Page 49 - DMGT302_FUNDAMENTALS_OF_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Fundamentals of Project Management

Notes Stage 6 – Evaluation of the Plan and its Impact

Once you have worked out the details of your plan, the next stage is to review it to decide
whether it is worth implementing. Here you must be objective – however much work you have
carried out to reach this stage, the plan may still not be worth implementing.

This is frustrating after the hard work of detailed planning. It is, however, much better to find this
out now than when you have invested time, resources and personal standing in the success of the
plan. Evaluating the plan now gives you the opportunity to either investigate other options that
might be more successful, or to accept that no plan is needed or should be carried out.
Depending on the circumstances, the following techniques can be helpful in evaluating a plan:
1. PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting): This is a good, simple technique for ‘weighing the pros and
cons’ of a decision. It involves listing the plus points in the plan in one column, the minus
points in a second column, and the implications and points of uncertainty of the plan in a
third column. Each point can be allocated a positive or negative score.
2. Cost/Benefit Analysis: This is useful for confirming that the plan makes financial sense.
This involves adding up all the costs involved with the plan, and comparing them with the
expected benefits.
3. Force Field Analysis: Similar to PMI, Force Field Analysis helps you to get a good overall
view of all the forces for and against your plan. This allows you to see where you can make
adjustments that will make the plan more likely to succeed.
4. Cash Flow Forecasts: Where a decision is has mainly financial implications, such as in
business and marketing planning, preparation of a Cash Flow Forecast can be extremely
useful. It allows you to assess the effect of time on costs and revenue. It also helps in
assessing the size of the greatest negative and positive cash flows associated with a plan.
When it is set up on a spreadsheet package, a good Cash Flow Forecast also functions as an
extremely effective model of the plan. It gives you an easy basis for investigating the
effect of varying your assumptions.
5. “6 Thinking Hats”: 6 Thinking Hats is a very good technique to use to get a rounded view
of your plan and its implications. It provides a context within which you can examine a
plan rationally, emotionally, optimistically, pessimistically and creatively.
Any analysis of your plan must be tempered by common sense.

If your analysis shows that the plan either will not give sufficient benefit, then either return to
an earlier stage in the planning cycle or abandon the process altogether.

Stage 7 – Implementing Change

Once you have completed your plan and decided that it will work satisfactorily, it is time to
implement it. Your plan will explain how! It should also detail the controls that you will use to
monitor the execution of the plan.

Stage 8 – Closing the Plan

Once you have achieved a plan, you can close the project. At this point is often worth carrying
out an evaluation of the project to see whether there are any lessons that you can learn. This
should include an evaluation of your project planning to see if this could be improved.
If you are going to be carrying out many similar projects, it may be worth developing and
improving an Aide Memoire. This is a list of headings and points to consider during planning.
Using it helps you to ensure that you do not forget lessons learned in the past.

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