In our first post we looked at the general theory of Planning, Scheduling and Execution in the context of daily life, in a way we can all relate to. Now let’s look at Planning theory in more detail.
We plan so we can see how to accomplish a given objective, so we know what needs to be done and when, so we don’t overlook anything important along the way. The more complex our objective is, the more critical our plan will be; the better we plan the more likely we are to succeed.
The foundation of Planning, especially in complex scenarios, lies in our ability to break down an objective into a series of steps we can follow to achieve it. Insufficient detail may confuse us, where we don’t know what’s next or we forget something; too much detail wastes time on things that should be obvious and that may change by the time we get there. Knowing how much detail to include is as much an art as it is a science, it’s dependent on context, and often involves a bit of trial and error.
To create a good plan we need to identify the key steps needed to reach our goal, and we need to understand and respect the interdependencies between these steps. We need to estimate, aggregate and summarize key details supporting these steps so we can reasonably and quickly ensure plan feasibility. When there are multiple ways to do certain things we need the ability to quickly evaluate our options and pick the best ones, and in dynamic or uncertain environments we 
need to plan for contingencies. We also need a way to measure how well our plan is achieving our objective, a way to monitor how well we’re doing as we execute, and an efficient way to re-plan when we’re getting off track.
Obviously, given the complexities we often face, the above is much easier said than done. Keeping our approach as simple as possible while achieving our objective is important, but certain kinds of complexities can indeed be quite helpful when we’re repeatedly challenged with the same kinds of planning problems: automating data collection, reporting and optimization can free us up to do the things we do best — analyzing situations, making strategic decisions and managing our business.
Next we’ll see how Scheduling fits with Planning and Execution.