How to Conduct Strategic Planning for a Project
Strategic planning provides a business with direction on achieving its mission and vision statements within a set period of time by setting milestones and goals. Strategic planning differs from a typical plan because such planning takes the external environment into consideration. Depending on the business's needs, the strategic planning for a project also includes details about necessary organizational design changes for the project, performance goals and needed resources.
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Instructions
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Develop the mission and objectives for this project. This should include why the business is taking on this project and what it hopes to accomplish.
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Conduct an external analysis. An external analysis is simply looking at outside factors that the company has no control over. Examples are new technology, competitive landscape, societal trends, demographic changes and political climate.
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List the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This is often called a SWOT analysis and helps determine how the company can overcome weaknesses and threats. A SWOT analysis also helps a business see how it can take advantage of its strengths and opportunities to be successful with the project.
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Develop milestones needed to complete this project. By breaking the project into milestones, you will be able to monitor more easily the progress of the project. Assign each milestone a deadline to ensure the project will be completed on time.
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Address major issues that may be faced during the project. These obstacles can be issues that are currently in place or that are anticipated.
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Establish a plan to overcome the major issues. This plan should include general approaches on how to overcome these obstacles, milestones to meet and how to monitor progress.
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Assign responsibilities. For each of the major issues, ensure that someone is responsible for carrying out the plan and reaching set milestones in case the obstacles arise.
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Set an operating budget for the project. List all resources that will be needed for the project, what the resources will cost and how the resources will be obtained. Resources can include additional employees, equipment, supplies or partners. If the project will last multiple years, then the first year should be as accurate as possible with the remaining years being estimates.
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