We’ve looked at the first 2 steps of setting up your project plan. Here are the next 2 steps…

Step 3:  Scope

What does this project include, and what is excluded?  The more specific you are, the better.  Quite often, a project will expand in scope by default, making it more difficult to accomplish.  By identifying what is NOT included as well as what is, then the original outcomes will be easier to achieve. 

The project of doubling gross and net sales will be highly susceptible to “scope creep” where what you are doing just keeps growing and growing.  By defining the scope, you actually have a chance of succeeding with this project, where otherwise you might find it difficult to keep this goal in check and acheivable.

Back to the example…

What’s In:

1. Sales and marketing to increase sales
2. Expanding delivery capacity to accommodate the increased sales levels
3. Handling billing issues to ensure timely payment, to fund this increase
4. Bank financing to cover the additional inventory and other costs associated with the intended increases
5. Productive staff and the amount in the sales and marketing dept.
6. Production staffing
7. Beefing up admin support

What’s Out

1. The proposed computer upgrade – though it will help, it will not directly increase our revenue or our net income in the short term and as a result should form its own project, distinct from this one
2. The training and development initiatives that the human resources consultant has proposed – while these are good initiatives, they belong to another project, not this one
3. Our tax and compliance issues – those are best left with the finance people, and do not form part of this project.

As you go through the project, keep coming back to the scope, and continue to clarify what is IN and what is OUT.  The clearer you are, the higher your chances of success.

Step 4:  Useful Perspectives

The perspective you take changes what you see, and how you interpret your world.  If you take on the perspective that projects are impossible, that won’t serve the effective completion of this particular endeavor.  What would be another perspective that you could believe, and that would be more useful?

By identifying several useful perspectives (for example, “what I offer is of value to others; people like it when others contribute to them; people will pay more for the better solutions; . . .”) the project actually gets easier to accomplish.

Examples of Useful Perspectives:

1. The market is out there for what we have.  We just need to find a way to tap it.
2. People value quality goods and quality service.
3. People will pay more if they see increased value for their financial investment.
4. The action of breaking things down to their subcomponents makes things easier to complete.
5. When people procrastinate, there is usually something “up”.  The answer is to see “what’s up”.
6. Mental blocks can be overcome through dialogue with others.
7. People want to contribute.  The thing that stops them is survival.  Once survival is handled and threats to it are handled, then people want to contribute again.
8. Tomorrow is a new day.
9. The future does not have to be the same as the past.
10. We ARE resourceful enough to get around problems.  We just have to bring our thinking to a higher level.

None of these is necessarily inherently true.  However, if you believe them, they will work for you when times get tougher.

Part 1…        Part 3…