Planning A Project

A Simple Planning System To Get Results

This simple system can be used for all types of projects to help get your desired outcome.

Developing internal business systems is also why franchising works so well. It turns a desired outcome into a system, and the people work the system. 

I break project work into five steps:

1. Determine what the desired outcome is? This is the goal.
2. Map the steps out in a flowchart that can be followed.
3. Timeline each step.
4. Confirm where the project milestones are to use as check points.
5. Track progress of each step to the timeline.

As the person ultimately accountable for the project to be delivered ontime, you may be involved (or at least approve) the five steps at the beginning. Then use the milestones and timeline to help manage the project.

The exciting thing here is all team memvbers involved have complete transparency and can see where additional support may be required.

As an example... I have recently created a 29 step 10 month plan for a major project. The timeline is broken down to weekly and many of the 29 steps also have additions mini steps. Multiple people will be involved but the common goal is clear and easy to see.

What also happens is by focusing and completing each step, similar to building blocks, each step (block) builds on the previous step (block) and the results seem to snowball.

I use draw.io when planning my projects or keynote on my Mac.

Where can you use this? Here are a few ideas:

• product development
• marketing process
• any business automation
• sales process - especially when linking manual steps to automated steps
• recruitment
• client nurture system

Give it a go. If this is new, start with a small project, then grow. 

I'm sure you will see the benefits.