Step 3: Plan the Project Based On the Vital Few

Describe Your New Thinking

In Step One we work with you to define your project goal. In Step Two we subjected it to the 80/20 rule. Has anything changed? If you’re like most creative thinkers the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

You have uncovered your leverage… the vital 20%. You now have both clarity and priority. You can easily describe what it is you want to do and why you’re going to do it.

The Project Plan

The project plan now serves triple duty: tactics, consensus builder and Request for Proposal. We include:

• Tactics — What you’ll be doing, how long it will take, the internal and external resources you will need to finish by the 100 day deadline.
• Consensus — A concise statement of the project goal, how success will be measured, and why this approach which leverages 80/20 thinking has been chosen over alternatives.
• Request for Proposal — sanitized for external consumption and clearly communicating expectations, timeline and budget range.

What To Do If You Don’t Have Enough Time

There may be situations in which it is simply impossible to get everything you want accomplished in the allotted time. We understand this, yet we don’t renegotiate the deadline established in Step One. Instead we advise alternative paths like those we’ve created for clients who also came up against time constraints.

• Prototyping — create a small, working version of your concept by the due date. Use it to secure a larger and more robust budget than had you attempted to sell your idea on paper alone.
• Phased Implementation — deliver work in stages. This variation on the prototype solution has the added advantage of incorporating feedback from each previous work stage into the next, which increases precision.

Step 4: Begin Work Immediately