Build a work plan manually

A work plan belongs to one workstream. Most projects have several, one per function, and the Roadmap composes them into a single picture.

The structure

Work plans are hierarchical. Sections group related work; tasks sit under them; a task can have detail tasks beneath it. Each task carries an owner, a due date, a status and a percentage complete. Sections are what the Walk the Walls views read, so it is worth making them mean something rather than treating them as headings.

Building one

1. Open the workstream and choose to create a work plan.
2. Add sections for the blocks of work. For an IT workstream that might be Applications, Infrastructure, Data and Service Desk.
3. Add tasks under each section, with an owner and a due date. An unowned task is the single most common reason a plan stops being believed.
4. Mark the tasks that are milestones. Those are what the Roadmap and the steerco pack show.
5. Set status as work proceeds. See Track progress with RAG status for what the five states mean.

When to do it by hand

When the workstream is small, when you are adding to a plan that already exists, or when you know exactly what the work is and typing it is faster than editing a draft. For a blank page on a large workstream, generating a first draft and correcting it is usually quicker; for a plan that already exists in Excel or Smartsheet, import it rather than retype it.

Keeping it current

Meeting Intelligence can propose status changes from your calls, so the plan updates from the conversation you were already having rather than from a chase email. Those arrive as proposals for you to accept.