Week 8 reflective post

To plan or not to plan? I think that any effort that involves more than 1 hr and more than 1 individual should be planned to lesser or higher degree. All IT projects fall into that category, so all IT projects should be planned. Most challenging planning and execution projects are the ones that take long time to complete and involve geographically and culturally diverse teams. This is where project plan and project manager play crucial roles. I think that it would be utopian to think that plans would complete by themselves and just by telling people what the goal is that the goal will be reached.

Reaching the goal is far more difficult than that. It is easy for the resources (people) to get sidetracked and become “swallowed” by burning operational issues and problems which at that time appear to be more pressing than some project which is supposed to be completed 10 months down the road. Commitment to planning has to start on the executive level and executives and managers need to receive regular status reports to make sure that the project is on the track and to remove any obstacles in case there are problems.