Dr. John A.

Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Creating “Strategic Plans” at the Departmental Level

Introduction

There is a lot of literature for writing strategic plans at the organisational level but it is becoming more
of a trend for departments to write their long-term localised plans within the corporate framework.
Unfortunately, those being asked to create them have little or no background in writing them, even at
the organisational level. In this paper it is recognized that there is only one strategic plan (SP) in an
organisation, so at the departmental level the document will be called the “Strategic Integration Plan,”
or SIP for short, because the department must integrate its activities in alignment with the
organisational SP. The SIP will also inform what is called an Operational Plan, which is a collection of
initiatives (developmental projects) that would achieve the strategic plan.

There are two compelling reasons for departments or units to write their SIP’s: 1) to demonstrate
understanding of their role in the SP and how they intend to achieve it, 2) to deal with other issues not
found in the SP that require attention and address them in a comprehensive way. There is no other
document that does this, as most departments are just asked for an annual work plan and budget, so
they do not think any further than one year out. Yes, things are changing rapidly and the further the
planning horizon, the more unpredictable the future conditions will be, but that is not the point. Many
projects or programmes take more than one year to realize. When moving toward a vision, it may take
one or two 5-year planning cycles to reach it. That does introduce rigidity but a least a ‘stake in the
ground’ that says that, all things being equal, we should be heading in this direction.

Where the examples of SIP’s were surveyed, there are none that start with the SP. Instead, each
department creates its own SIP independently, as if it were an organisation. Some made reference to
the vision, but since there are many paths to a vision, confusion can result from this approach. How can
units assist in the achievement of a SP and its strategy when they are not aligned with it? The following
examples will illuminate this point.

Organisational Strategy

Organisational strategy can best be understood by applying a concrete example. Up until the
development of the DC-3 aircraft (1935), commercial passenger operations were out of reach in the
sense that one could travel the distance quicker or cheaper using traditional modes of transportation
(e.g., railroads or buses). A commercially viable aircraft would have to travel long distances without
refuelling frequently, be large enough to hold many passengers, yet have the ability to land on short
fields as the US airport system was in its infancy. Figure 1 points out the five technologies that would
make this possible.

The first is the monocoque body which is one without an interior ribbing structure--more like an egg
shell capable of supporting its own skin--hence making the aircraft lighter. It would have to fly at higher
altitudes to get over mountains and weather systems but at these altitudes the air becomes less dense
and the propellers get less “bite,” hence the variable-pitch blades that can adjust to thinner air
densities. Engines that are water cooled are very heavy, as two cups of water weighs one pound. Air-
cooled engines significantly reduced the weight of the aircraft. The retractable landing gear presented
an aerodynamically smaller profile to the wind, hence less drag. The first four changes allowed the
aircraft to fly much further on a gallon of fuel because of weigh and drag reductions. The fifth
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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

improvement of wing flaps allows an aircraft to land on shorter or bumpier (unpaved) runways.
Together, synergistically, all five technologies allowed for the birth of commercial aviation. Remove any
one of them and the advantage disappears.

Figure 1: DC-3 Five Synergistic Technologies (1935)

Organisations are very much like aircraft in that all the parts (departments) must be aligned to create
the performance necessary to operate within a given environment. A ‘water-cooled’ manufacturing
operations will weigh down operations. A ‘fixed-pitch’ sales force will not have the flexibility to get any
but straightforward orders. The problem with many organisations is that they have no core strategy,
which is discussed next (see Mintzberg’s “The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning” article).

Using another example from aviation, Southwest Airlines is examined and how it demonstrates synergy
organisationally. It starts with their vision of being a short-haul carrier as articulated in Figure 2. They
are not trying to be everything to everyone (which is always bad strategy). The question then becomes,
what type of “creature” do they need to become in order to do that? That creature’s capabilities are
expressed in the green circles, which in SP language are strategic objectives. The yellow circles indicate
what needs to be done to convert Southwest from what it is now to what it needs to be—a lot of
internal change. Therefore, all SIP’s must support this new organisational strategy, which means that
they must make significant changes.

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Figure 2: Southwest Airlines Strategy Map

Table 1 illustrates possible changes that departments must make to successfully realize the
organisational strategy in Figure 2.

Table 1. Departmental Shifts in Focus

Department Current Focus New Focus

Fleet Operate several different types of Standardise the fleet using 737s (short
Management aircraft (short, medium, and long range aircraft)
haul)
Operations & Operate during peak times Operate at “all” times (high aircraft
Scheduling utilization)
Provide scheduled connections No forced scheduled connections with
with other carriers other carriers
HR Traditional incentives Employees stock ownership plans
Rigid 3-year union contracts Flexible union contracts
Pay prevailing wages Attract talented people by compensating
them better
Reservations Handled by travel agents Online and automated ticketing processes
Ground Handling A lot of time spent loading meals, Eliminate meals, have open seating (first
seating everyone by seat number, come first serve), and discontinue (forced)
and processing baggage transfers baggage transfers so that turnaround time
at the gate is 15 minutes max

The question then is, what is the departmental role and focus in the SP and what changes are necessary
to make that a reality? That is the way it is supposed to work, it is like assembling a space station in

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Figure 3, where there is a finished product in mind and everyone is working from the same blueprint.
This approach can be called strategy-driven, as it is the type of creature that is required to operate in a
weightless, cold, airless, and high radiation environment. In many cases organisations have no core
strategy, therefore every department directly seeks to realize the vision, the path to which can take
many forms. The analogy of landscaping the backyard captures this approach with the only instruction
given is to contribute to making a beautiful garden (vision). Each department has an idea of what that
means and how to get there but the end product may look pretty but not be very useful, as they are
acting in isolation, sticking things here and there, as their wits construe.

Space Station Model (Strategy Driven) Landscaping Model (Vision Driven)

Figure 3: Two different strategic planning drivers.

The differences in approach are illustrated in Figure 4 with two types of light. The vision-driven
approach is like a light bulb with each unit doing “its own thing” and thus scattering the light diffusely.
The strategy-driven approach ensures that all departments are aligned and working synergistically with
the kind of focus so that all energy can be brought to bear in one direction and can cut through metal.

Figure 4: Directional diffusion or alignment

For organisations that do not deeply understand strategic planning, the default or substitute for strategy
is often “Operational Effectiveness” which is improving how things are done. Even without any kind of
SP, all units should constantly be looking for ways to conduct their processes quicker, better, cheaper,
and safer without any directives from on high just to keep up with the competition. That is called

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

“Continuous Improvement” or the Japanese term “Kaizen.” Improvements in operational effectiveness

are very easy to copy and available to all players. Strategy, on the other hand, is very difficult to imitate.
It is only when a process is itself a competitive advantage that its improvement becomes a strategic
issue. Part of Walmart’s competitive advantage is its supply-chain management systems that provides a
supply of items just-in-time for sales thus minimizing the need for costly warehousing operations.

Figure 5 demonstrates a “strategy-less” strategic planning process. Strategy answers the question of
how to we achieve our goals, as there are many paths. This models jumps directly from goals to
activities thus bypassing strategy altogether.

Figure 5: Traditional “strategic planning” without strategy

The previous discussion surfaces a problem that persons outside of the planning field may have trouble
making a distinction between what is “strategic” vs. “operational.” Strategic deals with the larger picture
and the following types of issues:

1. The organization’s future or direction (vision)

2. The relationship to an organization’s key stakeholders, competitors, or regulators (mission and
business model)
3. The organization’s strengths and weaknesses, values, and culture (as it promotes/constrains
what is possible)
4. Any issue that affects the whole or most of the organization (not just one or several
departments), especially major change initiatives or strategies
5. Anything dealing with the expression of an organization’s core competencies, especially in how
it creates and delivers its products, programmes, or services
6. A unique process that provides a strategic advantage over its competitors
7. Any capital purchase/investment/debt of a large amount
8. A merger/joint venture, restructuring, or creation of a new organizational entity
9. Resources, when their disruption threatens operations
10. Catastrophic events whether natural or man-made, including the emergence of a disruptive
technology or products from competitors

In short, any issue/opportunity that can make-or-break the organization is a strategic one. Everything
else is operational. So the strategic question is, ‘are we doing the right things in the first place.’ Once we
are sure that is the case, then we must ask, ‘are we doing those right things, right?’ which is an
operational or process question. Figure 6 depicts this double-loop relationship.

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Figure 6: Strategic (External) vs. Operational (Internal) concerns.

In organisations with “strategy-less” strategic plans, the departments will have to review the SP for any
goals or strategic objectives that affect them or that they can influence or support. Otherwise, they
must operate from their own perspectives and make the assumption that their role or mandate has not
changed, but that they need to focus on operational effectiveness in doing what they do, better.

Some organisations are introducing the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) methodology which provides an
approach to develop, execute, manage, measure, report and evaluate strategic activities. In this
framework, upper level objectives are cascaded down to operational units, but even organisations using
BSC can miss core strategy and substitute strategic objective-level strategy in its place. A good way to
make a distinction between core strategy (space station) is to use an uppercase “S” when speaking
about it and a lowercase “s” when answering the question, ‘how will the department change to
contribute to the core strategy?’ The BSC employs a strategy map which shows how the strategic
objectives synergize to support the core strategy similar to the Southwest Airlines diagram in Figure 2.

Sources of Change Input

There are several sources of input for any change (improvement) activities in a department that can be
classified under three headings:

1. STRATEGIC:
a. Organisational Strategic Plan (and the derivative Operational Plan)
b. Unit-Vision driven (within the framework of the above)
2. OPERATIONAL: Infrastructure improvements (better, faster, cheaper, safer, etc.)
a. Physical (buildings, facilities, major equipment, etc.)
b. System (processes and IT used to support them)
c. Human (training and development, staffing levels, etc.)
3. ADMINISTRATIVE: Compliance with existing/new regulations/requirements
a. External (government or regulatory laws/requirements)
b. Internal (HR, IT, finance, legal, security, safety, etc.)

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

First, a brief discussion on the nature of work to classify different activities. All productive work can be
classified under one of three headings (the 3P’s).

Project – a one-time activity with a beginning and end that creates deliverables (outputs) that
are generally used to improve or maintain a process or create something new (e.g., set up a
database, build a facility, install a new phone system, train staff, etc.)

Process – a routine set of activities guided by a set of procedures usually done year round that
turn inputs into outputs that satisfy either an external customer (core processes) or an internal
customer (support processes) at a prescribed level of performance (standard) (e.g., processing
invoices for payment, registering students, approving leave requests, etc.)

Programme – shares characteristics of both projects and processes, in that, it is a routine part of
operations--but is not continuous like a process--but done periodically (like annually); they are
planned and executed as if they were projects (e.g., annual alumni Christmas dinner, sports day,
student orientation, TV shows, etc.); conversely, processes are not “planned” but are procedure
driven.

Each department will have a different mix of the 3P’s. Some are heavy in the process side (e.g., all
support units), in some projects dominate (e.g., IT), and other programmes take a lion’s share (e.g.,
Alumni events). There is a fourth category of work that is called “administrative” that must be done but
it is not considered productive work. Figure 7 shows the relationship of all the components and how
they feed into the SIP. The terms unit and department can be used interchangeably.

UWI Unit-Level Unit Unit

VISION VISION PROCESSES PROGRAMMES

UWI
Improvements Improvements
Strategic
Needed Needed
Plan

Unit
Campus Unit 5-Year
Strategic Unit Annual
Operational Operational
Integrated PROJECTS
Plan Plan
Plan

Government Compliance Internal

Regulations Required Regulations

Unit
ADMIN

Figure 7: Inputs for the Unit-Level Strategic Integration Plan (SIP)

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

In creating a SIP, as described earlier, a SP may require a change in the role or focus of a department
(Table 1). The SIP will have to articulate what that would look like, what needs to change (trade-offs:
starting doing this, stop doing that, continue doing…), what resources are required, and the level of
performance that can be expected. The campus Operational Plan may provide more localised direction
on how this will be accomplished. For organisations with no core strategies, the unit will have to
interpret its vision from the SP vision and operate on that basis. The end point here is to identify all
initiatives (developmental projects) required to support the SP. But, the SP is not the only source of
change that affects units.

The authors of the SP often times do not have technical or detailed insight at the unit level to envision
what it could be and here is where the unit-level vision of what is possible becomes important,
especially when there is little guidance in terms of directives (lack of ‘space station’ strategy) from the
SP. Of course, the unit vision must contribute to the organisational vision and we could be back to the
Figure 3 landscaping model. If this vision requires additional resources the Head must be prepared to
sell it and lobby for it amongst competing interests.

Make an assumption for a moment that your organisation does not have a SP, does your unit have
required infrastructure to carry out its current mission (functions)?

1. Adequate staffing levels

2. Competent staff and supervision
3. Adequate facilities, equipment, tools, materials
4. Information (timely, accurate data in the format you need it when you need it to do a task)
5. Appropriate working conditions, compensation, and incentives
6. Performance management system

In other words, can you execute all your current processes and programmes effectively and meet
performance standards? Or, do you have delays, backlogs, poor quality, missed deadlines, shortages, or
poor customer service, or other operational problems that need to be addressed? Like the public
service, many times the only way that politicians know something is wrong is when they see tyres being
burnt in the streets or are facing lawsuits. When everyone is silent they assume everything is OK. That
situation is really a crude “reporting system,” as they do not have a proper performance management
system that defines a problem as a gap between desired performance and actual performance (that
politicians would monitor internally, not on TV). The end point here is to identify developmental
projects that address operational shortcomings.

Finally, administration is often about complying with requirements from other internal units or
externally from the government or other stakeholders that have the power to enforce regulations.
Sometimes to comply requires significant changes in processes (e.g., pollution standards, worker safety,
product changes, etc.). The end point here is to identify projects that would bring the unit into
compliance.

So all these sources of change are potential input for a SIP and like any balancing act it only has a limited
amount of resources and must decide how to structure change initiatives over its 5-year Operational
Plan first, then extract the highest priority initiatives for its upcoming annual plan which would be
articulated in its Work Plan. Note that formal Operational Plans are usually made for 2 or 3 year periods,
but the initial outlook should be the full five years to see how everything fits together over the long run.

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Operational Plans (OP) may be replaced by the Balanced Scorecards in the next SP cycle but have a lot of
overlap. They should include only projects that support the SP--not operational improvement or
administrative compliance--unless those areas are of strategic importance. Certainly, the OP should not
contain processes or programmes themselves as these are routine activities.

SIP Content Templates

Given the foregoing discussion, you should be in a position to get the information that you need from
the various input sources. To assist you in structuring it the following four tables (A – D) have been
provided to organise your information and then in the following section to insert it into a SIP document
to complete the process.

Table A translates the strategic plan content into your unit’s role in supporting it. Everything you do
should be in that framework and support the organisation as a whole. You would fill in the information
from the SP on the left side, then translate those items in the right-hand column that apply to your unit.
If your SP does not happen to have a lot of direct relevance to your operations then the next table
might.

Table A. Translating the Organisational Strategic Plan

Area Strategic Plan Content Area Unit-Level Translation

Mission Mission
Vision Vision
Values Values
SWOT-Ext SWOT-Ext
SWOT-Int SWOT-Int
Goals Goals
Objectives Objectives
KPI’s PI’s
Issues Issues
Strategy Strategy
Implications

Table B takes your campus Operational Plan (or Balanced Scorecard) to see which strategic objectives
(SO) and initiatives that you can either support or create those that will support the campus plan. “DOP”
is the Departmental Operational Plan. Keep the numbering scheme the same when matching SP SO’s
but you can use letters (A, B, C…) instead of numbers if you create your own unit-level objectives (as
seen at the bottom of the table).

Table B. Translating the Campus Operational Plan

COP Campus Operational Plan Content DOP Unit-Level Matches & New SO’s
SO-1 SO-1
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-2 SO-2
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-3 SO-3
Initiatives Initiatives

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SO-4 SO-4
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-A
Initiatives
SO-B
Initiatives

Table C identifies projects that you find necessary to improve process and programme performance,
even if there were no strategic plan objectives directing you to do so.

Table C. Process & Programme Improvement

Unit Process/ Problem or Project Title Project Description

Programme Opportunity

Finally, Table D identifies projects that do not necessarily improve your unit’s operations but are
required by law, regulation, or internally by another department (HR, Finance, Safety, IT, Security, Legal,
etc.).

Table D. Administrative Compliance

Source Requirement Project Title Project Description

(Regulator)

Each project will eventually need a plan to determine staff and resources required, costs, duration, and
man hours. The Project Planner template (see Appendix) has been provided for this purpose

The SIP Document

The SIP document could have the following headings to standardise its format across the campus. Under
each heading are notes on what type of information to include in the body and provides an idea of how
many pages each section should be (in parenthesis). This document would only be created once every

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

five years, but you certainly want to update its components on an annual basis because of unforeseen
changes in your operational environment.

1.0 Executive Summary (1 -2 pages)

This piece is written last and pulls out the critical information that a person who does not have time to
read the entire SIP needs to know about the strategic direction of your unit and its challenges. It should
briefly describe what your unit is responisble for including its vision and mission statements, the
challenges it faces as it works toward its vision, the key strategy or strategies that will address the
challenges in order to realize the vision, and some idea of special resources required to do so. If not
contained in the foregoing it must demonstrate how it is supporting the UWI strategic plan, citing
directive strategic objectives in particular. It can wrap up with Critical Success Factors, which are
conditions necessary for success that are not under the direct control of the unit (e.g., top management
support, timely access to requested resources or information, etc.)

2.0 Introduction & Background (2 – 3 pages)

Start with an description of your unit’s mandate or purpose and pretend the reader knows almost
nothing about your unit. Provide a brief history of when you were formed or evolved or split off from
historical units. If you are a new unit you should have already written a Terms of Reference document
that outlines your purpose, major roles and goals, jurisdiction, boundaries with other units doing similar
work, authorities granted, and governance and advisory documents and bodies. Provide a brief sketch of
your operating environment and its major challenges to provide context (more fully developed in the
SWOT analysis).

3.0 Review of Previous Strategic Integration Plan 20XX – 20XX (2 - 3 pages)

If your unit was around for the previous SP you can analyze it from two perspectives: the process and
the outcomes (performance). You would describe the process or model you used to research, create,
execute, monitor, update, adjust, and report on your SIP, comment on its effectiveness and provide a
“Lessons learnt” section that will inform the design of the current SIP. You should have been measuring
your performance against your strategic objectives that you can report on. Where you fell short of the
target you can have a brief discussion on the challenges invovled, as most likely they will still be around
as you execute your new SIP. You may also want to discuss peformance on the initiative (project) level
or refer to reports that contain that information. Describe any significant events that arose during the
planning period that required a modification of the SIP or initiatives. Describe what was not completed
in the last planning cycle that will be rolled over into the new SP.

For more information on this process you can read my Chapter 9 entitled, “A Summative Evaluation
Model for Strategic Planning in Tertiary Education” in Quality Higher Education in the Caribbean, a UWI
Press publication. It contains questions for every phase of the SP for you to answer and provides sample
report headings to cluster them under.

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

4.0 SWOT Analysis (1-2 pages)

For this section you can use information from Table A containing the SP SWOT and your unit-level
SWOT. Speak about the challenges and implications for the “WT” items because strategy at your level
will probably involve surmounting the critical challenges so that you can achieve your vision. Sometimes
“Threats” are really opportunities disguished as problems depending on how you think about them.

5.0 Vision, Mission & Core Values (1 page)

Here again you use information from Table A of SP expressions of these three areas and opposite them,
you can craft your own more localised versions tailored to your unit. See definitions for each term
below.

Item Definition
Vision The future desired state of an organisation (3-5 years) that details its capabilities or nature.
Mission A statement of why the organization exists—its purpose. Most missions include a value
proposition of how delivers its value that differentiates it from competitors.
Values What is important behaviorally. Values have two types: eternal and environmentally-specific.
Eternal values are always valid, but environmental values are ways to be successful in a particular
environment (e.g., Industrial Age vs. Knowledge Age). Core values are how employees should
behave on their way to the vision, especially leaders. They should not exceed 5 in number or focus
will be lost (everything is important).

6.0 Strategy & Objectives (1-2 pages)

This can be the most difficult section, but start of with SP strategies in Table B, or in its absence, the
strategic objectives. See if they were modified at the campus level and what initiatives are specified that
you must either: 1) execute, or 2) support. Insert Table B and provide a narrative of how and why your
initatives are necessary and sufficient to realise the strategic objectives.

Table B. Translating the Campus Operational Plan

COP Operational Plan Content DOP Unit-Level Matches & New SO’s
SO-1 SO-1
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-2 SO-2
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-3 SO-3
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-4 SO-4
Initiatives Initiatives
SO-A
Initiatives
SO-B
Initiatives

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

7.0 Operational Infrastructure Projects (2 pages)

Insert your SIP Process & Programme Improvement (Table C) and include a narrative on each project and
how it will improve performance and some of the major challenges in executing it.

Table C. Process & Programme Improvement

Unit Process/ Problem or Project Title Project Description

Programme Opportunity

8.0 Administrative Compliance Projects (1 page)

Insert Table D “Administrative Compliance” along with a narrative for each project providing a rationale.

Table D. Administrative Compliance

Source Requirement Project Title Project Description

(Regulator)

9.0 Projects Master Plan (2 pages)

In this section, you will give the reader a sense of how all the projects will be distributed over the five-
year period. Eventually you will have complete the Project Planner (Appendix) for each project to
determine exact costs, durations, and man-hours required. You may want to only insert project names
at this point and have your superior review the table below first and make recommendations, as you
don’t want to spend time planning projects that will never be approved. When the overall scheme is
approved then you can start project planning for each approved project and then add “Cost” and
“Hours” information to the table with annual sums at the bottom. List of all projects in descending
order of priority and sequence over 5 years. See the following section of this paper for tips on ranking
them.

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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Table E. Projects Master Plan

Area Project Year-1 Year-2 Year-3 Year-4 Year-5

Names
Strategic Cost
Hours
Names
Operational Cost
Hours
Names
Admin Cost
Hours
ANNUAL Cost
Hours

You superior will indicate the frequency and structure of progress and final project reports or you could
make a proposal in that area in this section. You can use the information from the “Strategic” section in
this table to complete the Operational Plan or Balanced Scorecard (BSC).

10.0 Critical Success Factors (1)

This final section of the body alerts those stakeholders who have resources or influence on what is
required for the success of the SIP, the critical success factors (CSF). The definition of a CSF are those
conditions that are not under the control of the executing unit, that are necessary for the success of a
project or set of projects. Some authors refer to this as risk analysis.

11.0 Appendix (as required)

A - Project Plans for Strategic Initiatives

B - Project Plans for Operational Improvement
C - Project Plans for Administrative Compliance
D - Other Supporting Documents

UWI Operational Plans

Using the UWI Operational Plan (OP) template or its BSC equivalent, the unit initiatives can be listed
under the UWI SO they fall and the balance (unit created) can be listed under unit-level SO’s at the end
of OP. Because the OP is currently has a 2 -3 year horizon, not all projects can start in the first year.
Heads will have to select projects based on some type of prioritization criteria such as the following.
They are listed in descending order and all may not apply in a given situation.

1. Projects that are in the pipeline or active from the previous SP that support the current plan
2. The foundation or starter/feeder projects that need to be started early (sequencing)
3. Projects that have legal or regulatory deadlines
4. Those that are approved by all significant stakeholders
5. Largest ROI for the amount of effort and resources required
6. Projects that have detailed plans and committed resources
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7. Those with the least amount of outside or contracted help needed

8. Least labour intensive for administration and execution
9. Least volatility of implementation costs (predictability, instead of cost overruns)

The end point of this process should be a list of ranked projects in descending order of importance for
the whole 5-year period. The following section is the next stage in prioritisation.

Annual Projects Prioritsation

From the resulting project prioritization list, the task is to select the ones that will be started in the first
year, that is, included in an annual Work Plan. There are two factors that will limit this process: time
and money. The formula for time is available for annual projects is:

Total Office Hours (–) [Process Hours + Programme Hours + Administrative Hours] = Hours Available
for Projects

Total Office Hours: are the total number of hours all staff come to work. For full-time staff it is the
number of staff times the number of working days in a year (245 days in Trinidad & Tobago) less
vacation/leave days times 7 hours per day (lunch hour taken out of an 8 hour day).

Process Hours: The amount of time processing a single transaction through a process times the annual
volume (number of cases or transactions). Sum all processes for total.

Programme Hours: The amount of hours spent planning, executing, and reporting on a programme.
Sum all programmes for total.

Administrative Hours: If you cannot quantify then use 10% of total office man-hours as a rough
estimate.

Example using a 10-person full-time staff with 30 days leave per year: 245 working days (-) 30 leave
days (x) 7 hours (x) 10 staff = 15,050 office hours; 9,000 process hours, plus 3,000 programme hours,
plus 1,505 admin hours (office hours (x) 10%) = 13,505 hours; now subtract total office hours (15,050)
and there would be 1,545 hours available for all projects for the year (with current staffing levels and no
outside help).

The budget is the second factor and can be expressed as all costs for processes, programmes, and
administration less the total budget (using the previous year’s approved budget as a starting point). This
will leave money available for projects. Of course, in most instances, this will be a very small amount and
the Head with have to make a case with his superiors, Bursary, and other regulatory bodies for increases
in the budget if they cannot be self-financed.

The costs of each project would have been determined by now along with man-hours required which
would assist in making better prioritisation decisions.

Traditionally, departments take on way too much work as they have no way to quantify it. The
symptoms of this situations are missed deadlines, slower turnaround times, a drop in quality (rushing to
get through tasks), and working longer hours and weekends to make ends meet. This is important as
individual performance appraisals assess staff on standards or objectives set at the beginning of the year
based on certain assumptions some of which may be beyond the individual’s control or mis-estimated.
Then there is the additional ad hoc work or projects that arise during the year that were not planned.
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 Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

Often, supervisors will not make adjustments on deadlines, but hold the staff member to original
workloads and deadlines, thus putting them in an untenable position.

Appendix follows…/

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Dr. John A. Gedeon - Planning Officer II – UWI - University Office of Planning Updated: 6 JAN 2017

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