It is (almost) always a good idea as part of a planning process to review and revise – flexible planning! English Heritage‘s MoRPHE planning process recognises this, which I like very much. But I have had problems trying to follow their product based planning, based on the PRINCE2 project planning methodology.
English Heritage’s MoRPHE planning process is to identify outcomes, then to work backwards to discover what intermediate steps may be required to meet that end point. They use the term product to characterise each of the outcomes. Then the tasks are defined which are needed to generate these products. However, I have previously studied David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done‘ (GTD) methodology, which emphasises a more task orientated approach. His main focus is on the actions required to complete a task. In practice, at the initial stages of project planning, both are required. Both top-down and bottom-up. My study of the hermeneutic circle helped me with this. How can you know where you are going if you don’t know how you might get there?
Knowledge of how you might get somewhere can help in deciding where you want to go – and – knowledge of where you want to go can help in deciding how you might get there. And so one performs a dance between the two – except this dance is rarely made explicit. It is this dance that I am performing right now – and – in public!
