Introduction
In our previous blog (Planning Equilibrium), we looked at the merits of top-down versus bottom up planning and concluded that the most effective planning mechanism is to do both in parallel and combine them to produce a validated transformation plan. With that in mind, we shift our attention to how to quickly produce a complete, effective plan.
10 Quick Steps to a Successful Plan
Experience shows that there are ten simple steps which you can apply to every planning exercise, as illustrated by Fig 1 below.
As a transformation leader, it is vital to present a clear plan to all stakeholders. Executive managers need confidence that you can articulate your transformation, convincing them that you can execute the journey is key. Suppliers must understand the parameters within which you are asking them to work. Your team needs clear goals and objectives to aim for as well as guidance and help to achieve specific activities. Following our ten-step process will enable you to build trust amongst your stakeholder community, generating buy-in and participative support.
1. Know your transformation strategy, goals and objectives
You cannot plan what you cannot articulate, so make sure you can clearly and concisely explain your goals and objectives. Paint a visionary picture of the future and be able to explain in broad brush terms why it is imperative that transformation happens, and what the value of its realisation will be to the business. From this, clear targets will emerge, giving the team a clear end state to validate the plan against.
A robust business case is a critical consideration for the setting of clear targets. As you will see as we walk through the steps, every transformation programme starts from a position of uncertainty – it is impossible to validate timescales, costs, resources, risks and so on until you have undertaken significant planning. Therefore, your initial business case must be strong enough to withstand the crystallisation of those uncertainties. For example, if your financial case falls apart in the face of a 2% cost uplift then you didn’t really have a case to start with. It is imperative to subject the financial case for transformation to stress testing as part of initiating the case for change. Most transformation programmes end up taking longer, and costing more, than originally envisaged – be ready to face that reality from the outset.
2. Get all stakeholders actively involved in planning
People are more likely to buy-in when they’ve been engaged and involved so leave no stone unturned in order to actively involve people in planning. However, people can get turned off by the word ‘planning’ so one tip might be to create participative/fun events which you can badge as ‘visioning workshops’ or ‘transformation innovation’ or similar to enthuse people about working differently. Workshops are great for planning the big-ticket items, but a great deal of work will have to go on outside the workshop environment if your planning is to be fast, informed and thorough.
3. Build a roadmap … (and add contingency)
Most transformations wait until they have a plan before they think ‘contingency’, and the effect is often to ensure that the contingency is misunderstood and is cut back by executives who haven’t been close to the complexities of the planning process. We have found that the best expectation setting you can do comes in the form of developing your roadmap and including contingency from the very first version. For example, the first draft of your transformation programme roadmap might indicate that it will take two years, so add 6 months of contingency from the very start…….if you need less than that when you complete the planning process then you have delivered good news before the programme has even started.
The first transformation roadmap must be positioned very carefully – it is not the finished plan, merely a guideline as to the key building blocks of one. Many programmes suffer as a result of a failure to hammer this message home with executive stakeholders – the expectation you are setting is not of a specific timeline (we often advocate leaving the timescale out of the roadmap presentation for the first few iterations) but of a series of steps on a journey. If you receive pushback and demands for timescales and costs up-front, make sure you explain the stress-tested numbers you produced in your business case under step 1.
4. Identify issues, risks & assumptions – and plan for them
Every transformation programme identifies risks and issues up-front, and most will capture assumptions. However, most programmes also fail to engineer adequate responses to these risks and issues into their planning processes:
issues must have corresponding resolutions planned, with clear ownership
risks must have concrete mitigations identified, with clear ownership and timings of associated actions identified
assumptions are often completely forgotten but each one constitutes a risk if it proves not to be true. Assumptions should be managed in exactly the same way as risks
5. Build detailed project plans
It is rare for a transformation team to get the plan right on its first or second iteration. For one thing, people seldom think of every task, issue, risk or dependency straight off the bat. Programmes are also more complex than individual projects – dependencies between projects must be identified, their implications understood, and managed. Additionally, sharing resources between a programme and business-as-usual (BAU) requires specific management, therefore assigning resources to each project must be accompanied by a calculation showing the utilisation of each human resource across the programme as a whole (and an allowance for BAU time should there be resources which are not 100% allocated to the programme).
Each project should be built with the input of the main suppliers, wherever possible. If this is not possible, for example, because supplier engagement processes are not yet complete, then two approaches can be adopted:
a. Increase the level of contingency that you assign under step 7 below, or
b. Plan each project, and the programme as a whole, to the point where the
selection of key suppliers has completed and undertake a re-plan at that stage
It is important to build a programme plan at a level above the individual projects to ensure that they knit together effectively. Before each planning iteration, you should socialise the programme plan as well as each project plan, walking them it through to get people thinking differently so as to identify complexities and tasks that weren’t discussed last time around. It is not uncommon for programme plans to need 7 or 8 iterations before they are ready for approval, sometimes several more.
When iterations take place, it is imperative that transformation programme governance ensures all key programme materials are also updated. For example, there is a risk that your business case will change as you gather more planning detail so it needs to be maintained such that it is up to date when you submit the programme for approval.
6. Assign Key Responsibilities
Although people usually understand which project tasks they must do, the assignment of accountability and responsibility for key outcomes, outputs and milestones often leaves a great deal to be desired. Many transformation leaders look merely to the allocated Project Manager for everything and the Programme Manager for the overall programme plan. However, for that to work, those roles must be truly empowered. For extra insurance, it is good practice to allocate leadership responsibility to workstream leaders, for example, by business process area, or solution group. This extra layer of responsibility helps transformation programmes with multiple, interdependent projects which need to access shared resource pools to achieve their individual and collective objectives. In this way, the Programme Leadership can work with stream leaders to take balanced, prioritised decisions and keep the dates for the completion of key milestones and dependencies in the forefront of the owners’ minds
7. Calculate contingency
Now you have a detailed plan it is time to re-evaluate the levels of time, resource and financial contingency estimated under step 3. With a stronger understanding of the plan, risks, supplier relationships and resources required you will be able to calculate each of the contingent factors and attribute a level of time and cost to each. Taking a balanced view of the likelihood of crystallisation of the key risks will help you work out the ‘what if?’ impact should they happen. At the simplest level you may, for example, project a potential for a 3-month delay and the associated cost is the burn rate of 3 months’ resources. Many programmes require more complex calculations than this but, irrespective of the calculation basis, it is imperative that the time is factored into your road map, and the cost is included in your transformation business case.
8. Understand the critical path
Each project will have its own timescale however the programme as a whole will reflect the longest critical path through all of the projects and may have to encompass external influences on timescales (such as regulatory deadlines or competitive threats). When preparing the programme plan, it is important to remember this, particularly as the programme critical path might follow the interdependencies between the projects, as opposed to the single longest project in isolation.
9. Validate the roadmap
With project and programme plans ready, resources assigned, project interdependencies clear, and contingency understood it is time to prepare the first iteration of the road map, validating your original projections and adjusting where required.
At this point the transformation leadership team should pause and consider whether to progress to step 10 or iterate back to step 5. It is rare to complete a transformation programme plan on the first pass through for some of the following reasons:
Resource contention: between projects or with BAU can lead to changes to individual project schedules and therefore the programme plan
Interdependencies: between projects may require timescale acceleration in the providing project, or delays to the recipient project, with a concomitant knock on effect into resource allocations, supplier contracts, etc
External factors: might place constraints on a project, forcing compromises or a re-phasing of activities in order to meet obligations whilst retaining the transformation benefits
Known unknowns: there are uncertainties which mean you cannot yet plan them. Understanding the materiality of each one will enable you to assess its impact on the road map and decide whether to publish it, or to iterate
Your transformation governance process is likely to require a regular update, including the latest view of the timeline. If you still have areas to work through, keep reiterating the message that the transformation team is still on a planning journey and the roadmap will be formally approved once that journey is complete.
10. Walk through and approve the plan
There is more to approval than just saying yes or no. Many transformation programmes encounter difficulties because inherent complexities were underestimated at the approval stage, or certain aspects were insufficiently scrutinised or poorly understood.
In our experience, the most common of these is where the implications of assumptions made are poorly understood. Every assumption carries with it the risk that it fails to remain true. Therefore, each should be clearly stated, reviewed at an executive level, and managed as a risk with the same visibility and governance.
Approving a transformation plan includes everything that accompanies it – the business case, the resource model, supplier contracts and so on. The process of iterating the schedule may require iterations of the supporting material. Of particular note is the business case – it should remain commercially viable throughout the programme and certainly should be recalculated should costs or benefits shift.
One important tip is that if you are not ready to approve the full programme, then don’t. Instead, it may be wiser to approve a limited budget for a timeboxed phase (for example, analysis and design) to improve the planning inputs and increase certainty before you fully commit to a complete budget.
Conclusion
A great plan tells your transformation story, demonstrating why you are transforming, which activities you ned to undertake, how you intend to complete them, in which order, all the way to the depiction of successful outcomes. Therefore, it is much more than just a Microsoft Project plan, rather it is everything communicates your transformation vision and the journey to achieve it. However, great planning proves challenging for many organisations – we know this because so many transformations struggle to achieve their objectives cost effectively. Following our 10 simple steps to effective planning will increase the likelihood of your transformation producing a strong plan against which you can deliver successful results.
To find out more about planning a successful transformation, contact us at www.clavertonconsulting.co.uk.
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