Successful Program Planning: How to Create Focus-Driven Solutions

One of the hardest things to do in project management is to define goals and objectives for your project. While it seems like a relatively simple task, clarifying goals and objectives that directly tie to the identified problems can be particularly difficult in the beginning stages of a project. This can especially be the case in health and human service-related fields where the aims of projects are often to solve complex issues that are compounded by systemic and political barriers. Due to this, if program developers and implementers are not careful to clearly define problems and goals at the onset, projects are likely to experience project drift. Project drift is when changes to a project over time cause it go beyond its intended goal. This can lead to major disruptions to budget and timeline requirements, as well as attainment of anticipated outcomes for the project.

Program planners should also be aware of the added difficulty of managing project drift when programs require the input of various stakeholders. While partnering with a variety of stakeholders almost always increases the generalizability and sustainability of a project, it is also inherently difficult to manage the various perspectives and competing priorities of the stakeholders while maintaining the integrity of the partnerships.

In our work through Benchmarks’ Center for Quality Integration we have overseen the development, implementation, and evaluation of several test of change projects over the years and here are a few lessons we have learned:

1. Be specific about the problem and solution— What components of your issue can actually be impacted or improved upon? If the problem is poor retention rates, most stop there in defining the issue. However, more specificity is needed to identify where action can be taken. For example, exit interviews with foster parents indicate poor relationships with social work staff as a factor contributing to poor retention rates. In this scenario we understand that any generated solutions should have a clear and direct linkage to improving relationships between staff and resource parents. In addition, general problem statements such as “provide more supports for foster parents” will likely result in solutions that will not have as much impact as a more targeted one.
2. Conduct research— Once your problem is clearly defined, you may need to do more digging on what factors are influencing the problem. Using the example above, clarifying what factors are impacting the relationship between resource parents and social work staff is needed. For example, is it poor response time, attitude, lack of interaction, etc. that you are targeting? Once identified, future solutions will have a much better chance at delivering the desired outcome. In addition, research often reveals existing resources that may not be widely known. Revamping or building upon existing information, resources, and materials is often a better, less time consuming, and much more budget friendly approach than developing new solutions from scratch.
3. Plan for sustainability at onset— While it can be hard to see the forest through the trees, initial investments in planning for sustainability and the long-term success of a project can prevent lots of future headaches. Understanding what resources will be available in the long run, once any additional funding or staff associated with implementation goes away, will make for better planning. For example, if you can identify early on that ongoing funding for a Data Specialist is not in the budget long-term, you can think through ways to divide responsibilities among staff with reoccurring funding. This will alleviate stressors associated with “dumping” project-related tasks onto staff at the end of the project.
4. Commit to established feedback loops— Communication is not only the key to all successful relationships, but also the key to successful projects. “Say it once. Say it again. Review it. Say it again, another way.” Often projects establish policies and protocols that do not include checks and balances or ways for reviewing progress until the project is too far along. Throughout the implementation of a project, leadership should have a way to routinely check in on processes and outcome components to ensure activities are running smoothly and to troubleshoot effectively when they are not.
5. Make informed decisions— Data can often be a daunting term and may scare many people away. However, data does not have to be scary. Maintaining information about the progress of a solution can help identify potholes before they turn into sink holes. Work with project staff and leadership to identify key data points that can be indicators to larger issues. This may require the help of experts outside the agency and come with added expenses. However, related costs are usually minimal in comparison to the potential effects of poor data down the line.
6. Learn fast, fail often— This may be one of the most important lessons about project management in the health and human service sector. Developing and implementing solutions to enhance practice and improve outcomes for children and families is hard work. Programs often require reworking and several iterations throughout the projects’ life cycle. Therefore, it is important learn fast from mistakes and move on to solutions that work. In addition, it is important to find a way to record lessons learned and establish a regular process of reviewing them to ensure similar actions can be avoided in the future.

While this is not a comprehensive list of the lessons we have learned about good project planning and implementation science, sticking to these core lessons have assisted us in navigating implementation of projects across a multitude of implementation sites and settings.