A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with timing and resources, used to achieve an objective. See also strategy. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal. For spatial or planar topologic or topographic sets see map.
Plans can be formal or informal:
- Structured and formal plans, used by multiple people, are more likely to occur in projects, diplomacy, careers, economic development, military campaigns, combat, or in the conduct of other business. In most cases, the absence of a well-laid plan can have adverse effects: for example, a non-robust project plan can cost the organization time and money.
- Informal or ad-hoc plans are created by individuals in all of their pursuits.
The most popular ways to describe plans are by their breadth, time frame, and specificity; however, these planning classifications are not independent of one another. For instance, there is a close relationship between the short- and long-term categories and the strategic and operational categories.
It is common for less formal plans to be created as abstract ideas, and remain in that form as they are maintained and put to use. More formal plans as used for business and military purposes, while initially created with and as an abstract thought, are likely to be written down, drawn up or otherwise stored in a form that is accessible to multiple people across time and space. This allows more reliable collaboration in the execution of the plan.
Read more about Plan: Examples of Plans, Quotations
Other articles related to "plan":
... that the company is moving forward with a comprehensive and unsustainable plan to improve its operations, financial "performance" and customer service experience ... As part of the plan, services to Auckland, Brisbane, Perth and Ho Chi Minh City will be suspended effective after the last scheduled flights of October ...
... The grid plan, grid street plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid ... In the context of the culture of Ancient Rome, the grid plan method of land measurement was called Centuriation ...
... Generalplan Ost (GPO) was a Nazi plan to realize Hitler's "new order of ethnographical relations" in the territories occupied by Germany in Eastern Europe during World ... The plan was part of Hitler's own Lebensraum plan and a fulfillment of the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") state ideology ... The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war ...
... Main article Battlestar Galactica The Plan In August 2008, the Sci Fi Channel officially announced the production of a two-hour TV movie which was planned to air after the final episode of the series in 2009 ... by Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos, The Plan storyline begins before the attack on the 12 colonies and shows events primarily from the perspective ... On July 24, 2009, Edward James Olmos stated that The Plan will not be the last movie based on the reimagined series ...
... The Third Five-Year Plan ran for only 3 years, up to 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union during the Second World War ... The first two years of the Third Five-Year Plan proved to be even more of a disappointment in terms of proclaimed production goals ...
Famous quotes containing the word plan:
“...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)