How to Plan

Don’t laugh. Many IT project managers, executives, and professionals don’t know how to plan. Oh sure, they think they do, but the reality is they don’t. When these folks begin planning, their efforts consist of searching the Internet randomly, leafing through vendor brochures, and chatting with other professionals about similar problems they’ve encountered and how those problems were resolved. On the surface this looks like a great effort. The Internet, vendor brochures, and interviews are all essential elements to IT research. The trouble, however, is there’s little rhyme or reason, little approach, and most important, few results to show for the effort.

The goal of research is to come to a conclusion, a discovery, and hard-hitting facts, upon which a decision, a plan, or an implementation can be based. Now here is the key: good research stems from an organized, concentrated effort. In order to do good research, you also have to know what you’re researching for. This means you’ll need to understand the business opportunity or the problem that the project will address—and you’ll do that through stakeholder interviews. Some of these efforts, in your organization, may reside with the business analyst—but as the project manager, you still need to understand why a project is being initiated and what the project is to accomplish.