The Power of Planning

Today I learnt first hand the power of planning.

As a project manager I was tasked to reduce the duration of a project from 6 months to a shorter time frame.

I had with me a long list of tasks the developer had outlined with estimates for each task.

Making it more complicated was the inclusion of tasks to be performed by another developer and the overlapping between these two.

In a single meeting lasting less than an hour we were able to reduce the duration from 6 to 4 months!!

I used two planning aids common to the project management profession of which I am a rabid practitioner.

The first is called WBS and stands for Work Breakdown Structure. Any project has to deliver something. You take this 'something' and break it down into smaller and smaller pieces.

The next tool is called a network diagram. Here you take activities that you have obtained as a result of performing WBS and chart out the dependencies among them.

I try to practice planning in all aspects of my life.

I was not like this before. I read somewhere that events will not turn out exactly as planned but then if you do not plan your work then you are planning to fail.

Brian Tracy talks about the 6Ps of planning. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Incidents like the one I just illustrated has made me a believer in planning.