What are the stages of planning?

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, you mean the steps involved in planning. When writing any plan, I would recommend the following steps:

1. Identify the deliverables (outputs) and specify their main requirements
2. Identify the sequence in which these deliverables need to be produced
3. Identify the work required to produce each deliverable and the sequence of the activities (don't forget the quality control activities required to check that the deliverables meet their requirements)
4. Estimate: the time required for each activity, the type and amount of resources required and the cost of each activity
5. Add these estimations into a planning tool such as Microsoft Project to come with a schedule which shows who is doing each of the activities, their timescale and sequence
6. Identify any risks to the plan and modify the plan to reduce those risks
7. go back to step 1 and repeat (iterate) until you have come up with a realistic and achievable plan which will enable you to deliver what your customer/client/boss requires.
8. Seek approval for the plan from your customer/client/boss and after it has been approved execute the plan IE. allocate the work, monitor the performance and then update the plan with the actual cost/time/effort expended.