A plan is what turns a good idea into work that people can actually do on Monday morning. Project adverts in Ghana ask for work plans, activity plans and budgets more than almost anything else, and assistants spend much of their time updating them. This section teaches you to build those plans yourself.
What a plan answers
A useful project plan answers five questions:
- What needs to be done? A list of deliverables and the tasks under them.
- In what order, and by when? A schedule showing which tasks depend on others.
- Who will do it? A name against every task.
- What will it cost? A budget with every cost line.
- What might go wrong? A list of risks and what you will do about them.
What this section covers
- Breaking work into tasks. Splitting a big goal into pieces small enough to assign and track.
- Schedules and Gantt charts. Putting tasks in order, around holidays, market days and the rainy season, and drawing a timeline.
- Simple project budgets. Listing costs with quantities and unit prices in cedis, the way donors expect.
- Risks and issues. Keeping a register of what might go wrong and what already has.