What is planning? Planning means the process of deciding to do and how to do a project. Planning occurs at different levels of projects individually as well as collectively. Planners being the professional help the decision makers and never decide themselves. The purpose of planning can be best demonstrated from two different sources.
Long terms objectives are based upon the good planning so people need to accept these short term costly decisions of planners. Planners try their best to know the problems and their effects during the project planning. Planners also concern about their support in decision making for the future project planning. It is right to say that planners manage the flow of information like information gathering, organizing and distributing them.
Uncertainty also incorporates the planning process because best future prediction is impossible before the planners. Planners face the criticism due to confusion in their roles.The project planning given in both sources comprises of almost similar steps for the completion of the project. Project planning increases the efficiency of the project; therefore the planners conceptualize the scope of the project before planning the project. Next the planners develop a proposal of the project and present it to the stakeholders to receive their feedback.
When feedback is completed the plan is implemented. Finally the evaluation of project reviews the progress of the project and learns the experience to improve the future project planning. It is much focused in both of articles that alone project planning must be avoided and included those beneficiaries with their ideas and thoughts. Planning process involves with new tools and issues; these include the social equity, risk management; energy planning and its sustainability.
In the first article social and economic issues are described with detail while discussion of these issues is not founded in the second article. Economic and social issues are grouped along with the environmental issues in a comprehensive sustainability issues. However the planning tools like checklist, logical framework approach, indicator of progress and Gantt charts are more effective to judge the happening of the every step of projects. Reports are the management tools providing the key information for the decision making and stakeholder relations with management.
Planning tools are much focused in the second source of article. Both of articles have covered main subject of the project planning. It is learnt that community needs are preferred to be taken into consideration before planning the project. People in a community have different and conflicting ideas thus a project must seek to benefit most vulnerable. It is also seen that goals determine purpose of the project. When the objectives are written the SMART guidelines are necessary to be remembered.
It is also learnt that project plan establishes its milestones which are monitored by the deviation or completion. With good project planning and sufficient budget a project must go ahead without any issues. The project implementation must be monitored and controlled on the basis of the project objectives set in the initial stages. The actual cost of the project must be constantly compared with the planned budget.
This financial monitoring checks the deviation from the plan. Evaluation determines the impacts and effectiveness of the plans. Program values are determined by the project evaluation. We can use the above tools and techniques for our plans in the future.
These techniques and tools are more effective when used properly with all other aspects in future projects planning.
