Things never stand still. have to change in minor and major ways, including introducing new technology, reorganising offices, entering new markets, starting a new enterprise or department.

All change requires movement from the current state to the desired target state. Making this movement generally entails a project which can involve obtaining equipment, recruiting and training new personnel, identifying interim milestones and making sure they are achieved, and so on. In short, this means that a project to be undertaken.

Undertaking a project requires certain disciplines. It is necessary to understand what is to be achieved, how it can be achieved, when it should be achieved, the resources that can be used to achieve the goal and the constraints that have to be observed. It's also worth identifying the penalty of failure.

A key to all this rests with understanding how the project will be achieved. This entails setting out the tasks and then using this analysis to estimate, then cost, the resources needed. If the overall costs are too high, then there must be negotiation either to obtain additional support, obtain resources more cheaply, or decide what is not going to be done.

There are several project planning approaches, including various software tools that can be of assistance. In the absence of using these other approaches, this video describes the main factors that need to be understood and shows some simple approaches to project planning using Microsoft Word and Excel. You should also look at the section on process diagrams.