Planning is the basis of every project

Planning is the basis of every project

Having a project and having to organise everything down to the last detail implies an objective. Large established companies, small and medium enterprises, start-ups, a thesis, the organization of an event are based on projects. Designing or planning is essential to achieve an objective. Making lists, or rather checklists, is a good starting point for writing down everything you need to do to achieve the goal.

To reach a goal you need desire and organization.

The desire is fundamental because if you don’t really want something, no planning will be able to ensure the achievement of the objective. Once you have established the objective to be achieved, the project to be organized and after having written the first list, you must start to organize the steps with logic and priority.

First of all we need to understand what the individual activities to be carried out to complete the project are. What and how many people (professionals) we need, how much time will be needed and how many costs we should incur. Estimating how long it will take to achieve the objective is a very important part of the planning.

How to accurately calculate the time needed for a given project

In order to be able to estimate the time needed to carry out a project, the entire project must be divided into sub-projects. Based on your experience you should calculate the time needed for each small step. The advice is to round up the time, as there are always unforeseen events around the corner.

Many times a job can be done at 80% flawlessly, but it only takes 20% of the work to go wrong to nullify the other 80%; 20% in this case is the unforeseen.

The basis for good planning

Once these guidelines have been established, the time has come for the most important thing when carrying out a project relying on a team: talking. Talking and sharing are the basis of good planning because by confrontation most problems are solved and so the various operations to be carried out are established. The bulk of the work comes from the drafts that are established in the meetings, the meetings affect a lot in achieving a goal.

Planning by yourself

If the project is an individual one, it is necessary to compare by carrying out researches on the objective we want to achieve. Through research, we can understand in which direction we want to move and, above all, in which way we do not want to end up. In both cases, whether we are working on a shared project or on our own, it is important to outline the work in order to have an overview of everything that needs to be done. Once all the steps to be taken have been clarified, it would be a good idea to create a work schedule, divided into weeks, days, hours and tasks with weekly objectives to be achieved.

Useful applications

In the web there are many applications that help in planning. There are of all kinds and for every need, free or paid versions that include more or less performance. One of the most used applications is Trello which allows you to include more people in the project and of course to work remotely. If you don’t want to use digital applications, even the dear old post-it bulletin board may be enough, everyone must find the most comfortable and suitable way for their planning.

Here are the main points for good planning:

1. Have a goal in mind and have a desire to achieve it
2. Write a first general list of things to do
3. In the case of team work, set up meetings, while for those who work alone it will be enough to do more research.
4. Divide the project into sub-projects by assigning tasks and time, e.g. by organizing a weekly table.
5. Define a deadline for the delivery of the project taking into account the unforeseen circumstances.
6. Throughout the project phase, always have in mind the goal to be achieved.