Work Plan and Schedule: The survival Power Your Business Needs
Every business, whether it be local or on a large scale, needs some sort of planning to develop and prosper. The upper management usually creates a plan to accomplish some tasks and assigns managers to ensure that these tasks are accomplished before the end of a specified date for them to be considered a success. And while a great many people consider work planning and scheduling an extra hassle, thankfully there are also those who realize the true of value these factors bring to the fore and how they help in the smooth running of your business. Here we look at the ways you can actually plan your work better, design a realistic schedule, and knock your tasks out of the park by getting them done.
THE PURPOSE:
Before you create a work plan, you need to know for sure what the work plan is for. This sounds pretty obvious, but you would surprise with the number of people who create work plans without specifying the actual purpose of the plan. Determining the purpose of your work plan helps you to stay true to your mission, and ultimately succeed in acing it.
BACKGROUND:
In most work plans, an elaborate background is imperative to decide why you are doing what you are doing. When you do this, you essentially help yourself put a proper context into the entire matter. A clear and concise background in a work plan goes a long way in keeping you focused on the reason you create a plan for.
GOALS AND AIMS:
Aims and goals essentially tell you, what you can hope to achieve once you are done following the entire work plan to the letter. This is actually what you want to get as a result to his planning, and everything you do, every decision you take during the course of this project/plan, should be to get one step closer to these aims and objectives.
MANAGING RESOURCES:
Resources are what you have at your disposal to carry out these tasks and follow through on the work plan. These resources can be financial, time, or even your employees, and keeping close tabs on them is important in order to achieve the target you set out for. You can use an absence management software to keep track of the punctuality of your employees, and even though these software are a bit costly, you can always get a special discount via some coupons.
IDENTIFY THE CONSTRAINTS:
The hindrances or the roadblocks that act as an obstacle. These constraints can be of any sort, e.g. time, financial, even manpower. And to develop the perfect work plan, you need to identify these roadblocks ahead of time. In order to maximize the effectiveness of your work plan, you need to schedule everything accordingly.
ACCOUNTABILITY:
This does not necessarily mean, “Assigning the blame”, but with the help of accountability, you can know for sure as to which module was whose responsibility. This helps you in such a way that whenever the development of a module lags behind schedule, you know who to call and ask for an explanation. Similarly, when somebody does great work, accountability helps you to reward that person because it will be clearly defined who did what.
ANALYTICS:
One of the most important aspect of a clear and effective work plan, is its analysis. This means, statistics, data, and matrices that enable you to decide your next move. Most common techniques for this are Gantt charts, or using the “SMART” method. SMART stands for Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time bound.
Specific: The Who and the what of the plan.
Measurable: Can we quantify the results?
Achievable: Is the result achievable within the specified time period, using all the resources we have at our disposal?
Relevant: What is the impact of this goal on the overall strategy?
Time bound: The timeframe for completing the project.