It is often after envisioning the end state that people begin immediately planning, but that is still premature. Most business environments are much more complex than we give them credit for on the surface. Even the best operations managers are unlikely to always develop the right plan the first time. Operations is a team sport. That means that you must not only have the cooperation of your staff and stakeholders in order to be successful, but you must solicit feedback and gain the backing of the same parties before you begin execution. This is best accomplished by writing down your thoughts on the proper approach.
Writing a draft of your approach to solving a problem in the form of a position paper or narrative and then socializing that paper to people with relevant knowledge or that might have broader point of view, context or a more complete understanding of risks or limitations will help you right-size your project before too much time, resources or effort is expended. Your solution design will be better in the end.
Depending on the nature of the proposal, this can take many forms from something as simple as soliciting email feedback to conducting formal meetings. The objective is to ensure that your thinking on the proposed problem resolution is complete and that you have buy-in and support from key constituents and stakeholders before you begin producing the detailed plan for execution. It can be helpful to give specific time recommendations for when feedback should be provided. Create detailed notes and diagnose the feedback to determine if it will result in a change in your proposed design. Do not simply react to feedback or criticism. You can't possibly know everything. That is why you solicit feedback in the first place. Many people write proposals with the expectations that they are simply accepted. Good managers write proposals because they understand that the feedback they receive will help their proposal get better.
Think about your proposal and everything that it might impact. Make sure that you have identified all possible scenarios. Let this feed your risk register and planning process in general. Play the scene out in your mind to try and visualize the end state and what the process to get there will look like. This will help you manage expectations. Only then can you begin to develop an actionable plan.
It is important for an operations manager to ensure that their plan includes five key components as follows:
1. Identify all use cases - Understand all of the system and human actors and document their specific relationships. This will ensure that your process flow or work stream is built on a sound foundation.
2. Design process flows - A good process flow should be iterative, starting at a high level with more detailed layers underneath. Identify all possible decision points, conditions and categories of tasks to ensure completeness.
3. Create a risk register - Establish an inventory of everything that could go wrong. Be sure to include an impact statement and a suggested action that might mitigate each individual risk.
4. Develop test cases - Test cases help you understand if you have achieved your goals. As part of your overall solution design, the test cases are critical to guaranteeing that your effort will be successful. These test cases form the basis of a checklist to ensure project completeness.
5. Outline all work streams – A sound project plan is really nothing more than well categorized set of work streams that govern all tasks and dependencies in order to achieve specific milestones.
For an operations manager, the key to a successful plan is really focused on the process design. All things will be built on the process design. This includes everything from training material to job descriptions to reporting and operating agreements between teams. It is very important that an operations manager has a good foundation in process design regardless of the discipline in which he or she operates.
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