Implementation planning is the process of executing, planning, modeling, and designing a new aspect of a company. These are goals that you are pursuing with your business.

Of course, they need clear steps and documentation for a successful implementation.

These documents are meant to support a strategic plan developed by the people in charge to guide staff and resources throughout the entire process. You can redirect them for different purposes, such as giving objectives to a specific employee or department as a whole.

The implementation plan explains how you will bring the strategy to life, including who’s in charge, the tasks to accomplish, and the deadline. It’s a step-by-step guide for project success.

The planning process works this way:

• You come up with objectives that will be developed through the implementation process.
• Assign tasks to achieve goals.
• Establish necessary resources.
• Set up a timeline.
• Track objectives.

After the whole planning process is completed, the execution steps come in. This includes:

• Assessing objectives.
• Completing the plan.
• Sharing the plan with the people involved. 

The reality is that you should apply an implementation plan before the project starts. Why? Because you need to ensure the project succeeds.

This document helps you and your team understand the vision and points you want to accomplish to reach a clear goal. Without it, it’s easy for the project team to lose sight of each execution phase.

There are four clear benefits for project managers and stakeholders to develop a strategic plan with an implementation plan.

An implementation plan reduces confusion among the stakeholders. It’s well known that the more complex a project is, the more resources are needed for its completion.

This document is an antidote that clearly explains everyone’s responsibilities and how they can execute them. This way, you can define milestones, and manage expectations and costs.

After setting up the project’s roadmap and details, you need this document to express how you will communicate with your stakeholders. This includes:

• Any team member.
• Investors.
• Vendors.
• Customers.
• Managers.
• Executives.

The idea is that you can control expectations and give updates for each task your team completes. Clear and transparent communication is necessary to help your teams focus on the project’s scope.

When you know who participates in a project, you can delegate and make them accountable in case of any problem. Participants will do their best when they know they are responsible for something.

No one likes to take the blame. But knowing who messed it up can help you prevent most issues. Overall, accountability transforms into better results.

The thing about projects is that they may change in scope according to their growth. The implementation plan may have gone obsolete because of how it changed.

Yet, only some scope creep is a good situation. This could make team members lose track of the main goals established. Not only because there isn’t a plan for the new scope but also because there aren’t clear steps to achieve this change.

The implementation helps you with this. You can have scope creep and still be on the same page thanks to the clear objectives and stages. Each member will know what to do and where to keep focus.

There are six components to have in consideration when you are creating an implementation plan.

Let’s see what they are:

• Identify Goals: Select objectives that you will include in your implementation plan based on how they fit your company’s vision and mission.
• Assign Roles And Responsibilities: Choose people for the project and assign them a functional role in your implementation plan. This way, you know who’s responsible for what.
• Schedule Deliverables And Due Dates: The schedule is as important as the implementation plan itself. It will help you track and communicate progress while keeping the stakeholders’ expectations on hold.
• Determine Enough Resources: You can’t develop a project if you don’t have resources. That’s clear. The implementation plan ensures you have capital and people as assets to fulfill your goals. 
• Create Metrics: You can’t improve what you can’t measure. So, you must use particular mectrics to determine if your project was successful or a complete disaster. Thus, the implementation plan must include the KPIs you’ll develop.
• Build a Contingency Plan: The implementation plan should feature a contingency plan. That is, how your team will advance without having everything stated in the document. Maybe you don’t have enough resources, or a team member leaves. You should endorse all that.

Now that you know what is needed, you can create your own project implementation plan and include all the required details.

Writing an implementation plan is easy. You need to include most of the information above and use the appropriate format.

Each aspect of this document has many benefits for the overall result.

1. Brief description: To start your implementation plan, you should add the main description expressing the mission, vision, and why you are implementing the document. You could also include limitations and expectations.

2. Staff involved: Include names, roles, experience, and responsibilities of each member that will work on the project.

3. Tasks developed in the project plan: A good implementation plan includes descriptions of all the tasks you’ll develop during the project. If you have already started to work on something, you can edit the implementation plan.

4. Implementation schedule: Here, you must outline timeframes and milestones. Implementation plans need this section to be as precise as possible. After all, if you can’t establish a deadline, you won’t use the budget correctly.

5. Asset allocation: Describe the resources you need to start the project—for example, money, computers, software, department help, people, etc. 

6. Strategic planning documentation: In this section, you should add the extra documentation you need to complete your project: spreadsheets, PDFs, past evaluations, and dependencies.

7. Metrics in the entire project: Organizations need to measure projects with KPIs. And so, you should add the expected metrics that you’ll need for all the phases of your project.

8. Approval by the project manager: Some projects have high risks or rely on an upper management approval process. As such, leave space for your manager to sign off the document.

Now that you know what to include, below you'll find an implementation plan example, so you know how it looks.

As the project progresses, you need a way to track all the steps and aspects of your strategy. You also need the chance to build Gantt charts and other graphics to evaluate the situation.

So, which program should you use to create an implementation plan?

That’s simple, Microsoft Office. This is the leading productivity software you should use to keep your personnel running and update the implementation plan. If you want to succeed, you can download the official Office suite from the website.

You then will need to activate it with a license, which you can get from RoyalCDKeys. The good thing is that you could get an original license for barely $10. Starting with a Microsoft Office 2021 suite is a crucial asset to your project, and it's a great tool to keep the organization running, measure risk, or write ideas for your business.

You may need more time to develop an implementation plan from scratch, but you can still use templates found online.

If you decide to use them as a resource for your business, here are some examples you can use:

Template #1

Implementing strategies from scratch takes work. It’s far more complicated than just going to the project manager and requesting new project goals for the entire team.

To successfully implement an action, an idea, a design, etc., you need a strategic implementation plan that leads you and your team from start to finish until you reach project success. Communication tools are also necessary to keep the development team and all staff involved in sync while developing individual tasks.

This is how you can progressively add features to your product/services or even deploy new rules in your workspace. It needs to be gradual, so everyone can adjust to their new reality and accomplish the goals you expect.

You can use the implementation plan templates above to track your progress. Don’t miss the opportunity to develop the right action plan!