Planning and managing projects

1. Tool C2Countdown planning
Countdown planning serves for rapid planning of projects or events.
Basically it is a mind-mapping exercise with a time arrow as the cen-
tral structuring device.
It happens frequently that spontaneous ideas come up in a meeting
or gathering of people, of planning some sort of anniversary event, a
publication, an important meeting, certain projects, whatever. The
normal thing to happen is that people start planning with what to do
next. Then would follow a time-consuming discussion on what else
has to be taken in consideration.
Assuming that the fundamental question of who is the target group,
whose need is to be satisfied, is more or less clear, in order to ren-
der such a first planning approach more effec-
tive and motivating, it is utterly helpful to
structure the process by a few simple devices.
• The first one is to start with the end. Fix-
ing the end of a process, its result, product
and date immediately structures the whole
way of thinking.
• The second one is drawing an arrow with
some rough time structure adapted to the
planning time you need.
• The third one is to go back in time till the
present.
Furthermore, it may be helpful to collect dif-
ferent aspects of the process on each side of
the arrow. In the example graph, the left side
is for organisational issues, the right side for
the content development.
It is like with designing a machine. An engineer starting from the
clearly defined needs of potential customers will design a different
machine as compared to an engineer thinking of realising the techni-
cally possible.
31 Dec 2008
Conference on
Countdown planning
Final programme
out
Deadline
registrations
Deadline early bird
registrations Draft programme
out
Website online
Bank account
open
Start
registrations
Call for papers
Deadline
call for papers
Fixing date and
venue
Juli
Juni
31 Dec 2008
Conference on
Countdown planning
Final programme
out
Deadline
registrations
Deadline early bird
registrations Draft programme
out
Website online
Bank account
open
Start
registrations
Call for papers
Deadline
call for papers
Fixing date and
venue
Juli
Juni
End-of-year conference
planning
21.07.2008, 10:58:29