Planning
Having established what is to be achieved, planning breaks an activity
into a series of structured manageable tasks, co-ordinates these tasks
and monitors progress.
Tasks can happen in series or in parallel. So-called ‘parallel
processing’ – running several tasks simultaneously – has several
advantages. It can reduce the overall timescale for the project and
reduce the risk of a delay in one task delaying the entire project. Figure
13.10 illustrates this point.
Increasingly there is an awareness of being time focused. Business is
now adopting a time-to-market (T-t-M) philosophy. This T-t-M
approach advocates the importance of reducing the overall time taken
to implement a project. Consider the potential benefits of reducing
implementation time. Firstly, a commercial return is produced sooner.
Secondly, by being early into the market the opportunity exists to gain
a price premium and/or market share. The T-t-M focus is achieved by
parallel processing and, conversely, spending more time developing a
robust planning specification.