Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Activity and Resource Based Work Planning

Having worked with a number of large and small organisations over the years I have come to understand that there are only three (3) primary resources available to any & all organisations - no matter what their size, sector in which they work, funds available to them, number of employees, etc. These three resources are:

Time: the people available and their knowledge,skills and attributes
Things: the physical, logistical, technological resources that are available to us
Money: the financial resources that give us flexibility to buy additional time (e.g. recruitment, over-time, training) or things (additional tangible resources) should we need them

Drawing on this understanding I have developed, and successfully used a work planning tool that looks to make the optimum use of these three resources when prioritised against organisational objectives (i.e. work plans, business plans & strategic plans):

The planning tool looks to address the key questions that any organisation should look to monitor as it goes about it normal working period (be that daily, weekly, monthly, etc.):
- What are we (as a team)working towards?
- What am I (as a team member) working towards (contributing)?
- Are we on track? Do we need to change anything?
- Are we doing the right things?
- Are we making best use of what we have (time, money & things)?
- Do we have all that we need?
= And is it all working together?

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