subject: Planning And Completing Work [print this page] I have found the greatest weakness of most planning is that a plan is made initially but not kept up to date. Usually planning is done before all the information about the work is clear, so the plan becomes less relevant as time goes on. To stay relevant, a plan needs to constantly be checked and updated as the situation changes and better information becomes available.
To get your work done with a minimum of time, effort and stress, the work needs to be planned and managed to completion. Most importantly, plans need to be easily updated until they are completed, so they match the prevailing situation.
The bottom line for plans is that they need to generate a simple ToDo list for everyone who needs to contribute. If every person involved clearly knows what they need to do, when and with whom, the planning process has succeeded.
Currently there are many planning processes that can be used to plan and complete work. The major problem is that they only focus on parts of planning and completing work. For example, project management focuses on the project manager, but doesnt directly help the people actually doing the work. At the other end of the end of the scale, personal time management solutions, like Dave Allens Getting Things Done, focus on personal ToDo lists that are not directly linked to plans.
For over 15 years, I have been using a simple one page work plan template to help people develop powerful work plan in 10 minutes or less. The 10 minute work plan template has been used by thousands of people in over 100 countries. A free copy of my work plan template, with an explanation of how to use it, and three worked examples, is available at http://www.taskey.com/Products/RequestaWorkPlan/tabid/340/Default.aspx
Software for planning and completing work simplifies the concurrent use of many work plans. The software (accessed by web and mobile browsers) makes planning and completing work simple, because it keeps everyones ToDo list up to date with current plans. Completion of ToDos automatically drives progress reporting, and plans can be quickly updated. Visit http://www.me2team.com and http://www.taskey.com for more information.
