Develop a project plan

It’s now time to develop your project plan. 

You’ll need some information such as the need statement we talked about earlier, things like your project title, project summary, your outcome goals, information about your capacity to deliver. So this is the skills and experience of the people who are doing the work and any strategies, policies, standards and frameworks. So any information that’s relevant for your project. For example, if you are building, you will need some information about that building and about what the D.A. which is the development application, which is typically required, information about how you’re going to implement it, so how you’re going to deliver it. Things like timelines, a bit of a stakeholder analysis, which we talked about in the previous lessons. Some risk management we’ll talk about shortly. And also some key milestone dates, particularly if funding is given to you once you complete a milestone. And of course a detailed budget. Different application forms, ask for different things. Some don’t ask for detail, but you will need the detail to make sure that you’ve factored all of the expenses. We’ve provided download one page project plan that’s actually going to help you think through some of those key things. 

The previous list is a more comprehensive list, but this helps you brainstorm. So things like what is your need statement, what is the solution? So what is that project you’re wanting to get funding? What are the outcome goals? What is the summary of your budget? Giving some examples of your capacity to deliver and any strategies, policies, standards or frameworks that you have in place. Or perhaps if you are using this as a pitch document to go and speak with a funder. You could also include information about how it aligns to their strategies, policies, standards, and frameworks. We are going to be looking at the application form and writing shortly. We’re still in the project planning stage. 

So let’s look at five top tips I’ve got for budgets in this stage. If you’re asking for quotes and you need quotes, ask for them to provide the price for when you are ready to do the work. If the work’s not going to be ready until, let’s just say early in the year, often at the beginning of the year or midyear, there are industry price rises. So that helps them understand you want them to factor in things like CPI increase, the consumer price index increase, understand what it costs you to deliver. These are your unit costs. How much does it cost you for every hour for your staff, for example. Understand what is fixed costs in a project and what is variable. 

For example, if you’re running an event, a fixed cost might be the size of the room that you’ve selected because it’s the only one available. A variable cost might be if you get more ticket sales than you thought, then you might actually be able to get a larger room, but focus on that fixed cost. Whereas the dinner, because you’re selling more tickets, then that cost varies depending on the number of people that are attending your event. And of course, the budget must add up. 

So if you are using a spreadsheet or a formula, just double check that that budget adds up and make sure you include some details on your calculations. It might be a while until you find a grant that’s suitable for your project. So including this information will help you when you are ready to write your grant application. Some top tips for risk management. Think about the risks that the funder cares about. For example, if they’re a health-based organisation, they would obviously care about privacy of people’s information and keeping that confidential. 

Cybersecurity is a risk that most funders care about as another example. Use the risk management documents that you’ve already got and reflect on how your project might modify those or what risks you need to include. So do some scenario planning to factor in some of those project risks, and include risks that are risks, strategic risks for your organisation, such as if you’ve got someone driving the project, what might happen if they win the lotto and move overseas and they’re no longer available to deliver the project? Who will? What will you do if you have that key person loss? A great way to think about risks is including a broad range of risks, and there’s a really good tool called STEEPLE we’ll go through and have a look at now. This is about your social risks, your technological risks, environmental risks, economic risks, political risks, legal risks and ethical risks. So STEEPLE is a good framework to do some brainstorming to see if you’ve thought about a broad range of risks, and of course in your application form, I really do suggest you include some of those risks. 

The other thing to think about is evidence and research. You will need to start gathering that evidence and research. So look for primary evidence. These are things that you’ve gathered. These are things like feedback from your clients or your customers or your volunteers, interviews, things that they’re saying. Survey results. The other is secondary research. There’s probably someone else who’s done some research in your industry. So think about those published reports. Have a look at the funders research. That is secondary research. Also consider research from two sides, and that is qualitative as well as quantitative. So qualitative is things like how people express their emotions and their feelings, how it’s data that captures those thoughts and those expressions. It uses describing words. This data actually supports when you’re writing stories and examples and demonstrating things to a funder. The other one is the numbers. Of course, we are talking about numbers, percentages, and ratios. 

So whilst you can of course translate qualitative into quantitative, it is ideal to have a mix of both. There’s a really good resource that I wanted to share with you that is available to you free, and it has a range of data, and it’s called the regionaldatahub.gov.au. So regionaldatahub.gov.au will include the link below, and that is like a clearing warehouse of all types of data that should support what you are doing regionally and regional means in Australia, everywhere, but the CBD essentially of our capital cities. So that should include and support many of you that are doing the course and the work and the projects that you are trying to pitch.