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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.

To get anything done, call this execution, we need a plan. In simple cases we might not even notice we’re planning, but we always do. All of life’s this way, all day, every day, if we stop and think about it.

And as we execute to a plan, life happens and we re-evaluate and adjust: we re-plan as needed and continue executing until we either meet our objective or give up. Whether we’re running errands, building a house, fighting a war, or managing a supply chain, the same basic principles apply.

As our objectives become more complex so do our plans. We break our objective down into key steps, considering critical baseline conditions, and include enough detail to ensure feasibility as well as we can. We know things will change, so we include more detail in earlier stages where less change is expected, planning far enough out to see how we’ll ultimately achieve our objectives.

Most every plan requires set of tasks to be done in a sequence. When the sequence is intuitive we may not even think about it, but if there’s some flexibility, and it appears that certain sequences will be much more efficient than others, we’ll likely do some scheduling. We initially plan these tasks at a high level, lumping them into periods where we need them, then as we get closer we include more detail and apply additional skill and logic to determine a good sequence within the context of our plan. This is definitely a kind of planning, but a completely different, more intense kind.

Finally, some tasks require a bit of lead time to prep for, so we “freeze” this initial part of our plans, stabilizing them long enough to protect this setup effort once we get it started. We generally handle minor adjustments during this frozen period as needed, on the fly as we’re working out our plan.

The above concepts are intuitive, and perhaps deceptively simple; it’s what we do naturally every day. But the ideas are extremely powerful when applied in larger contexts. It should come as no surprise then that they comprise the foundation of general planning theory. To be successful in more complex scenarios, where managing all the moving parts at once and seeing how they’re all working together is next to impossible, it’s important to intelligently and consistently apply these same basic principles.

In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at Planning as a unique problem solving domain, consider its purpose and scope and distinguish it from both Scheduling and Execution. Then we’ll follow with similar analyses to complete the total picture, and then summarize what we find. When we’re done, we should have a much better sense of how to tackle our most complex planning challenges.