Schedules are not bolts from the blue

‘Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning’ - Winston Churchill

Schedule must illustrate the start and finish dates of the initiation elements and summary elements of a goal. Initiation elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the each individual milestone. Use Schedules for all small and big milestone that fit on a single sheet. Every single project, plan, dream being put into execution is with the singular objective of achieving success. Everybody who ever initiated a plan based on a dream must have a schedule to see that they make progress and success of their venture. Everyone wants to win, to achieve and to succeed. However, people often underestimate the importance of effective sustainable scheduling while initiating a dream to reality. You must ensure and assess:

- How you estimated your dedication and commitment?

- How you ensured that no hidden task left out in the schedule?

- Any risk not scheduled?

- How you ensured all resources are capable?

- How you predicted quantity is as per scheduled delay?

- Have you scheduled the review mechanism and self assessment?

- Have you scheduled measurements and performance indicators?

- Have you scheduled plan B for all failures/ lapses? And finally

- Have you ensured the schedules and task are aligned to your dream?

Different people will have different perceptions of what successful planning and scheduling means. Plan with scheduling for execution is a process of deciding in advance where one wants to get to the chief strategic goal, which is a part and parcel of your dream. The XV Olympiad in CALGARY involved nearly 2000 athletes from 57 countries in 129 competitive events, attracted over 15,00,000 spectators, was covered by over 5000 journalists, and was run by a staff of 600 professionals complemented by 10,000 volunteers. For those 600 responsible for organizing, planning, scheduling, coordinating, and handling the information requirements for the 16 day extravaganza, the task was overwhelming. 

The top managers of the organizing committee thus turned to a Computer Based Project Planning and Scheduling (CBPPS) system for scheduling and managing the 30,000 tasks organized into 50 projects. The goal for the CALAGRY games was to provide the best games ever, but within the budget. The philosophy employed was to let each project manager plan their own project but meet firm completion dates and budget limits. [R G Holland, ‘The XV Olympic Winter Games: A case study in project management, PM network, Nov’1989]

Take off your hat to a good plan

'Plan is integrated and it can't be developed without
effort and dedication' - Dr V V Rao

 The Pearl Harbor assault was a planned event for more than a year and the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet.

Yamamoto had two sources of inspiration for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

·        The first was the destruction of the Pacific Fleet and a Japanese invasion of the Philippines and Guam.

·        The second source was the November 1940 RAF strikes at Taranto, Italy, in which torpedoes heavily damaged two Italian battleships.

The event impressed Yamamoto because it was the first practical attack by aircraft on battleships. In January 1941, Yamamoto instructed Rear Admiral Takijiro Onishi, a renowned naval aviator, to prepare a preliminary study on the feasibility of an attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. The plan was completed in April and called for Japan to make a surprise air and submarine attack on Pearl Harbor.

The site was selected because it was a major United States military installation and a close enough for Japanese forces to approach with little risk of detection.

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, director of the air attack, spent the next several months developing the tactics and equipment necessary to fly to Hawaii and take out the ships along Battleship Row.

In November, after the Japanese government approved the attack, it became known as the ‘Hawaiian Operation.’ On November 30, the Japanese cabinet set December 7 as the date Japan would declare war on the United States. On December 1, Yamamoto's flagship in Japan's Inland Sea sent out a prearranged coded message — ‘Climb Mount Niitaka’ which was the signal to attack Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7. [The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater, 1925]

A plan is a formal statement of a set of strategic goals, the reasons they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the dream or concept attempting to reach those goals.

A plan can typically any diagram or list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve a goal. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a strategic goal.

What to plan?

1. A comprehensive, integrated, dedicated and committed efforts

2. Best resource utilization

3. A detailed and able to monitor, measure and continually improve

As such, planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. This thought process is essential to the creation and refinement of a plan, or integration of it with other plans; that is, it combines forecasting of developments with the preparation of scenarios of how to react to them.

Example: The 2003 Invasion of Iraq (19 March – 1 May 2003), was the start of the conflict known as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, in which combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations.

In both Pearl Harbor and Invasion of Iraq, the detailing was on the tactics, efforts, resources, timing and with supreme aim the victories were achieved.