After completing the Needs Assessment stage, you have a high-level, skeleton project plan in place as a guide for your project. During this stage, you start filling in more details until you have a fully developed project plan that sets you into motion—filled with action items. Note: It’s also helpful at this point (if you haven’t already) to determine what type of structure you want to use for operations—for example, a business or non-profit.

Project Buckets

In this step, you organize other areas of your project into “buckets.” For example, for a natural healing center, the buckets might include: Building for the center, frequency healing devices, healers who know how to use the devices, natural medicinal products, brand identity/content for the center, marketing, and so on. For each of those buckets, you’ll need to perform a type of sub-project development for them too. Need assessment, for example: What type of building do you want to buy or build? What’s best for the people you’re benefiting? Do they need any specific facilities in the building?

Strategic Objectives vs. Detailed Goals

Many times, the term “objective” is used in a more strategic sense; objectives provide a high-level, overall direction. For example, an objective could be to purchase a building rather than build one. This sets an overall direction immediately for all the related tasks that follow. For those tasks, which usually are more tactical in nature, we use the term “goals.” For example, a goal for “healing devices” might be to have three quantum biofeedback devices, two musical instruments, and 10 tuning forks—a very specific goal. Or a goal could be something such as 50K people seeing your website/year. In this step, think about the detailed goals for priority tasks in your project buckets.

Project Phases

Especially if your project has a large scope or the funding is coming in intervals, it makes sense to use project phases instead of doing everything all at once. For example, for a natural healing center, phase 1 might simply include purchasing the building—that’s your single focus. If the building drives the type of healing modalities you have, specifying that project bucket as phase 1 is a great idea. For example, if you purchase a building on a small piece of land, you might only have room for a vertical garden. Or if the building is small, you might need to pare back the number of healing devices you have. Thinking about your project in phases also helps you build in flexibility, and brainstorm viable scenarios that each might work well.

Milestones for your project also help you set priorities. Milestones can usually help indicate you’re making progress and can also signify the priorities (at different points) for your project. For example, a milestone for a natural healing center might be: All healers have accepted work agreements. Or natural medical products have been chosen and affiliate agreements accepted. Milestones often represent a group of related tasks, as shown in those examples.

Human Resources Needed

At every level of the project, who’s involved and what are they going to do? How will you find the right people? Where? Will you need to train them? Do you have a description of the tasks each role needs to perform? Will you need onboarding information for them? A natural healing center might need healers, office managers, gardeners, etc. And, the people involved in the project development might perform various roles required for the project (as discussed in the next step).

Roles + Responsibilities

With a clear picture of the human resources needed for implementation and project development, you can begin choosing who does what. Establish the responsibilities for everyone on your project team, as well as anyone else. One of the most popular methods for setting clear responsibilities for projects is OARP—owner, approver, reviewer, and participant. (Please research this method or any other methods that fit your project.) Each task, at a minimum, must have a designated owner to ensure that it is completed.

Costs + Funding

This step is straightforward. Research how much everything will cost, include cost projections in your project plan, and as you implement your project, you’ll also track actual costs. Total the cost projections for each project bucket (for example) and calculate the total cost of your entire project. Funding: Where is your funding coming from? (That’s very important to ensure that no strings are attached.) Is it coming from one source or multiple? Does your funding match your project cost? Why not? If not, possibly evaluate where can you cut back on costs. Important: If you must fill out a funding template for your project, at this point, you have most of the information you need, if not all, for just about any template.

One of the steps in project planning that many people overlook is contingency planning. If xyz (risk) happens, how might it affect your project? What would trigger xyz? How likely is it that XYZ will happen? If the likelihood is low, you might put that risk on the back burner or have a brief response plan. If it’s high, you might create a fuller contingency plan to mitigate it or adapt your project.

Final Timeline + Schedule

As you’ve been iterating through the steps in this stage (as well as using your preliminary timeline from the Needs Assessment stage), you build your project schedule—it can be as detailed as necessary for your project. The tasks in your schedule might include phases, milestones, priorities, and so on. They will also include dependencies: what must happen first for the next step to be possible? Establishing your project’s dependencies enables you to better manage your schedule, identify possible roadblocks, and minimize delays. A distinction to keep in mind: Timelines are usually high-level while schedules are more detailed.

Iteration + Reviewing/Testing

Iterate, iterate, iterate through these steps. At this stage, it might also be relevant to have various key people do a final review of your project plan, as well as do some testing on people who volunteer for it. When you’re satisfied the planning for your project is done, you’re ready to move forward to the implementation stage.

Action Items + Compass

Action items (tasks), who’s doing what and when (responsibilities and schedules), and clearly defined results (when you can)—at a minimum, that’s required at this stage, and it’s the only way forward to successfully implement your project. Also, remember your compass: Is your project still aligned with our team’s purpose (shown at the top of this page)? Is your project still aligned with your compass specifically for your project? If not, it’s essential to re-evaluate now and eliminate any “scope creep”—anything that’s really not in alignment with your project or is simply unnecessary.