Planning
Ever heard of a Gantt chart? No neither had I! But a Gantt chart I was asked for and a Gantt chart I have produced.
For the uninitiated this is a way of showing when different parts of a project should be started or finished. It looks a load of lines or boxes on a calendar. If that still doesn’t make sense then I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart
My one shows the work I plan to carry out for the vulnerable workers project. It started life, over the course of a weekend as a load of post-it notes on a pasting table at my boyfriend’s flat but is now a magnificently eccentric publisher document.
I only understand how eccentric exactly because i ran it past a Gantt Chart aficionado (Fred Grindrod of the Recession and Recovery Team: take a bow!). Still quirky methods are to be expected from the self educated and hopefully everyone who needs to can tell what it means. It’s actually pretty cool to be allowed to plan a project. Planning is not something I’ve ever been asked to do before.
Initially I was concerned that I would be expected to return from the mountain with tablets of stone to be rigidly pursued no matter what. This led to all sorts of worries that the plan would be “wrong.” How could I hope to produce a plan at all when there is so much I don’t know at this stage?
It’s now been explained to me that of course the plan can change depending on opportunities and setbacks encountered on the way and I have now added set points in the plan for reassessment, if necessary changing things.
At the moment looking at the chart is monumentally reassuring because all that’s down for March and April is “Mapping.” This means scoping out the situation, meeting people, getting to figure out what is generally happening and so on.
When I have occasional (no, make that frequent!) moments of self doubt I can look at it and think that yes, so far all I have done is run about meeting people and chatting to them and yes that’s exactly what I’m meant to be doing. Onwards and Upwards then!
Filed under: Academy, Uncategorized
