Project Planning- Understanding the current situation

From Norfolk RCC

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Understanding the current situation

In order to get somewhere we need to know where we are. Perhaps the first question to ask is what is the overall purpose of your organisation? If it to benefit the local community (or any other type of community) then a good starting point is to find out what are their needs/challenges/problems/wants. Usually the easiest way to do that is to ask them and there is a whole section of this site dedicated to consultation- the first rule is never assume you know you're probably wrong.

In addition you will want to consider the state of your organisation, the physical condition of any buildings or assets and what's going on around you both locally and further afield (for instance if new legislation is planned or commodity process look likely to go up).

There are many different tools to help you pull this information together you'll find a list with links to additional resources by clicking here. One thing to remember is they are simply tools, some tools work better in different situations than others, euqlly some people prefer different tools to others. The overall process is the important thing not the methodology, if a blank piece of paper and pen works for you then use it (most of us just need a little bit of an extra guide).On this page I'm going to just quickly cover perhaps one of the most common SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT has been referred to as SCOT if you prefer challenges to weaknesses ;-)). A SWOT analysis is normally done by dividing a piece of paper into four sections under each of the four headings and then brainstorming, usually as a group, factors to put under each. You can download a basic template by clicking here.

Strengths (strong committee) and weaknesses (low financial reserves) are internal to an organisation whilst opportunities (more children in the village) and threats (competition from nearby facility) are external.

Inevitable some things seem to fall into more than one category, that's ok as long as you understand why (something can easily be an opportunity if acted upon and a threat if not). Remember the purpose of the tool is to help you draw things together and structure your thinking, not do the analysis for you. There maybe things that you don't know which category to them in and have to do further research, for example to understand properly where to put the 'state of a building' you may need to first to a survey.

"its a lot easier to deal with dumb questions than dumb mistakes."

The important bit is what you do next, a SWOT is a waste of time on its own you need to also answer the questions:

How can we use each strength?
How can we stop each weakness?
How can we exploit each opportunity?
How can we defend against each threat?

Once you've drawn together all the relevant information and have a clear understanding of the current situation you will be able to identify the major issues. You will then need to prioritise what you are going to tackle first it is usually impossible, as well as a bad idea, to try an do everything at once.

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