University of Palestine Dept. of Urban Planning Introduction to Planning ( EAGD 3304 ) M.A. Architect: Tayseer Mushtaha Mob.: E.mail: 13/10/2008

LECTURE 3. DISCUSSION FOR TODAY WILL COVERS; PLANNING CYCLE

PLANNING CYCLE,,, What is the planning cycle? Planning can be thought of as a cycle that prioritizes ideas, assesses their relevance and potential, and documents the steps in the work you are going to do. Ask yourself the following questions to begin the planning cycle: 1.What are the problems/needs that this project aims to address? 2.What is the goal and how will we reach it? 3.What are the required resources and how much will everything cost ? 4.What does the project timeline look like? 5.How will we check if the project is working and successful?

Planning cycle or (planning round) Planning is a continuous process STRATEGIC PLANNING; ACTION PLANNING; IMPLEMENTATION; MONITORING; EVALUATION

strategic planning What is strategic planning? A strategy is an overall approach and plan. So, strategic planning is the overall planning that facilitates the good management of a process. Strategic planning takes you outside the day-to-day activities of your organisation or project. It provides you with the big picture of what you are doing and where you are going. Strategic planning gives you clarity about what you actually want to achieve and how to go about achieving it, rather than a plan of action for day-to-day operations.

Strategic planning enables you to answer the following questions: Who are we? What capacity do we have/what can we do? What problems are we addressing? What difference do we want to make? Which critical issues must we respond to? Where should we allocate our resources?/what should our priorities be?

Only once these questions are answered, is it possible to answer the following: What should our immediate objective be? How should we organise ourselves to achieve this objective? Who will do what when? A strategic plan is not rigid. It does, however, give you parameters within which to work. That is why it is important to: Base your strategic planning process on a real understanding of the external environment Use work you have already done to extend your understanding of the external environment and of your own capacity, strengths and weaknesses

ACTION PLANNING What is action planning? Action planning is the process that guides the day-to-day activities of an organisation or project. It is the process of planning what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, by whom it needs to be done, and what resources or inputs are needed to do it. It is the process of operationalising your strategic objectives. That is why it is also called operational planning. When an action plan or an operational plan are presented as the basis for a funding proposal, or for a loan application, or to get others to buy into a process or project in some way, they are often referred to as “business plans”. (See the section later in this toolkit, From Action Plan to Business Plan.)

Most action plans consist of the following elements: a statement of what must be achieved (the outputs or result areas that come out of the strategic planning process); a spelling out of the steps that have to be followed to reach this objective; some kind of time schedule for when each step must take place and how long it is likely to take (when); a clarification of who will be responsible for making sure that each step is successfully completed (who); a clarification of the inputs/resources that are needed.

IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING PLAN THAT CLARIFY THE FOLLOWING,,, INSTITUTIONAL SET UP (RESOURCES) FINANCIAL (RESOURCES) TECHNICAL TIME SCHEDUALING MONITORING AND EVALUATION STRATEGIES

monitoring and evaluation What is monitoring and evaluation? Monitoring is the systematic collection and analysis of information as a project progresses. It is aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a project or organization. It is based on targets set and activities planned during the planning phases of work. It helps to keep the work on track, and can let management know when things are going wrong. If done properly, it is an invaluable tool for good management, and it provides a useful base for evaluation. It enables you to determine whether the resources you have available are sufficient and are being well used, whether the capacity you have is sufficient and appropriate, and whether you are doing what you planned to do (see also the toolkit on action planning).

Evaluation is the comparison of actual project impacts against the agreed strategic plans. It looks at what you set out to do, at what you have accomplished, and how you accomplished it. It can be formative (taking place during the life of a project or organization, with the intention of improving the strategy or way of functioning of the project or organization). It can also be summative (drawing learning's from a completed project or an organization that is no longer functioning).

What monitoring and evaluation have in common is that they are geared towards learning from what you are doing and how you are doing it, by focusing on: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Impact Efficiency tells you that the input into the work is appropriate in terms of the output. This could be input in terms of money, time, staff, equipment and so on. When you run a project and are concerned about its reliability or about going to scale (see Glossary of Terms), then it is very important to get the efficiency element right. Effectiveness is a measure of the extent to which a development programme or project achieves the specific objectives it set. If, for example, we set out to improve the qualifications of all the high school teachers in a particular area, did we succeed? Impact tells you whether or not what you did made a difference to the problem situation you were trying to address. In other words, was your strategy useful? Did ensuring that teachers were better qualified improve the pass rate in the final year of school? Before you decide to get bigger, or to replicate the project elsewhere, you need to be sure that what you are doing makes sense in terms of the impact you want to achieve.