Planning Strategies for Successful Project Management

Planning for successful project management is by no means easy. The Project Management Institute’s 11th Global Project Management Survey, from 2019, shows that respondents deemed an average of 15% of their projects failures. 

One of the central responsibilities of a project manager, aside from executing and monitoring a project, is to properly plan it and establish the most suitable strategy for its successful delivery.

Let’s look at three strategies that can help you plan a project.

Compare the ‘as is’ with the ‘to be’

One of the most efficient ways to plan your actions within a project is to precisely delineate between “what is” and “what ought to be.”

Here’s a straightforward action plan to achieve an in-depth understanding of what it will take to get from one to the other: 

1. Assess the current state of affairs in great detail
2. Delineate the desired state of affairs in great detail
3. Superpose the two to fully assess the gap between them
4. Decide what changes need to happen
5. Make sure that the project team is on board with the changes and agrees that these changes are necessary
6. Plan your actions to get to the desired outcome
7. Implement the plan

Divide projects using STOTT

STOTT is an acronym that stands for strategic, tactical, operational, and tasks and tools. This strategy enables project managers to divide their project into a variety of decisions and assess their complexity. This ensures careful planning and a more reasonable distribution of time and resources.

Here’s a breakdown of every component of STOTT:

• Strategic: Decisions that will have a considerable impact on the entire project
• Tactical: Decisions that will impact phases of the project
• Operational: Decisions that will affect certain activities
• Tasks and Tools: Decisions that will change the process of work for your team members

Start off by identifying the essential elements in every one of the levels mentioned above. Then identify the importance of each element by its impact, as well as the elements that need more time to be resolved.

Looking at a project from this perspective will allow you to predict most of the issues that can arise in a project and address them before they become problems.

Consider time, territory, and technology

This strategy is somewhat similar to the previous one because it divides the project into large, independent chunks. However, where STOTT analyzes elements of different sizes, this strategy divides a project into three equal parts—time, territory, and technology—and assesses the amount of work necessary in each sector. 

For each sector, establish the fundamental problems, limitations, and decisions that your team will have to deal with throughout the project. Then define your most prominent issues and the significant steps you’ll have to make in each of these perspectives within the project.

Use These Strategies for Success 

One of the central aspects of high-quality project management has to do with creating a plan for success and predicting potential issues that could affect the project. These strategies can help assess the amount of time and effort every facet of the project will demand.

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