Has anyone used the Strategic Plan in P&SS? I've been looking into it but having a tough time figuring out the best set up since our lead staff are in different areas of the hierarchy, but the plan is institution level. Any tips or ideas would be helpful.
We're actually in the process of (re)designing our Strategic Plan structure in P&SS, and your question caught my eye. Most of my experience in P&SS has been on the assessment side (both academic and non-academic), but I've recently moved into strategic planning and have been exploring a couple of different approaches for our institution-level strategic plan.
If you've already made some decisions about your setup, I'd love to compare notes. It's always helpful to connect with others who are working through similar questions and challenges.
Hope things are going well with your implementation!
Jennifer, we had a couple of other options available that we looked into besides WM and ultimately the decision was made to create our own template in Excel. Our strategic plan is very explicit, with goals and objectives, but also specific related tasks that we want to track. In addition, there are KPIs but also sub-indicators – specific measures that contribute to the overall KPI. None of our options, including WM, seemed to allow for that many levels of both objectives and indicator measures. That’s my caveat, so anything I learned is not meant to discourage you. It wasn’t going to work for our approach, so I also didn’t explore it farther.
For the goals and objectives, there didn’t seem to really be a place for KPIs. It is more of a met/unmet type indicator. So, I found the Success Outcomes tab under Institutional Information and put them there. But I was struggling to make connections to the objectives I had set up in the Strategic Plan. I also added a non-academic department with staff, but it looked like they had to have institution level roles, which is not what we wanted. I couldn’t see them on a list of people to assign as a lead when they were added under their own department. It was about that time the decision was made to use Excel so I didn’t pursue it farther. Again, it just wasn’t going to work for the level of overall project management admin wanted for the all the various pieces.
Sorry that wasn’t much help, but I am interested to hear what your approach is and how it works for your situation. Our next plan might not be so detailed, and I would like to consider it an option in the future.
Comments
We're actually in the process of (re)designing our Strategic Plan structure in P&SS, and your question caught my eye. Most of my experience in P&SS has been on the assessment side (both academic and non-academic), but I've recently moved into strategic planning and have been exploring a couple of different approaches for our institution-level strategic plan.
If you've already made some decisions about your setup, I'd love to compare notes. It's always helpful to connect with others who are working through similar questions and challenges.
Hope things are going well with your implementation!
Hi Jennifer,
I just typed a long response that apparently disappeared somehow. I'll try again in a while.
Jennifer, we had a couple of other options available that we looked into besides WM and ultimately the decision was made to create our own template in Excel. Our strategic plan is very explicit, with goals and objectives, but also specific related tasks that we want to track. In addition, there are KPIs but also sub-indicators – specific measures that contribute to the overall KPI. None of our options, including WM, seemed to allow for that many levels of both objectives and indicator measures. That’s my caveat, so anything I learned is not meant to discourage you. It wasn’t going to work for our approach, so I also didn’t explore it farther.
For the goals and objectives, there didn’t seem to really be a place for KPIs. It is more of a met/unmet type indicator. So, I found the Success Outcomes tab under Institutional Information and put them there. But I was struggling to make connections to the objectives I had set up in the Strategic Plan. I also added a non-academic department with staff, but it looked like they had to have institution level roles, which is not what we wanted. I couldn’t see them on a list of people to assign as a lead when they were added under their own department. It was about that time the decision was made to use Excel so I didn’t pursue it farther. Again, it just wasn’t going to work for the level of overall project management admin wanted for the all the various pieces.
Sorry that wasn’t much help, but I am interested to hear what your approach is and how it works for your situation. Our next plan might not be so detailed, and I would like to consider it an option in the future.
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