{"id":20,"date":"2012-01-12T16:53:05","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T16:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/?p=20"},"modified":"2012-01-12T17:16:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T17:16:51","slug":"getting-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/2012\/01\/12\/getting-started\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting started"},"content":{"rendered":"

Putting the plan<\/a> together for a project like this is a critical part of the start-up activities \u00a0\u00a0Unsurprisingly JISC requires projects to produce a comprehensive plan in the first few weeks, based on a detailed template, which is undoubtedly the result of their years of experience, and is tailored to cover all pertinent information, but which nevertheless seemed somewhat daunting at first.<\/p>\n

The level of detail required meant wrestling with several \u2018chicken and egg\u2019 situations.\u00a0 How can I identify the post-project impact and create sustainability plans when we haven\u2019t necessarily worked out all aspects of the project yet?\u00a0 How many risks can I accurately assess when I don\u2019t yet know what\u2019s going to go wrong?\u00a0 We\u2019re in Donald Rumsfeld territory here, and suddenly \u2018unknown unknowns\u2019 becomes meaningful.<\/p>\n

Much of December was spent in mental time travel, projecting myself into the future to identify outputs and outcomes, impacts and risks as well as how to publicise and evaluate the project during and after its completion.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the issue of unpicking the assumptions about how the project will actually work, also known as explaining the \u2018approach\u2019.\u00a0 Whilst it can feel somewhat onerous to work through these details, it is ultimately useful, because it flushes out the stuff that you just haven\u2019t thought about.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s helpful to keep reminding yourself too that just because something is in the plan, doesn\u2019t mean it is cast in stone.\u00a0 Things will change as we progress and that is ok, as we can adjust the plan to absorb changes.\u00a0 Indeed there are already things that we are doing that have evolved differently to how we envisaged them only a month ago.\u00a0 The benefit of having the plan is that it provides the structure and thinking which gives you the freedom to make pragmatic or creative choices as the work progresses, without coming unstuck.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m now a convert to detailed project planning, on the other hand, don\u2019t ask me to start writing any other project plans just yet\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putting the plan<\/a> together for a project like this is a critical part of the start-up activities \u00a0\u00a0Unsurprisingly JISC requires projects to produce a comprehensive plan in the first few weeks, based on a detailed template, which is undoubtedly the result of their years of experience, and is tailored to cover all pertinent information, \u2026 Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[166],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/observingthe80s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}