What Does It Mean To Have A Plan?

A Plan is the strategy for the successful completion of a project.

A strategy is not a list of objectives, but the means of achieving those objectives.

Any project without a Plan is a project wondering in the wilderness.

What does the Plan tell us?

• What Done looks like?
• What activities are needed to get to Done?
• What are the potential roadblocks along the way to Done, and the activities that will be performed to remove these road blocks?
• What are the alternative paths to Done - literally Plan-B?
• What are the measures of progress along the path to Done?

Now that the Plan is in place, the Schedule answers the questions:

• What is the sequence of work needed to produce the results of the project?
• What is the work effort and duration of that work effort for each result?
• What "margin" is needed for the work effort and the duration to increase the probability of success for the project?

The schedule is a fluid description of the sequence of work. The Plan is the guidance for performing that sequence of work. When changes arrive, the Plan must tell us what alternatives we have. Or if there is no stated alternative, what steps we can take to develop one.