The Importance of Planning Simply

After starting work with a new group of developers, I have come across a new technique of Project Planning. This process is a simple, efficient method of helping yourself and the client come to an early realization of the most important aspects of your project and their product. The goal at this point of the planning stage is to make sure everyone involved will have a clear picture of why certain parts of the process must have priority over others. The best part, all you need for this are two things: A pen and a pile of flash-cards.

Better ideas from simple tools

I have long been a fan of flash cards, sticky notes, traditional notebooks and other everyday materials in my design process. Flash cards are an easy way to create modular wire-frames. Traditional pen to paper wire-frames require you to erase pieces of your already drawn ideas, sometimes even having to start from scratch to add in a forgotten piece of information. This increases time spent on your wire-frame, as well as dirtying your ideas with smudges and getting all those annoying eraser bits everywhere. No one wants any of that.

Flash cards, on the other hand, allow you to create modules of your design. It’s rather simple: For the logo of a website design, write “Company Logo” on one side of a flash card. Now, when the time comes that you think that logo works better in the center of the layout, or perhaps in a section currently dedicated to another element, all you need to do is move the card. No erasing or redrawing required! Don’t even think about trying to sketch out the logo. This whole process is about seeing the big picture, removing the hurdles that are in the little details.

Same concept, new goals

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this same concept could be used to plan a project. While sitting in on a project planning session, the person in charge grabbed a pile of flash cards and declared it time to “tell a story.” What came next were a series of great questions and ideas. To tell a story you need a few things: characters, goals, and actions. For this process, we will choose a goal, and then figure out what action is needed for our character (the user) to accomplish this goal. For example, your first scenario could be: “To checkout of our store, what must a customer do?” Which you would write at the top of your first card.

Your typical scenario would be:

Add products to cart
View cart
Click Checkout

At least that’s what your first reaction most likely was, along with probably everyone else. Ok, put that on the card. Next ask something along the lines of “To add a product to my inventory, what must my employee’s (admins) do?” The logical response would be something along the lines of:

Log in to admin account
Go to Add An Item Page
Enter product information
Confirm and add product

Great. Add that to another card, along with the respective question. Your goal is to figure out every possible situation for each type of user this way. Everything from “How can a new visitor find the F.A.Q.?” to “How can an admin edit a customer’s mailing address?” At the end of this process each user’s story, and every route it may take, will be piled together in an easy to manage, modular format.

This is important

Now that you and the client have taken the time to pool all the features and these stories together, it’s time to start planning. This is where you start to see the beauty of this process. Ask the client to rate each card’s content. These should be gut instinct reactions. If it is a core, must have feature, give it a 10. If it’s really not an important part of the product, but would be nice to have, give it a 3- or maybe even a 1. This part of the process can be a little fun, and you should try to have some with it. An open dialogue of opinions is important in this process, and ideas should not be shot-down now, but encouraged. Do not be afraid of too many ones, or too many tens.

However, be wary of the ‘no decision zone’ between four and six. The only time I would recommend asking the client to reconsider their choice at this stage is if many of the cards are falling here. You can simply explain to them that a wider difference between numbers will give you, along with the client, a better understanding of what your time and their money should be focused on.

Lay it all out

Your pile of cards has now turned into ten or so piles of numbered cards. Perfect! This is where your project planning experience will come in real handy. Grab your tens, the most important features your client thinks they need on the website. We are effectively going to re-do the previous process, however now you’ll have to apply some sense to it all. For instance, to stay on our shop example, your client may decide that sorting products by color is an important tool. However, if your admin can not add products, or their color, into your database, what good is that feature? Building your admin section would be put in the new 10 pile, while your customers interactions with the products may be put slightly lower, an eight maybe. Yes, this seems like a common sense decision, but sometimes a client-and maybe even you or your developer- may not understand simple parts of the puzzle such as this.

A helpful tip- once you finalize the position of each feature, renumber the cards in an easy to understand way: a new location, a different color, a thicker number. Do not erase the original, gut-reaction numbers. Sometimes looking back and thinking about what caused these initial reactions can help you gain a bit of insight on your client and what is really important to them.

This is what makes this whole process a must do for me: 1. When completed, you will have your production schedule laid out in front of both yourself and your client. 2. The client now has a better understanding of the actual process of your work, and any confusion as to why certain aspects of their product must be worked on before others will be cleared up.

I love finding simple and effective solutions that are a great tool for both communication and effective management. Project planning is an extremely necessary part of any business, so why not find creative ways to not only make it efficient, but even enjoyable for you, your team, and your clients? You may find it even brings out more and better ideas than you first started out with.

by Brandon Brown