Effective operational planning

Turning strategy into an operational plan isn't about doing more things right – it's about doing more of the right things. In contrast to strategic planning, the goal of an operational plan is to see how you'll execute on your strategy month by month, week by week. This means coordinating people, time, and budgets across teams (and maybe across departments, too).

An actionable operational plan answers questions like:

• What milestones do we need to hit?
• Who will work on what?
• Where might we run into bottlenecks and how can we avoid them?
• How will we define success?
• What early indicators will tell us we're on the right track?

Once you have an actionable plan drafted, be sure to gather and incorporate feedback from the core team involved, as well as stakeholders. Operational planning is a process so don't be discouraged if your team goes through a few iterations before landing on a plan everyone can get on board with.

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This work is a derivative of Painless Operational Planning by Atlassian and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0).