Summary Notes

Topics

  1. Implementing the Solution
  2. Approval
  3. Components of the Planning Process

Implementing the Solution top

Approval top

The first step in the implementation is to get approval from your organization to proceed with the chosen solution. Many times it may be necessary to sell your ideas so that your organization will provide the necessary resources.

This process may include the preparation of a document or presentation describing

  1. What you want to do
  2. Why you want to do it
  3. How you are going to do it
  4. How your project will greatly benefit the organization and/or others

The following short checklist can help sell your ideas.

Components of the Planning Process top

Carry Through Check List

Make an educated guess of what your solution will look like when you are finished.
Make sure there is coordination of tasks and personnel.
Constantly monitor your Gantt Chart to make sure you are on schedule.
Evaluate each completed task along the way.
Continue to learn as much as you can about the solution you have chosen. Read the literature and talk to your colleagues.
Continue to challenge and/or validate the assumptions of the chosen solution. Make sure no physical laws are violated.
Find the limits of your solution by making different simple models or assumptions that would clearly both
   • overestimate the answer, and
   • underestimate the answer.
Construct a quick test or experiment to see if the solution you have decided upon will work under the simplest conditions.
Plan your computer experiments (i.e., simulations) as carefully as you would plan your experiments in the laboratory.

Follow Up

Finally, in the Follow Up Phase, we monitor not only our progress with respect to time deadlines but also with respect to meeting solution goals that do indeed solve the problem. In this phase we periodically check the progress of the Carry Through Phase to make sure it is