Dynamic Planning — Bringing the Project Plan to Life

You saw it coming!  Just when you thought the planning cycle was finally over, something changed, and now you’re back to the drawing board. It’s the same old story: plan, redo the plan, and redo it again. Sometime during that process, the plan is complete, you dive into the execution phase of the project, and that is when it starts all over again. So, why should this plan cycle be any different from other plans? It won’t be, unless you do something different.

As planners, we have all been in this position at least once, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Thanks to the introduction of modern, off-the-shelf simulation tools, we can now take our static plans and make them come alive so that we can better model how the plan will execute. This strategy saves valuable time by locking in the process, resulting in a more solid plan. Before you jump in head first, though, you need to assess what you are trying to accomplish, and this all starts with understanding where your static plans may fall short.

The Pitfalls of Static Planning

At its highest level, a good plan is self organizing—it provides insight as to what to do, when to do it, what can go wrong, how to correct it, and, most importantly, what the new result will be. Even with the most thorough plan, it is nearly impossible to capture all that needs to happen, all …