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 ... 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 2011 ...
... 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 ... 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 ...
... 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 ...
... 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 ... Written 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 of two Cylons, Cavil and ... On July 24, 2009, Edward James Olmos stated that The Plan will not be the last movie based on the reimagined series ...
Famous quotes containing the word plan:
“Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“Max Detweiler: I get a fiendish delight thinking of you as the mother of seven. How do you plan to do it?
The Baroness: Darling, haven’t you heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?”
—Ernest Lehman (b. 1920)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)