RACP - Project Design >> Designing the key features of your project >> d. Developing your project plan

Project Design >> Designing the key features of your project

d. Developing your project plan

Your project plan outlines the key activities and time frames within the project.

In determining your project plan:

Be as specific as you can about the activities involved to assist in setting realistic time frames.
Spend time on detailed design work, which can reap rewards later in the project, and resist the temptation to move too quickly into the implementation phase of your project.
Focus on political strategy and organisational psychology, as well as technical methodology. In developing your plan, work out who in your care system may be the winners and losers.

New evidence might suggest a pathology test is no longer an important factor in management of a patient - e.g. measuring plasma levels of amiodarone or tri-cyclic antidepressants. However, adopting a new guideline that changes management without consulting the pathology department (which may have invested money in creating and maintaining the test) has the potential to create resistance to the new process.

Expect that reaching agreement on key decisions within your team will take time and factor this into your time frames.
Develop a forward schedule for regular team meetings so that busy team members can plan their ongoing work commitments around these times. This will help ensure that project time-lines are not delayed by non-attendance at team meetings.
Ensure that meeting times also accommodate any time constraints that consumer representative(s) may have due to paid or unpaid work commitments, or ill health.