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Chapter 22
Case Study: Planning
a Year of Projects
ONE OF THE FUN THINGS ABOUT LEARNING, TEACHING, AND CON-
sulting is that I get to share everything I’ve learned with my clients and see them succeed. I’d like to do the same for you. My clients like to take on big challenges—so they need all the project management they can get to make each project effi-
cient and keep track of everything. With my help, they start every year from the top down with strategic planning to set direction and program management to organize the year’s projects.
A Strategic Plan Adds Flexibility
A strategic plan is the baseline for a company’s year. When you have a plan, you can either follow it or do something better. As a result, you’re not locked into the plan. Actually, the plan makes it easier to decide when not to do the plan.
Here’s an example of how this works for me. As I was finishing a big project, I got an e-mail announcing that a former client was looking for help at the beginning of a new, large project. It’s the kind of work that I love to do. But I’m already pretty busy and this client, being in government, has to
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put the request out for competitive bid. So, I will need to decide if I want to take the time to go after the job.
That decision will be pretty easy because I already know what I will do if I don’t do this new job. My strategic plan is laid out: I know what projects I will be working on, how busy I am, and how much money I will make if I don’t take the new job. I have a basis for comparison.
So, now all I need to do is look at the new opportunity. My administrative assistant will put together all the information. We will compare the value of the new project against the value of the work I will give up to do it—an opportunity cost analysis. If the value of this new job is greater than the value of what I am already planning to do, then I’ll put in the bid. In the analysis, I’ll look at whether this job is aligned with how I want my company to grow and also at any risks related to the job—potential delays that would use up my time and so forth. If you make your own strategic plan—using the tools in this chapter—you’ll be able to make big decisions easily, too.
A company without an annual plan is under more stress and at more risk. Decisions take longer to make and, without practice making strategic decisions, it is too easy to jump after something that looks good, but actually won’t pay off.
What Is a Strategic Plan?
A company’s strategic plan sets its direction and defines the context that then defines what projects will help the business succeed and grow. If your company doesn’t already have a vision, mission, and values statement, I recommend that you read two books:
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (1997), which explains the value of a company defining an enduring vision, mission, and values and then developing a strategy, and gives specific instructions for creating a vision, mission, and values statement in Chapter 11.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey (1990), which can teach you how to create corporate and personal mission statements and can help you organize your work and time so that you can achieve your goals and lead others.
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Case Study: Planning a Year of Projects
A company’s vision, mission, and values statement should have one part that does not change and another part that changes in response to what our customers need. For example, Boeing will always build cutting-edge airplanes and spacecraft, but what defines “cutting edge” changes each decade. Also, in the first few years of strategic planning, we are still defining who we are and what the company stands for. So, we may revise and refine the plan.
My clients find that having a strategic plan with vision, mission, and values really helps, year after year. It allows us to do what we want to do: realize our dreams and solve our problems. Whether we want to grow the business, or work smarter and get some time off, the strategic plan is a tool that brings success to our businesses and balance to our lives. Strategic planning lets us consider creative ideas and new possibilities and then focus on the ones that matter most.
How to Plan Strategy Each Year
Each year, you can review and improve the permanent part of your strategic plan, the core vision, mission, and values. After the first few years, these are likely to become pretty stable. Then we focus on updating the mission or creating a new mission for the year. This mission is about goals of corporate growth and opportunity and about solutions to major problems. It also makes sense to review and revise your mission to customers. We all succeed by serving customers, but how will you serve them this year? If you discover you’ve gotten a new type of client or customer, is that a new direction or a temporary twist in the road? Strategic planning lets you make general plans into specific ones, and choose which trends to follow, and which ones to let go because there’s something more valuable or more meaningful to do.
Strategic planning puts together two questions:
What do I want to do this year?
What is best for my business this year?
The answer to those questions are your company’s projects for the year. Table 22-1 gives the process instructions for annual strategic planning.
Part of the work of creating a strategic plan should be on a retreat, but not all of it. Before the retreat, you should gather all the information you can and read and review everything. Also, don’t assume you should go on retreat
Some years, the strategic plan
is about how to realize our dreams. Other years, it is about how to dig ourselves out of a deep hole we’ve dug ourselves into.
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Work |
Business owners or senior executives taking time aside for an annual |
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Environment |
strategic planning session in an organization that uses the Get It Done |
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Right! method. |
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Input |
Prior year’s strategic plan |
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Any reviews of major projects or work from the prior year |
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Corporate financial statements |
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List of customers and revenue per customer |
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Any documents describing business issues or problems |
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Any other documents you find valuable in assessing your business |
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Tools |
Large pads, paper, sticky notes |
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Word processing program |
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Spreadsheet program |
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Resources |
Time aside from work |
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Techniques |
Methods in Built to Last by Collins and Porras and The Seven Habits |
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of Highly Effective People by Covey |
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Methods in these process instructions |
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Process |
1. Read last year’s strategic plan |
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2.Ask yourself where you want to be in three to five years. Review the part of the plan that discussed that and update it.
3.Create a spreadsheet listing goals and actual results achieved. Look for major variances only. Don’t worry about details such as whether the work was done on time or completely within budget.
4.For each major variance, note whether there was a conscious decision to cancel the project or if it just drifted out of sight or if you kept at it, but didn’t finish.
5.For each realized goal, ask, “Is this something I want to do again this year?”
6.For each problem solved, ask, “Was this problem permanently solved? Could the solution apply more widely?”
7.For each cancelled or unfinished goal, ask, “Do I want to do this in the coming year?”
8.Based on your answers in 5, 6, and 7, write up a partial draft list of goals for the next year.
9.Look at your list of clients. Are there any you want to do more business with? Any you want to drop? Any types of clients— market segments—you want to pursue further? Add these ideas to your draft plan.
10.Step way back and listen to your dreams. Is there anything new and different you want to do? Add those to your draft plan.
11.Look at your input documents and talk with your team members. Do they have any dreams? Do they have any major problems that need solving? Add those opportunities and problems to your plan.
Table 22-1. Process instructions: annual revision of a strategic plan (continued on next page)
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Case Study: Planning a Year of Projects
Process |
12. Use the survey in Chapter 1 to create an updated list of problems |
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13.Use all the material in Chapters 1-4 to organize your business and its programs.
14.All of this is your draft plan. Now, you can use the techniques on brainstorming from Chapter 11 to organize the ideas.
15.State items in the plan as goals.
16.Organize those goals into groups, looking for the largest issues to be solved and looking for opportunities to align your business and align to your customers, as we discussed in Chapter 14.
17.Define all of this into programs that serve customers for pay, develop new products, or improve operations.
18.Figure out which programs add the greatest value.
19.Decide how many programs you and your team can do this year.
20.Include those programs in your plan.
21.For each of those programs, define and prioritize the projects.
22.In areas where you had an idea for a program, but you don’t have the time and money to do it, see if there is a smaller project that will solve part of the problems.
23.Throughout the whole document, make sure everything is clear, especially the goals.
24.Share this with your team.
25.Working with your team, schedule work and goals for each month of the year.
26.Review and revise your strategic plan.
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A strategic plan that will guide your company for the year, realizing |
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Table 22-1. Process instructions: annual revision of a strategic plan (continued)
alone. Maybe the whole company should go! And after the retreat, we take the plan to our team and, with our team, add details and build it into the schedule. Have every director or manager make his or her part work: get input from each one and have each one develop his or her own schedule for delivering the results that will make your company succeed.
Conclusion
Project management is about making dreams into reality, solving problems, and making money along the way. Give yourself time to dream. Then create a strategic plan that will focus the work of the year to make your dreams and your team’s dreams real.
Astrategic planning retreat is
a time for reflection and learning. Don’t make last year’s mistakes again; learn from them.
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Appendix
Forms
and Tools
FORMS MAKE IT REALLY EASY TO LEARN PROJECT MANAGEMENT, TO
teach it to your team, and to save a lot of time keeping track of your projects. Forms scare some people. I suggest that you see them as friendly assistants. To plan your projects and keep everything under management, you need to answer a lot of questions and
organize a lot of information. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an administrative assistant to remember all the right questions and things you should keep track of? Well, most of us can’t afford that assistant, but forms are the next best thing. Think of each box on the form as a friendly reminder. Think of the whole form as a bunch of questions already organized for you. Each question is easy. Answer it, then the next one and then the next one. When you’re all done, wow! your project is organized.
The forms and tools you see on the next several pages are just the tip of the iceberg. As a reader of Project Management for Small Business Made Easy, you get a lot more forms, tools, and free stuff at www.qualitytechnology.com/ DoneRight. In addition, those tools are editable, so you can change them, and so you can enter information right on your computer using Microsoft Word® or Microsoft Excel® and other programs. Page through these forms, use them, and then go online to get even more!
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Form: Questionnaire: Are You Ready to Learn PM?
Questionnaire: Are You Ready to Learn PM?
This questionnaire will help you plan how to use this book well. It is based on Chapters 1 and 2.
Instructions: Write down your answers to the questions. Then go to the key (page 216) to interpret your answers and plan how you can best use this book.
1.Why did you pick up this book?
2.What are the biggest problems and challenges you face in your business? (List one to three.)
3.What are the biggest opportunities for you or your business right now? (List one to three.)
4.How much do you know about project management? (Pick one.)
Zip. I don’t even know what a project is.
I know what a project is, but nothing about how to manage one.
I’ve got the basics down: goals, time, cost, planning—but I really don’t know how to get a project done on time.
I can do a project myself, but I don’t know how to lead a team.
I’m pretty good, but I want to be able to get projects done on time and within budget more often.
I’m a good—or great—project manager, and I’m looking to grow.
5.How important is learning to get jobs done on time to you and your business?
Crucial. Without it, I’m likely to lose my business.
Very important. I’m sure that this is where my company is stuck.
It matters a lot. The improvements would be a big help.
It can help. It’s one of the things that we need.
Right now, there are other priorities, but I want to get a handle on this.
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Form: Questionnaire: Are You Ready to Learn PM?
I’m not sure.
Actually, now that I think about it, I’ll give the book to someone who needs it more than I do.
6.How much time do you have to read and use this book?
Two or more hours per day: I’ll make the time—I’m desperate.
A few hours a week.
I’ll kind of read it around the corners, as I get time.
I have to get some other things done first, and then I can put in some good time. But I’d like to get a handle on it now.
Help! I’m so buried in work that I don’t have time to learn how to do a better job!
7.What do you hope to learn from reading this book?
8.What do you hope to do differently after reading this book?
9.What projects would you like to get done soonest?
See Key on page 216.
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Tool: Questionnaire Key
Questionnaire Key
Check your answers against the following comments.
#1. Always keep the answer to #1 in mind. Stay connected with your reason for reading this book and applying what you learn from it. Read it aloud to yourself every time you open this book.
#2 and #3. These lists of most important problems and opportunities form the list of projects you will do. Solve big problems and help your business grow.
#4. Plan your learning. If you checked one of the first four boxes, then read all of Project Management for Small Business Made Easy. If you checked one of the last two, then skim the book and figure out what you most need to learn.
#5 and #6. Make sure that the amount of time you’re willing to invest matches your need. If getting things done—or getting things done right—is your challenge, then the answer is here. But if you’re overwhelmed, then you’ll have to organize a bit and maybe set some other things aside to really use this book. But it will pay off. Every page offers quick tools that will save you time.
#7, #8, and #9. These are your lists of goals. Think of them as your finish line in a race. Keep your eye on the prize and check your progress. Whenever you finish reading a chapter, assess your progress against your answers to #7, #8, and #9 and set your direction toward your goals.
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