Next Steps become Big Steps

Project Plan

After our successful demo, my manager and I sat down in our conference room with white board markers to draw out next steps. We began by talking about our expectations for the project and began very shortly to see the expectations of us from the sponsors had changed during the demo.

We went from proposing a solution to owning a program. The feedback given to us by the National Learning Leaders showed they were so happy with our idea that we should "run with it." "It" being the whole process and program of 4D Follow Though - the development driven interactions with leadership training participants over a 10 week period - that would be taking place in 11 different regions, 50 individual classes containing 1,000 participants a year.
Wow.

Daunted but daring - we began to draw out what that would look like: what would need to be put into place in the form of policies, processes, training and resources.
First - we started by stepping through the known process. Where were the delta points? What would we need to change as we moved the process in-house with a new tool. Next, we began to lay out who would need to be doing these things. What roles would need to change? What new skill sets would they need to have?
We looked also at how we would handle change management. This new tool would require additional effort from the participants. We would be facing all of the misgivings of the old system - plus a fear of the new tool.

I created a project plan to begin capturing the next steps. The project plan will be presented back to our project sponsors, who hopefully will bless our vision for the future.