6 Project Planning
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States (1953-1961), Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe (1943-1945)
Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to
- Describe the living order approach to project planning
- Explain and distinguish between push and pull planning
- Describe the Agile approach to project planning
- Explain the relationship between sustainability and continuous improvement
- Discuss issues related to contingency plans
The Big Ideas in this Lesson
- Uncertainty is a permanent feature of a project leader’s work.
- In the living order, planning is a learning, collaborative, and adaptive exercise in which team members stand ready to alter the plan at any time to address changing conditions.
- Living order planning is exemplified by pull planning, in which planners start by identifying the desired end-state, and then work backwards to plan activities that will achieve that goal.
6.1 A New Way to Think About Planning
Merriam Webster’s definition of planning is “the act or process of making a plan to achieve or do something.” This suggests that the ultimate goal of planning is the plan itself. It also presumes that once a plan has been formulated, you only need to follow the plan to achieve the desired outcome. That’s fine for ordinary conversation. But when we begin to think about living order project planning, a more expansive understanding of the nature of planning emerges. In living order, planning is a process that prepares the project team to respond to events as they actually unfold. The whole point of planning is to develop strategies to mangage
- Changes to scope
- Schedule
- Cost
- Quality
- Resources
- Communication
- Risk
- Procurement
- Stakeholder engagement
Planning results in a plan, but the plan is not an end in itself. Rather, a plan is a strategic framework for the scheduling and execution of a project. It’s only useful if it includes the information team members require to begin moving forward. And it only remains useful if team members modify the plan as they learn the following about the project:
- Key constraints such as the timeline, cost, and functional requirements.
- Information on project system issues, such as workflow and milestones, which provide a broad look at the project as a whole.
- Plans for periodic check-ins that allow participants and leadership to reevaluate the project and its original assumptions.
Planning is Accepting Uncertainty
Die-hard geometric order planners take a deterministic approach, laboring under the false notion that once everyone agrees on a plan, the plan itself determines what comes next. Indeed, it is tempting to think you can nail down every detail at the beginning of a project and then get going without looking back. But effective living order planners understand that, especially early in a project, these details are nearly a