can be found through a google search.

If you have been using one of a mind mapping tools, here is a video about how to use mind maps to plan projects.

Project Planning using Mind Mapping https://youtu.be/_ERcknXoT1o

There are some useful things to keep in mind when you plan a project and they are identified in the triangle below. All three elements are desirable to have in any project but reality dictates that you can only have two of the three as one must always be sacrificed. When you plan your projects which one will you be sacrificing to achieve the other two?

I have found that this principle has been very valuable to me when it comes to planning any innovation in my workplace. The trick is to plan carefully so that all three elements can be achieved in a satisfactory way, which typically means you need to sacrifice one of the elements, ie. the project will either take longer, cost more or the quality will be lower than desired. Learning to balance these elements in your planning is a valuable skill that comes from experience.

Not everyone agrees with this principle and they will do things with little or no planning. Do you know of anyone like this? How successful are they?

Are you a strong project planner? How could you improve your project planning and implementations?

Watch this video below that Andy Faraj created. How much planning do you think Andy had to do to create this video?