In today's article we clarify what a work plan is, what it is for and, most importantly, how you can easily create one that is tailored to the size and objectives of your company. It's as interesting as it sounds, so go for it, read on...
If you type the keywords “what is a work plan” into your favourite internet search engine, you'll find hundreds of different results that give lengthy explanations to something that, believe us, is extremely simple: is an outline, a roadmap that helps us to get to a certain place by meeting a series of milestones.
It is not complicated to draw up such a plan as long as we are clear about it:
A work plan not only serves to to maximise the use of your financial, technical or human resources, It also carries out other important functions, such as the following:
Now that we know what a work plan is and what it's for, it's time to outline the series of basic steps that will help you create a truly effective work plan that doesn't end up being a waste of paper.
Following on from our simile “Work plan-roadmap, we could say that there are two basic points: the beginning and the end or, in other words, where we come from and where we want to go, what the objective of the plan is.
As you already know where you're starting from – here and now – what you have left to note down is “where you're going”: what is the goal you want to achieve with that plan.
It could be the completion of a civil engineering work, the creation of a software programme, the launch of a new product, the creation of an internal communications department… Whatever it is, you must note it down.
In a long plan, it is essential to write down the stops on your journey or, in other words, the milestones that you will have to meet little by little in order to not exhaust your resources in the first phase of a long journey.
These milestones are the small goals you have to achieve in order to reach the final objective of your plan. For example, if your objective is to create an internal communications department, a first milestone could be to select the person in your company who will be responsible for leading that new department.
A second milestone would be to describe the resources that new department will need (office space, computers, wage costs, etc.). A third milestone could be on effective recruitment of candidates… And so on until you reach the final objective.
The third essential step in an effective and efficient work plan is to be realistic and write down the resources you are going to allocate to achieve each milestone in the previous step. These resources can be of all kinds: financial, technical, training, information…
The fourth and final step of our example work plan is as important as the previous ones: identifying barriers what you will encounter on your long road to the goal you have set for yourself. In this case, try to To be as pessimistic as possible and note down every difficulty you think might arise, from lack of funding to administrative delays, labour disputes, etc..
