Goal

• Organization goal –
Develop process
oriented culture

• Objective - To
develop inclination to
effective planning
practice in the
organization
GROW

• Goal
• Reality
• Options
• Will
 Definitions - Plan
• In simple terms - think out; prepare in advance

• how do we intend to achieve what we wanted to

achieve
• Any detailed scheme, program, or method
worked out beforehand for the accomplishment
of an object; a proposed or tentative project or
goal or course of action.
• A drawing or diagram made to scale showing the
structure or arrangement of something
good, bad, noble, worthy, silly, small, big,
large, short-term, long-term, successful,
failure, correct, improper, conscious,
unconscious, needed, not needed,
structured, unstructured, formal, in-formal,
ad-hoc, aggressive, pessimistic,
optimistic, realistic, imaginary, visionary
etc…
 Planning in real life
‘failing to plan means planning to fail’
• Games - Football, cricket, sports,
• Travel (Tour)
• Life Security ( Insurance, Savings etc.. )
• Get-Together ( Parties, Festivals, Functions etc..)
• Self Improvement ( Education, Career, work etc..)
• Organization
• Manufacturing - Production, Materials
• Military, Warfare
• Town, City …….. The list is endless …..
 Case Study
• I require a small POS application immediately
( yesterday...? ) for my cash billing purposes. Right
now, I am using an Freeware application which
satisfies my billing, however the performance is very
low and not able to generate report at the day end. In
a typical day, I expect around 1000 cash bills to be
printed. Purchase, Stock Maintenance may be looked
into the latter phase. In short, I am looking for ONLY
two primary options in the solution Product Master,
Cash Bill only and nothing beyond it. Money is not a
constraint for the right performing solution. Give me a
proposal.
 Case Study

I require a
small POS
application
immediately (
yesterday...?
) for my cash
billing
purposes.
 Case Study

Currently, I
am using a
Freeware
application.
 Case Study

Satisifies
billing
purposes, but
not reporting
needs
 Case Study

Need to print
on an
average of
1000+ bills
per day..…
should be
really faster
Case Study
Need two
options only –
Product,
Cash Bill. All
other we can
look into the
next phase
Case Study
Don’t worry
about
money….(?!)
Give me a
proposal
Business @ speed of thought….????!!!
Action @ speed of thought ….????!!!

• Requirement is clear
• Only two options are required
• Does not require very deep thinking
• Could complete even with novice
programmers. We will give them an
opportunity to learn
Plan @ speed of thought …….???!!!
 Analysis

• Planning
• Requirements & Usage
• Resource
 Analysis - Planning

Date Order Task Estimated From To Hours Spent

October 1, 2007 1 Analysis & Design 2 9:00 11:00 2:00

2 Requirements Knowledge Transfer 5 11:00 16:00 5:00

3 Product 5 16:00 18:00 2:00

3 Sales 10 16:00 18:00 2:00

October 2, 2007 3 Product 5 9:00 12:00 3:00

3 Sales 10 9:00 17:00 8:00

4 Testing 5 17:00 18:00 1:00

4 Documentation 10 17:00 18:00 1:00

October 3,2007 4 Testing 5 9:00 13:00 4:00

4 Documentation 10 9:00 18:00 9:00

October 4,2007 5 Trial

October 5,2007 6 Go-Live

 Analysis - Planning
Some “assumptions” (?!!!) in the plan
– No break time – lunch, meetings, etc..
– No bugs produced in Testing
– Master and Transaction in parallel
– Testing and Documentation in parallel
– Resources are available accurately
– No need for reviews
– No risks and contingency faced
– Acceptance of deliverable at one shot
 Analysis - Requirement
• What is the software currently being used ?
• Can you explain what the customer meant by “perform
• What reports the customer is not getting in the current
satisifed ?
• Have you perceived need for printing options other
than the billing option ?
• Can you list the user conveniences that you have plann
• Have you perceived the need for “Search” option ?
• Did you ever feel there could be “inactive” items?
• How you are sure that you have perceived correctly
that is in the customer’s mind ?
Communication time required to complete all
the queries…… ?
Assume that all these have
been cleared, and have
been completed also.

Still, do you feel that go-live

can happen successfully ?
NO... all most all items have to be
entered
– a provision to add a new item name
while staying in the billing form
– still another dimension would come in -
the customer would say "why don't you
import the existing names?”
– this leads to another series of question
in what way, the existing data can be
exported ? excel, csv, txt, doc, database
– how quick it can be done ?
Once again let us assume the
previous case is also done. Is
the customer still going to be
comfortable ?
Possibility of saying “NO” still exists -
taxes – different tax rates, or only
one tax rate?
discount – festival discount, sales
discount
suspending a bill – while billing,
additional shopping
revoking a bill – resume from
previous billing
backup - safety
restore
purging of data - performance
 Analysis - Resource

• You committed for 02/10/2007 – Are you sure that you want to
commit on a National Holiday?
• You planned for the resource, but no commitment on any front
that the resource would be available ( other team resource ).
• If it is your own resource, have you checked the possibility of
utilizing the resource ?
• If you have planned for a good resource, have you checked the
load ?
• Have you checked with the resource calendar – leave days,
work (shift ) timings ?
 Analysis - Resource
• How you have made sure the resource is effectively utilized?
For example, if a resource is working across projects, after
deployment is over, customer is keeping on giving on changes
and hence the resource cannot be released or the resource
fails to get released ... in the event of enjoying some sweet idle
time ...
• Have you checked the whether the database is in ready state to
use? If it is not ready, how the time taken to get ready with the
database will be reflected in the plan?
• How you have planned to deliver the solution ? FTP, CD etc..
• Would you really like to deliver the solution without any review –
code, functional etc..? Can it be inclusive of the task hours itself
?
 Lapses identified
With all these analysis, we arrive at:
• Be aware of the resource schedule and
utilization
• Capture the effort till the close out
• Capture the lessons learnt
• Improve upon requirements clarity,
requirements elicitation
• Improve on the domain knowledge
 Requirements for Planning
• Begin with the end in mind
• Common Sense
• Applying “Conscious knowledge”
• Domain Information
• Analytical and Reasoning capabilities
• Capability of identifying risk situations
 Advantages
• Provides informed direction
• Provides a better basis for decision-making on
• time,
• cost,
• quality
• risks
• Helps to avoid
• conflict
• ambiguity
• defining the role clearly
• duplication of efforts