CREATING AN ACTION PLAN
WHAT IS IT?
An action plan is nothing more (or less) than carefully listing all the things that your team needs
to do. It outlines your strategy for completing the project.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
• Action plans make your work more intentional.
• It is difficult to hold each other accountable for the project goals unless there is a written
plan of work to be accomplished.
WHEN IS THIS USEFUL?
Once you have clearly defined your problem, decided on what project to do, and power mapped.
SKILLS: action plans, negotiating, teamwork,
STEPS:
1. Look at the project outline. To create an action plan, teams might want to start by looking and thinking about the resources and obstacles that will affect their project idea. Teams may want to keep the following questions in mind when making their plan.
- What is our project’s overarching goals and mission statement?
- How much time do we have to work together?
- What information, resources and power do we need to implement our
project’s goals and mission? - What are the possible barriers to meeting our project’s goals?
- Are there possible alternative courses of action?
2. Prioritize goals: Which goals are most important (which goals are absolutely necessary to
complete your project)?
3. Which Comes First? Together, draft a plan of goals in sequential order. Your team might
have to come up with a series of preliminary goals that they need to accomplish in order
to arrive at their final goal. Sometimes you have to put off your major goals until later,
sometimes you need to work on more than one goal at the same time. While the group
may not be ready to develop a specific weekly timeline at this point, try to have team
members prioritize tasks—what needs to happen first? What is the logical way to order
the goals so you can complete your project?
a. Possible mini-exercise (can be used for step 3 Prioritize and step 4 Which Comes
First?): Once you have identified your major goals, sometimes it is good to break
into small groups and ask each group to rank the goals in order of importance
and/or the order in which they should be done. Then come back together and
compare what people came up with, highlighting differences between plans, and
that there is more than one way to create an action plan. Decide together which
order is best.
4. Brainstorm: Next, take one of the project’s intermediate goals—i.e. if the project is
starting a community garden, one of the project’s major goals may be to make sure that
the garden is visible in the community and that neighbors are encouraged to participate.
Begin by brainstorming a big list of all the things that need to be done to implement that
goal. What are different possible strategies for promoting the garden to the community?
How would neighbors feel welcome? What would make people want to participate?
Stress to teams that this list can be huge and they should try to think as broadly as
possible to get everything down on paper.
5. Setting Objectives: Building on the large list of possible steps, next try to get the team to
think of more specific objectives that will enable them to reach their goal. While team
member may have many ideas of how to make the garden visible (buying billboard ads,
giving away vegetables, etc.) some ideas may be more realistic than others. Good
objectives clearly state how you will reach a larger goal. It may be helpful to keep in
mind that a good objectives is “SMART,” or:
• Specific: It addresses the matter specifically
• Measurable: It can be measured to determine whether it has been achieved.
• Achievable: It is within the means and capacity of your group.
• Realistic: It is practical and can be accomplished within a reasonable time frame.
• Time-bound: The time period for reaching it is clearly specified.
6. Setting Tasks: For each objective, have group members brainstorm all the possible steps
that would be required to complete the objective. Next, prioritize these tasks. Team
facilitators could ask: Which things are more important than others? Which intermediate
steps must be done first before moving onto other steps? What different strategies are
appropriate to each step? Try to make a logical progression of each thing you need to do.
7. Creating Timelines: Next, match these preliminary goals and immediate steps up with
timelines. What is realistic to get accomplished in a certain time? While timelines are
important, keep in mind that they may change as each group moves forward into
implementing their project.
8. Creating accountability mechanisms: What things do you need to do to make sure the work
gets done one time? Sometimes it helps to have a team member’s job as accountability
checker, they check in on those who are doing the task.
9. Plan celebrations! As long as you are doing all this work, you might think how you will
celebrate. Plan on time for reflection, evaluation, and celebration.
* Note that some groups will not complete an action plan with every step they will do, but will
identify major goals and then make a detailed plan when they get to them.
EVALUATION:
• What was it like to make this action plan?
• Was it difficult to make decisions on what to do? Did you decide democratically? Were
there power dynamics at play?
• Is your plan more complicated or take more steps than you first thought? What things did
you not think of before making the plan?
• How will this help you get your work done? What can you do to be accountable
