4 steps to aligning your goals with your actions

In our previous article we offered you some advice that can help us to keep our motivation on a high level, which is, in a nutshell:

• Prioritization of our goals and deciding which objectives will bring us the greatest value,
• Keeping our tasks small and constantly tracking our progress,
• Small but persistent changes will bring us, significant, long-term results,
• Always ask ourselves why we want to achieve this goal, what the purpose is and what result we expect after accomplishing this particular goal.

And last but not least, when we have achieved our goal we can not forget about celebrating, which will help us to pause and really reflect on what we’ve used our time and energy for. This embracing of our success can act as a wonderful incentive to keep moving on with our important work.

Today, we would like to share our four-step process with you that utilizes the hints described above, and is based on efficient techniques that we will introduce and explain along with their psychological aspects.

Discover your long-term priorities with SWOT

In the first step we will encourage you to conduct a SWOT analysis that will concentrate around finding out what your current situation is and what your opportunities and threats are. Furthermore,  you will learn how your current assets and weaknesses are connected with your opportunities and threats.

Of course you may want to take a shortcut and skip this step by moving immediately to the process of listing your goals, but we do not recommend this approach.

As an outcome of this analysis, you will received invaluable insights for creating a long-term action plan, and you will have the possibility to:

• sum up where you are at the moment as a team, company, or person in your developmental process,
• plan your directions and specify where you would  like to be in the future.

We have already described this step in detail. You can find this article here.

Write down your goals

One thing that a lot of very successful self improvement writers such as Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Anthony Robbins emphasize is the importance of writing down goals. A goal that is written down can bring you clarity and focus. It can give you direction and a declaration of where you are headed.

Evidence of the efficacy of written goals lies in a study conducted during 1979 Harvard MBA program, where graduate students were asked “have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”  The results: only 3% had written goals and plans, 13% had goals but they weren’t in writing, and 84% had no goals at all. Ten years later, the same group was interviewed again and the result was absolutely mind-blowing.

The 13% of the class who had goals, but did not write them down was earning twice the amount of the 84% who had no goals. The 3% who had written their goals down, were earning, on average, ten times as much as the remaining 97% of the class combined!

So, as was proved in the research, the very act of writing down your goals vastly increases your possibility of success. This is an activity that we would encourage you to not pass up; after all who wouldn’t like to be in the top 3%.

In addition to the previously mentioned benefits, the process of writing down your goals also frees up your memory to be occupy with more important things, and allows you to be less stressed and more concentrated on crucial activities.

Our memories, in many cases, are also not very reliable. Every time we remember something we recreate what happened, rather than just replaying a film from our mental archives. During the process of recreation, we tend to leave out some details and change those that are uncomfortable for us. So, our memory can be like a leaking bucket.

So, take your time, and list everything that you have always wanted to accomplish or have always dreamed about.

You can look for inspiration in the results of your SWOT analysis that contains the overview of your current situation and suggestions for future actions.

Your goals can be short-term as well as long-term. Remember, the sky is the limit.

Prioritize: Important vs. Urgent

Research indicates that white collar workers spend a great deal of their time—an average of 41%—on unimportant activities. So, why do they keep engaging in them? Because ridding oneself of unnecessary work is easier said than done. We instinctively stick to tasks that make us feel busy and that seem to be urgent.

It’s just human nature to give more weight to things that are right in front of our noses, so weneed to use our willpower to make up the difference between the strength of our immediate desires and the importance of our long-term goals.

We can efficiently address this problem in our day-to-day work by method that was used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and is outlined in a quote attributed to him:

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

At first, we take one particular goal, and then answer the questions: “is this important” “is this useful?” “will I (or we as a team) be satisfied with how I (we) have used my (our) time and energy?”.

At this stage, we need to distinguish important issues from urgent ones that seem to be important, but actually are traps set by our mind that add additional priorities to activities that require as to put out fires, but produce little value at the end.

Task: Important vs. Urgent

So, our goal is to move the most urgent tasks to the long-term goals section, and put off all unimportant issues and come back to them if you have some spare time.

By focusing our efforts on working on fewer but more important items at the same time, we will get more done. Lots more, actually. And we will feel less stressed.

Try out this approach for yourself, and now move the most important objectives from left to right and categorize them from the perspective of time.

At the end of the day, when you will have accomplished one small but important objective, you will actually feel more fulfilled than after accomplishing several less important ones.

Add your purpose and the definition of  “done”

The more compelling that you can make your long-term desire, the less willpower you will need to close the gap between planning and acting.

In order to do this, we keep before our eyes only those goals that we are currently working on. We also need to constantly remind ourselves “why” we want to achieve this goal, and what reward or improvement stands behind this particular goal. And, as we proved in our previous article, knowing “why” is a highly efficient motivator.

Furthermore, we also ponder and describe how we will recognize when the goal has been accomplished. The vision that we will have of ourselves after achieving these goals will give us additional strength to pursue further goals.

So, we encourage you to write down the purposes for and the reasons why you consider these particular goals to be the most important, how you will recognize that you have accomplished them and keep reminding  yourself of these important points as many times as you can.

Plan and Act:

Visualizing your work and workflow carries with it many benefits, beginning with how our brains process information. The human brain can input visual information 60,000 times faster than written information. Since Kanban boards create a “picture” of your work, a visual display can make it quicker and easier for you to understand status and progress.

Kanban board can also place limits on your work In progress, and show you how fast your progress is. No matter how small it will be, it can motivate you to keep pushing forward, and to keep challenging yourself, day after day.

With this in mind, start your process of planning:

1. Write down all tasks that may bring you closer to accomplishing your goal. One task can address a couple of your goals. All added tasks will be automatically placed in the “To do” section.
2. Then, choose the tasks which will bring you the greatest value and move them to the “In progress” section.
3. Focus your efforts on working on fewer items at the same time - you will get more done.
4. All completed items are moved to the “Done” column.

At the end of the process set a due date for your goal, which will specify a timeframe for your actions.

Research suggests that the average person who is given two weeks to complete a task will instinctively adjust his effort so it actually takes exactly two weeks.

On the other hand, we are familiar with the Zeigarnik Effect, according to which it seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience disappointing. As an example we can recall a study in which participants received  “brain buster” puzzles to complete, but not enough time to complete them. The surprising thing was, even whenparticipants were asked to stop, over 90% of them went on to complete the puzzles anyway.

Due to the above mentioned facts, as a general rule we should keep our due dates close and avoid postponing them. We have addressed this issue by putting more effort on decreasing the size of our goals and task. We can chart our progress, and see that we will indeed finish, and, as mentioned before small but persistent change will bring us big results in long-term.

Summary:

Rome wasn’t built in a day; likewise, successful people don’t always know the right answer, but they keep moving anyway. Taking action will lead to answers, so don’t let obstacles stall you when you’re searching for the right solution.

You definitely are ready to spread your wings and take action right away. You can do this with your new plan.

CayenneApps – List of Goals - achieve your goal

In our next article we will focus on finding ways to make use of this special time of the year, and share with you our thoughts about New Year’s Resolutions. Stay tuned!

http://blog.cayenneapps.com/2014/12/23/4-steps-to-aligning-your-goals-with-your-actions/

16 Startup Trends That Will Be Huge in 2015

Image credit: Microsoft | YouTube

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in some of today's most talked-about startups, including Slack, Buzzfeed, and Instacart.

Andreessen Horowitz has its finger on the pulse of what's happening in tech. Over on the firm's website, its investors have shared 16 trends and themes they're excited about this year. It's a sort of State of the Union for what's happening in tech.

We've compiled Andreessen Horowitz's predictions for the 16 startup themes that will be big this year. 

1. Virtual reality

"Computer enthusiasts and science fiction writers have dreamed about VR for decades. But earlier attempts to develop it, especially in the 1990s, were disappointing. It turns out the technology wasn’t ready yet. What’s happening now — because of Moore’s Law, and also the rapid improvement of processors, screens, and accelerometers, driven by the smartphone boom — is that VR is finally ready to go mainstream," Chris Dixon, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says. 

We've already started to see the emergence of virtual reality: people are still excited and curious about Oculus, which Facebook announced it was acquiring last March. Microsoft and Apple are also reportedly exploring virtual reality too.

2. Improving enterprise software design

Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss says this is the year for enterprise to play catch-up. Enterprise companies need to get up to speed with consumer-facing startups, which have already created beautiful, functional interfaces, especially on mobile.

"Enterprise UI is woefully behind," he says. "All those well-understood motions that have taken hold from our everyday smartphone behaviors — pinch, zoom, swipe, tap, speak, even just moving stuff around with our fingers — have yet to take hold in the enterprise. The user interface has always been an afterthought, the last thing one did after building a database. That is changing now."

3. Machine learning and big data

Andreessen Horowitz's Peter Levine says we're going to continue to see big data as a trend this year.

"Where business intelligence before was about past aggregates ('How many red shoes have we sold in Kentucky?'), it will now demand predictive insights ('How many red shoes will we sell in Kentucky?')," he says. "An important implication of this is that machine learning will not be an activity in and of itself … it will be a property of every application. There won’t be a standalone function, 'Hey, let’s use that tool to predict.'"

4. The full-stack startup

Chris Dixon thinks you should put your money behind "full-stack startups" — companies that "build a complete, end-to-end product or service that bypasses incumbents and other competitors," he says. He uses Apple as an example of a full-stack company — it makes its own chips, apps, and retail stores.

Dixon thinks Lyft and Uber are full-stack startups. "Companies like Lyft and Uber said: 'You know what? Instead of trying to sell software as an add-on, we’re going just going build the whole service using our modern software.' They asked: What would this industry look like if it were rebuilt from scratch using technology we have today?"

5. Containers

Computing has become more efficient since it first started, but Peter Levine says containers will be huge in 2015.

"Containers aren’t actually a new thing. They’ve been around for a long time, but are taking off for a few reasons," he says. "One reason is because Windows has become less prevalent in the datacenter; one of the downsides of containers compared to VMs is that they can’t run multiple operating systems, like Windows on top of Linux. Another reason is 'microservices' app architecture driving enthusiasm for containers; these app architectures are especially suited to containers because they have discrete pieces of functionality that can scale independently, like LEGO building blocks."

6. Digital health

A lot of medicine that's being practiced today — a lot of the devices doctors use — is being designed by people without medical degrees. Andreessen Horowitz's Balaji Srinivasan says the trend of mobile and digital health will continue to increase this year.

"One center of action is likely going to be the mobile programmable medical record — the container for all diagnostics and test results — something like what Apple’s HealthKit may evolve into," he says. "All this diagnostic history isn’t necessarily 'big data'; it’s just never been tracked and cross-correlated before in one place. Once technologies like HealthKit get a little more traction, millions of software engineers without MDs can build new applications on top of that data store (perhaps collected by other applications) without injuring the phone owner."

7. Online marketplaces

Online marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist have been super successful. But Jeff Jordan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says the next trends to watch with e-commerce and marketplace spaces include businesses that are built by fleshing out niche services you'd find on Craigslist, like ridesharing or sublets; "mobile-first" marketplaces; "people marketplaces," where you can find niche services like Instacart or Glamsquad; and marketplaces for new segments, like B2B.

8. Security

2014 was not a great year for password security. Between the Sony leaks, the large-scale iCloud photo hack that resulted in private, naked pictures of celebrities leaking online, and security breaches at companies like Target and Home Depot, it seemed everyone was vulnerable to having their privacy breached.

So it comes as no surprise that one trend Scott Weiss is predicting will be big in 2015 is security. Companies that can identify when and where data breaches occur and then lock everything down and do damage control will be invaluable. 

9. Bitcoin (and blockchain)

Even though the price of bitcoin has been dropping, Balaji Srinivasan says there are three things to consider in regards to the cryptocurrency this year. First, he says, bitcoin is still really new — so we should except adoption to increase significantly in 2015. Srinivasan also says we can expect new payment applications to develop for bitcoin, and that we should consider bitcoin as infrastructure.

10. Cloud-client computing

Peter Levine says there's a lot of potential with computing today to make your devices work more efficiently.

"We have more processing power in our hands today through smartphones than we did in large computers decades ago. So why shouldn’t some of this processing move out of the cloud and back into the endpoint, into the phone?," he says. "Doing processing locally has its advantages. For instance, the cost of an endpoint CPU and memory is a 1000x cheaper than the cost of CPU and memory in the server. And in many places around the world, connectivity and transmission costs are sometimes far more expensive than the device."

11. Crowdfunding

When we think of crowdfunding now, we think about sitting at our computers and occasionally donating to someone's potato salad project or a movie campaign on Kickstarter. Jeff Jordan says this will change. "With smartphones in our pockets, we not only have access to crowdfunding platforms whenever we want, but to the crowd that comprises the various social circles of our lives — from family to school, work, and the region we live in," he says.

12. Internet of Things

Scott Weiss says the solution to our society's culture of planned obsolescence — where you constantly have to replace old or broken devices because they're not built to last forever — is the Internet of Things. "We tend to focus on the glorified outcomes [of IoT] but the mundane ones are equally if not more powerful," he says.

"The IoT could change things here, and create a new culture of repair. If you’re a small family-owned restaurant that can’t afford to constantly upgrade equipment or fix things, you can answer a whole new set of questions with the IoT: Is that freezer working extra hard because someone left the door open, or because its compressor is about to fail and you’re about to lose $6,000 in food?"

13. Online video

YouTube has been around for a decade, but Jeff Jordan says online video is still just ramping up now. He predicts YouTube will be carved out by entrepreneurs and companies for their own purposes. Besides new ways of monetizing video, Jordan says new forms of video advertising will emerge, and YouTube will start taking better care of its stars. Jordan also says other players could get in on the online video game too — it doesn't have to be all about YouTube.

14. Insurance

Software and data have improved, Andreessen Horowitz's Frank Chen says, so shouldn't the way we purchase our insurance also change? "Software will rewrite the entire way we buy and experience our insurance products — medical, home, auto, and life," he says, in three major ways: "By changing the way insurance companies price risk; by empowering an ongoing relationship between an insurer and insured; and by changing the way insurance companies pool capital." 

15. DevOps

DevOps — a portmanteau of the words "developer" and "operations — is a skill-set that any modern programmer should have, Scott Weiss says. He says there's a lot of opportunity for DevOps to grow this year.

"The rise of the hyperscale cloud datacenter has now made this job much harder as developers have had to hack together tools and complex scripts for pushing code to thousands of pancake servers," he says. "This complex cloud infrastructure — coupled with the growth of the DevOps movement today — has opened up many opportunities, starting with helping developers and companies to manage the entire process … to much more."

16. 'Failure'

"'The goal is not to fail fast. The goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.'…Enough said," the VC firm says on its website, paraphrasing a tweet by known tweetstormer and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen: "My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing."

Disclosure: Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, is an investor in Business Insider.

Business Analysis Brainstorming Sessions: How Does Your Mind Work?

They call it business analysis for a reason. As a BA, you’re expected to think deeply about a project, and then articulate transformative and lasting solutions. But what about self-analysis?

They don’t teach that in business analyst school.

When it comes to brainstorming sessions especially, it’s best to know which way your mind works best. According to the authors at Mind Tools, knowing which “thinking hat” you wear will help your career.

This is especially important for business analysts. To break it down, there are 6 “thinking hats” that dictate your mental MO. Keep in mind that every now and again it’s important to break protocol on how you think.

When you know the way you think, you’ll be better prepared for everything you’ll face in any given project.

Are You a White Hat Thinker?

If you wear the White Hat, you focus primarily on the information you have in front of you. As a BA, you’ll definitely be put in a situation where all you have are documents, and few honest reports from stakeholders. The danger here is that you may rely on past data that’s no longer relevant.

Are You a Red Hat Thinker?

Red Hat Thinkers rely on their emotional compass. Usually they consider the emotions of others when considering a solution. As a BA, there will be emotional elements at stake, so it’s good to think this way, but since there are “feelings” at play, there may be more than one person who doesn’t fully understand the reasoning behind your decisions.

Are You a Black Hat Thinker?

Black Hat Thinkers use “negative” thought processes—i.e. they look at all the possible bad outcomes that could stem from a project. It’s a matter of caution and pointing out structural weaknesses within a company. That in and of itself is not a bad idea, but do consider the certain positives along with the possible negatives.

Are You a Yellow Hat Thinker?

Yellow Hat Thinking is the exact opposite of Black Hat Thinking—this mode of thinking keeps you rooted only in optimism about the solutions you provide. But you can be “too light” when you fail to spot leaks in the integrity of your proposals and overall solutions.

Are You a Green Hat Thinker?

The Green Hat thinking mode reflects creativity—particularly how ingenuity is applied to the solutions you develop. The problem with Green Hat Thinking is that there is a lack of criticism. In your creative-drive the voice of reason hushes itself, so look out for that.

Are You a Blue Hat Thinker?

Blue Hats are usually worn by those who conduct meetings, as that thinking mode pertains mostly to control of processes. Actually, this is the best hat to wear, because when you need a back-up plan, you switch to Black Hat thinking. When you need a new angle in your proposals, you switch to Green Hat thinking. And so on.

Business Analysis Planning Techniques

Three Project Planning Techniques that is useful for Business Analysts to apply

There are a few reasons why it is really good for a Business Analyst to have some familiarity and practical skills when it comes to some basic (but powerful) Project Planning Techniques. Apart from the fact that most Business Analysts operate within a project environment and therefore should really understand the main planning activities and cycles that is happening around them it can also be extremely useful for a Business Analyst to be able to properly plan for their ownBusiness Analysis activities on a project using these Business Analysis Planning techniques.

It is also very useful knowledge for a Business Analyst simply from the perspective of adding even more value as a Business Analyst within a project environment.

There are a few specific Project Planning techniques that a Business Analyst should learn and a few concepts to understand to really perform optimally within the project environment. These techniques and concepts are very applicable when it comes to Business Analysis planning and estimation activities. On smaller projects where the Business Analyst gets more involved with working closely with a Project Manager (or even play the role of a pseudo Project Manager) these techniques are like your bread and butter when it comes to planning tasks.

So let’s now have a look at the three core Business Analysis Planning Techniques (borrowed from the Project Management Profession) that will help you in your role as a great Business Analyst.

These three Business Analysis Planning Techniques are distinct techniques but they all work together to build up a comprehensive Project Plan which turns into the Project’s detailed schedule. The steps to build this overall Project Plan / Project Schedule is as follows:

Step 1: Build a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Step 2: Create a Network Diagram (using your WBS)
Step 3: Create a Gantt Chart (using the Network Diagram)

Business Analysis Planning Technique #1: Work Breakdown Structure (Step 1 in Building a Project Plan)

The Work Breakdown Structure is a Project Planning technique used to plan out everything that needs to be delivered by the project in terms of Phases, Deliverables and Tasks. It deliberately doesn’t take the timeframe, the sequencing or any dependencies into account yet and should be seen as the very first step of Building a Project Plan / Schedule.

Let’s first define the specific terms you need to understand when learning about the Work Breakdown Structure:

Phase: The Phase of a project is a logical grouping of activities and deliverables that is grouped together for purposes of planning for a project. The Phases often aligns with the phases used in the Systems Development Life Cycle although this will be different when you plan for an Agile based Project.
Deliverable: A deliverable is a specific output that the project must deliver along the way of being executed. Examples of deliverables could be documents, software packages or any tangible result that makes the project progress to the next stage of the plan.

Tasks: A task in the context of project planning refers to a set of steps or activities that is typically performed to work towards achieving a deliverable. Therefore there will be a set of different tasks that needs to be completed before a deliverable can be achieved. In most cases it takes more than just one task to deliver an outcome. When you define your tasks you should break down small enough to assign to one person or one group with specific skills to execute. A task will be typically something that requires between 1 and 5 days worth of work effort.

So now that you understand the concepts you need for starting to build your Work Breakdown Structure. You should also take note that there is another approach to determining all the required work for a project by using a Product Breakdown Structure. This method is similar to the Work Breakdown Structure and achieves the same overall outcome but is underpinned with another methodology called Prince II. We will not be covering that method here but once you understand the Work Breakdown Structure Technique, you will be in a great position to understand the Product Break Down Structure too.

How to build your Work Breakdown Structure?

Ideally you should get yourself a big white board or a large table to work on. Get yourself some large and medium sized “Post It” notes and some different coloured marker pens. You are going to be sticking things on the wall and scribbling on them as you go, so make sure you are prepared. The reason using “Post It” notes are recommended is because you are going to be moving the “Post It” notes around and will be using them again when you start Step 2: Creating the Network Diagram.

Give your Project a Name: Take a large “Post It” note and write the Project Name on it. You then put that note at the very top (in the middle) of the white board or table as if it was the position of the CEO on an organisational chart.

Define your Phases: The second step you will do is to define which phases you believe will be involved with your project. For example, if you are planning a software development project you may want to have phases such as: Initiation Phase, Analysis Phase, Design Phase, Build Phase, Test Phase and Implementation Phase.

You should take the large “Post It” notes and write a Phase Name on each of them. You will then stick them at the top of your white board from left to right (leave as much space in between each Phase “Post It” note as you can.

Define your Deliverables: Now that you have your Project Name and Phases defined and up on the white board or the table, you can start thinking about what key deliverables each phase will be delivering. For example: Your Analysis Phase will probably be delivering the following two deliverables (as a minimum): Business Requirements Document and Business Analysis Approach Document. These are just two examples but you can image the type of deliverables that you need to think of here.

You should again take the large “Post It” notes and write the name of the Deliverable on the note. You then stick these “Deliverable”s under each Phase (where they will be completed) as if they are the Phase’s sub-ordinates on an organisational chart.

Define your tasks: Each Deliverable will have to be delivered as a result of a range of different tasks that was performed by the project team. This is now where you take each Deliverable and break down exactly what tasks must be completed in order to deliver that deliverable. Examples of some tasks required for the delivery of the Business Requirements Deliverablecould be: Perform a Requirements Gathering Workshop, Document Business Requirements, Review Business Requirements.

You now take the small “Post It” notes and write each task on the note and stick the tasks underneath the corresponding Deliverable on your white board or table. Once you have done all the tasks for each deliverable you will have the framework for your WBS all set up and ready for estimation.

Estimation

Now that you have all the Phases, Deliverables and Tasks outlined on the White board or table you are ready to evaluate each task in terms of how much effort is involved to complete this task. It is typically suggested that you write the minimum number of days (or hours for a smaller project) in one corner of the small “Post It” note and the maximum number of days (or hours) in another corner of the “Post It” note. You only do this for the Tasks because the tasks are the only things on your WBS which requires effort to complete.

So now go through each Task with your team and agree on the minimum and maximum values for each Task.

Milestones

As a final step before you complete the Work Breakdown Structure is to identify the Deliverables and Tasks which you see as Milestones. A milestone in the context of Project Management is when you feel like you have reached a critical point or achieved a significant result in the project.

With your team you should review all the Deliverables and Tasks and decide which ones are deemed “milestones” for your project as it progresses. For those milestones you should draw a diamond symbol on the “Post It” note to illustrate that the particular item is a milestone for the project.

Now you can stand back and admire the WBS. It is a great idea to mark each Deliverable and Task in a way which will remind you which Task belongs to which Deliverable and which Deliverable is part of which phase. This is important especially for the next step where you will start the build the Network Diagram.

Business Analysis Planning Technique #2: Network Diagram (Step 2 in Building a Project Plan)

The purpose of the Network Diagram is to ultimately determine the critical path of the project. The Network Diagram shows the sequence and dependencies that project tasks have upon each other.

How to build your Network Diagram:

You do this by taking all the ‘Post It’ notes which are the Tasks (put the Deliverables & Phases aside) of your project. Start to take them one by one and by starting on the left of the white board, you place it in the sequence of execution. Part of the objective here is to figure out which tasks can run in parallel and what dependencies exist between tasks.

 Let’s say your Project is to make coffee. Pretend you have unlimited people helping you do this project.

Task 1: Put the kettle on
Task 2: Find a cup,
Task 3: Drink the coffee.

You would place Task 1: Put kettle on and Task 2: Find a cup in the same invisible column on the white board on the left (working from left to right).

Then you will place Task 3 (drink the coffee) in the next invisible column along.

Task 1 & 2 are not dependent on each other because they can be executed at the same time and there were enough people helping to make the coffee and therefore you place one below the other in the first invisible column.

Task 3 is dependent on both Task 1 and Task 2 to be executed before you can start executing Task 3. This is why you place Task 3 in the next invisible column.

You should now try and do this with all the Tasks in your real project.

Critical Path

Once you have all your Project tasks outlined in the way described you have achieved two key project planning results. You know what sequence you need to execute the tasks in and you also know which tasks is dependant on other tasks. You now have to determine what the duration of the project is by working out what is the longest time-frame the project needs to execute all the tasks. Keep in mind that the number of people who you would have available to execute your project has not been determined yet. It is now just about understanding based on the sequence and dependencies what is the quickest and the slowest duration of the project.

How to determine the critical path?

When you determine the critical path you need to identify each task in each invisible column on the Network Diagram with the maximum duration assigned to it. Remember how you placed a minimum and maximum duration on each task? Now is the time to use this maximum number. So for each task that you identify in each invisible column with the highest maximum value, you should make a circle around the maximum duration for that task (preferably in a new colour). Once you have determined the highest maximum task for task in the invisible column and you marked them out you should add the maximum durations for all these tasks together. Once you come up with a total duration you will know that maximum length of time the project should take. These tasks you identified forms what is referred to as the critical path of your project. If any of the tasks on the critical path is taking longer to finish than the maximum duration that was planned for, your project is effectively running over the critical path and is therefore running late. This is why project managers are often very focussed on doing whatever they can to stay within the critical path of the projects!

Finally, you can a similar exercise to determine the quickest that project can be completed by identifying, marking and adding up the highest minimum duration values for each invisible column on your Network Diagram. This is another great measure for project managers because they will know that regardless of how many people they assign to their project, the project would need at least that minimum number of days to be completed.

You have now successfully created the Network Diagram for your Project Plan. You now only need to finish Step 3 of Building the Project Plan before you completed!

Business Analysis Planning Technique #3: Gantt chart (Step 3 in Building a Project Plan)

This final step of creating the Gantt Chart or Project Schedule is where people often start. Starting with this step is not a great way to build a project plan because you have not considered the WBS step or Network Diagram step in any detail. It means you will be guessing a lot of the tasks, their dependencies and durations with trying to start directly within a calendar based planning tool. It is really valuable to first complete the WBS and then the Network Diagram before drafting the Schedule.

So what does this step really entail? In short, it is a combination of your WBS (Phase, Deliverable, Milestones and Tasks!) and Network diagram (Sequence and Dependencies) with the additional layer of a calendar and resources. You are essentially combining all your steps with a calendar where you are able to see specific calendar months and assign and share tasks among resources for your project. It shows you the “real” duration of the project in calendar months rather than work effort required.

Use a Gantt Chart (MS Project) to put this together electronically rather than the “Post It” notes.

In Conclusion

In a nutshell, if you are able to do these three project planning techniques and you understand the underlying purpose of each step, you are set to start participating or leading any project planning efforts! You will by know have a greater appreciation for the benefits of how these Project Planning Techniques and steps can assist you in your own Business Analysis Planning activities. Once you applied these three steps in practice once, you will never stop using it – promise! Give it a go!