The planning is the programming of actions and of operations to carry out
- in a precise field,
- with precise objectives,
- with average precis
- and over one duration (and of the stages) specify (S).
Often outlined by a Todo list, it is concretized then by a Plan guarantor in a detailed and concrete way to the principal operational aspects of the type QQOQCC: who, what, where, when, how, how much.
The plan can belong to a Stratégie, this one being more general and permanent and less detailed. One speaks however about strategic Planification when a strategy is particularly concrete and precise.
Among the tools for planning, one finds the analysis (for example methods QQOQCCP, SWOT…), the Forecast, the Budget, the Scenario S (between which to choose), the Probability S, alternative solutions or of fold (to be prepared in the event of obstacle during the execution of the plan) etc
Scopes of application
In a general way, a planning is made to anticipate the various actions related to a Projet. One can thus find it:
- military Strategy, ex: : Plane Battle plan, of unloading,
- Management of Undertaken or another organization, ex: Plane Plane marketing, data processing, Plane of financing, and more generally Plane of business/Plane of company.
- economic Planning, ex: Development plan, Recovery package, Plane of austerity
- Town planning, ex: Plane of urbanization, Diagram of town planning
- and in good of other spheres of activity (spectacle, sport, voyages…)
Dimensions of a planning
Planning is the first stage of the Roue of Deming. Planning:
- makes it possible to manage limited resources
- raises partly of the chance
- requires a prioritisation of the tasks.
A planning associated with a Projet comprises four dimensions:
- the human Resources and the natural resources (men - “which”, the material, means)
- the Lasted (when)
- the quality (level of reliability of the result provided at the end of the project)
- the Functional perimeter (together of achievements, it “what”)
Sometimes, the fifth dimension is found: the risk. However, this size includes
- either the origin of a new functionality,
- or a resultant of the insufficiency of the forecasts.
Techniques of planning
All the play of a planning is to optimize these four parameters, knowing that
- the resources are limited
- the duration must be shortest possible
- the recipient of the project will always require a quality without reproach
- the perimeter is sometimes immutable
Cutting in tasks
The various techniques of planning more or less rest all on a project division in elementary tasks. These tasks are then scheduled, i.e. positioned in the logical order of realization or manufacture (one must plaster the walls of a house before applying paintings).
These are then the various tasks which are the subject of a planning. It is thus essential that cutting is most relevant possible: one could be mistaken on the estimate in the load in a task and on his planning with a more or less large margin of error, but if a task “were forgotten” during cutting, the margin of error will be, there, of 100%!
On the various techniques of cutting of a project, to see the article Project management.
Charge and time
Once cutting in tasks obtained (it can be carried out in an iterative way) one proceeds:
- with the estimate of the task: which will be the load, the time, the cost,
- with the planning of the task: when it begins, when it finishes,
- with the allowance of the resources: by which it is carried out, with which means.
The estimate can be done, in a complementary way:
- in load: how long is necessary it to conclude this task (for example, it takes 9 months to make a baby)
- in time: if the resources quasi-infinite but were used in a conventional and usual way, how long it “reasonably” between the beginning and the end of the task would run out (in our example, even if one had many moms, it would always take 9 months to make a baby).
Use of forks
A planning is composed of tasks (the functional perimeter). This decomposition can be realized recursively to obtain sub-tasks, which taken into account individually last one realization which is known or possible. To guarantee the risks of going beyond of planning, one will give for each one of these tasks
- one minimum duration (optimistic),
- one duration ideal,
- one duration unfavourable.
These estimates can then be adjusted according to several stages (derivative of the method COCOMO for COnstructiv COst MOdel ):
- to obtain a theoretical quotation of the project thanks to metric and a weighting according to the nature of the tasks to be realized and their complexity
- to adapt this theoretical quotation to the context of the project with a grid of evaluation of multiplying criteria providing of the coefficients of adjustment
- to distribute the quotation adjusted on the various phases of the project thanks to a series of ratios of ventilation.
Estimate of times
The estimate of the load or the time of a task is not an exact science and rests most of the time on the experiment of the planners.
However, some “laws” are frequently observed:
- the law of the Chronobiologie: the duration of any planned task will have a tendency natural to approach the chronobiologic expiry nearest and the chronobiologic clock is “discrete” and advances by with blows (the units of time chronobiologic are the day, the week, the season (vacation), the year). Illustrations: any work planned for 3 days will take one week, useless to plan a 8 days study: work will be finished next Friday, any launching envisaged in May will be done during the summer, etc
- the syndrome of the expiry: an expiry official, envisaged and announced, organized sufficiently a long time in advance, can be transformed into biological expiry for the actors of the project and thus can, consequently, being respected. But the stress must be sufficient to overcome the internal biological tendencies, with an official character (meeting of validation,…), public (meeting with thirds, presentation of results,…), impossible to circumvent (concrete object to produce, file, demonstration,…), and finally, irreversible: the convocations left for a long time…
- the theory CQFD, or It is Quasiment Finished Tomorrow : any started task reached a level of advance of approximately 90%, much more quickly than envisaged… but is stabilized there much longer than envisaged. To counter this drift, another extreme (used in very large projects) consists in measuring the advance of the tasks in a binary way: finished/not finished.
Allowance of the resources
Any planning worked out using these various techniques or methods (often used jointly) must be checked under another aspect: the occupancy rate of the resources.
With this intention, one represents the general planning of the project into as many individual detailed plannings than of resources allocated on the project, these individual plannings make it possible to check a certain number of constraints of organization of the project:
- breaking bulks: are the affected people occupied at 100% during all the time where one needs them? (see smoothing and levelling with the method PERT)
- the load factor: certain resources are perhaps not usable to 100% of their time (external meetings, functions of support, assignments partial,…)
- rise in progressive load: the arrival and the mobilization of manpower on the project must follow a bell-shaped curve “” in order to facilitate the human stock management (integration in the teams, formation or training,…).
A little humor
-
law of Weinberg: to know that how long takes to complete a work, made your most reliable estimate, add one, multiply by two, and round with higher ten
- law Golub n° 8: a badly planned project will take three times more time than planned for its completion; a carefully planned project will only twice take time envisaged
- Loi of Murphy: if one adds a new resource on a late project, that does nothing but increase the delay
- Loi of Hofstadter (Law of slip of planning).
Heuristic S used in software Genius
Economic planning in policy
See also: economic Planning
Economic planning (or economy planned) is a test of rationalization of the economic projects of a supposed country to answer the ideal of a perfect coordination allowing satisfaction of all.
Its requirements in term of information (the planner must literally all know) and of control (once the conceived plan, it must be applied and followed by the whole of the actors) corresponded in particular to the centralizing approaches, which it is of the Jacobinisme or the Socialisme collectivist “with the Frenchwoman”
The method, initially military and industrial, was thus sometimes extended to the very whole company during the middle of XXe century. At the time, the “obvious” advantages in term of coordination and thus of reduction of the Wasting and conflicts made think that the liberal model was exhausted and that the model Communiste or at least interventionist (inciting planning) would carry it.
Planning " pure" disappeared with the regression from the communist theory.
Planning in artificial intelligence
See the detailed article: Planning in artificial intelligence
The planning is a discipline of the Artificial intelligence which aims at the development of algorithms producing a list of tasks to be achieved to solve a given problem. The software of planning which incorporates these algorithms names planning. Classically, a planner takes three entries thus defining the problem: a description of the initial state of the environment, a description of a goal to reach, and a whole of possible actions. It can then extract a solution from it.
See too
- Law of slip of planning
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