Development directorate

Brown paper planning

Spring 2007

developing people, improving young lives

Notes
 Brown paper planning
What is it?
• A brown paper technique which uses the power of the team to plan a
change implementation while building team ownership of the output
• It documents an entire implementation – capturing roles, a timeline and
activities shown in “swim lanes”
• It highlights all milestones, activities, interfaces, decision points and
deliverables
When would you use it?
• During the Develop stage, prior to Delivery
Are there any rules?
• Don’t plan alone – always use the team by assigning responsibility among
team members for each swim lane in the plan
• Start with milestones – working back from right to left with the final
deliverable first, then the subsidiary key milestone events/deliverables

Notes

For this tool you will need a large brown paper (hence ‘Brown Paper planning’); lots of post-it
notes and flipchart marker pens. The idea is to engage your change team together in planning
all the things that need to be done in order to implement a change initiative. You already will
have a vision of what the future will be like and will have progressed through Discovery and
Deepen stages using some of the other Remodelling tools and techniques to arrive at a
solution at the Develop stage. Now it is time to plan how you will deliver the change and this
brown paper tool helps to build ownership of key people in the execution of that plan.
 Brown paper planning – starting point
Timeline

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sep

Design
the four
workshops

Workshop
delivery

Workshop
outputs &
forward
planning

‘Swim lanes’
Workstreams
3

Notes

Start with a large brown paper – about 2 metres high and perhaps 4 metres long.
Mark out the paper as shown above. There are three things to bear in mind: workstreams;
‘swim-lanes’; and a timeline.

The team will first need to identify a number of ‘workstreams’. For convenience, these are
ways of dividing up the work of implementing change for planning purposes. For example,
they may reflect the responsibilities of several different stakeholders in the project; or they
might reflect the different but related functions that make up the change solution. For
example: if your change project was all about moving house, then for planning purposes it
might be sensible to think of different streams of work that correspond to the roles and
responsibilities of key stakeholders such as: vendor; purchaser; solicitor; estate agent;
building society; etc.

Each workstream is allocated its own ‘swim lane’ – a row across the brown paper into which
all the activities assigned to that workstream are planned.

The timeline reflects the duration of the change project, working backwards right to left, from
the end of the project back to the start date. Divide the timeline into equal columns to
represent convenient blocks of time or calendar dates – in weeks, months, or school terms,
whatever is sensible.
 Expanding the plan – milestones

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sep

Planning
the four
workshops

Workshop
delivery

Workshop
outputs &
forward
planning

Notes

Populate the plan by identifying key milestones. These are events, deliverables or decision
points that symbolise significant achievements at certain points along the timeline. In the
example of moving house, these might be ‘making an accepted offer’; ‘exchange of contracts’;
‘completion’; etc.

Use square post-it notes to represent the milestones and orientate them in a diamond shape.
Write clearly the identity of the milestone in each case.

In the slide shown here, there is a series of four milestones in the workshop delivery swim
lane – each representing the delivery of one workshop. In the workshop outputs swim lane
there are two milestones that represent: an interim draft report; and the final report;
respectively.
 Expanding the plan – activities and dependencies

Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sep

Planning
the four
workshops

Workshop
delivery

Workshop
outputs &
forward
planning

Notes

Complete the plan by using post-it notes to represent activities (note that for clarity, each
workstream has been assigned a different colour). Activities are the work that must be done in
order to meet the planned milestones. By using a string of post-it notes you can represent the
planned duration of each activity, from start to finish. Use a marker pen to identify the
activities.

Finally, it is advisable to indicate where the start or finish of one activity is dependent on
another, by drawing lines between them.

If different people in the team are assigned to a workstream and plan their ‘own’ swim lane,
their thinking is then challenged and informed by the planning of other workstreams on which
they are interdependent. This results in a far more rigorous plan and builds ownership of the
plan going forward.