Overview of Project planning

All projects – whether community controlled or within organisations like government departments – follow a systematic process if they are to be successful. Any project that wants funding must be able to show the leaders have thought about each of the process, which involves the 4 stages shown below::

1. IDENTIFYING NEEDS

.4.EVALUATING

2.PLANNING

3. ACTING

1. IDENTIFYING NEEDS

Needs of any group of men or boys can be identified by one of two methods:

Using existing data that shows a problem in a community (eg high levels of male unemployment; high levels of overweight men).
Collecting information from the community about their concerns (eg boys not having enough interesting activities in leisure time; men feeling “left out” of their families or communities). Often, we know that something is not right because of what we see and what people tell us. But this is not enough for planning a project if you hope to get funding. If there is no existing data you will have to find someway to measure the extent of a problem – what the problem is, how many people are affected by it, and in what ways they are affected. There are a number of ways to do this. The most common is to conduct a survey. Planning a survey is not as easy as it looks, so it is helpful if you can get assistance from someone who has experience in surveys – AMS, Aboriginal Health Workers in the Department of Health and staff from universities will often have someone who will help to design a survey.

2. PLANNING

Planning is usually one of two types:
Strategic planning - planning for the overall goals of a project – what changes you hope to make and how you will help the changes to occur.
Operational planning – considers the details of a project – who will do what, when, where and with what resources.

Both types of planning are needed for a project. For any project to be successful requires good planning (and sometimes a little luck).

3. ACTING

For day-to-day activities, a project must be well coordinated to ensure that the planned activities are occurring as best they can; that the administration of the project (managing staff, budget, resources & documentation) is completed to the level needed and at the right times; & that information that will be needed for evaluation is collected.

4. EVALUATING

The purpose of evaluation is both to help project staff learn for the future, and as a basis for reporting to funders. There are usually three areas considered in evaluation:

Process evaluation – how well the project was managed and functioned.
Outcome evaluation – how well the things that were planned to be done with participants were done.
Impact evaluation – what effect the activities of the project had on the participants.

The links provided in this site contain enough information for ensuring each of these areas is done well.