implementation plan business model

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• What is an implementation plan? 6 steps ...

What is an implementation plan? 6 steps to create one

An implementation plan—also known as a strategic plan—outlines the steps your team should take when accomplishing a shared goal or objective. This plan combines strategy, process, and action and will include all parts of the project from scope to budget and beyond. In this guide, we’ll discuss what an implementation plan is and how to create one.

Projects require planning to be successful. Would you build a house without a blueprint? Probably not, because nailing pieces of wood together without a plan could lead to disaster. The same concept is true in the corporate world. An implementation plan functions as the blueprint for any shared objective. Your plan should include everything from the project strategy, to the budget, to the list of people working on the project. 

In this guide, we’ll discuss what an implementation plan is and how to create one. These steps can help you and your team prepare for projects both big and small.

What is the purpose of an implementation plan?

The purpose of an implementation plan is to ensure that your team can answer the who, what, when, how, and why of a project before moving into the execution phase. In simple terms, it's the action plan that turns your strategy into specific tasks.

A good way to know whether your implementation plan is effective is to hand it to someone outside of your team and see if they can understand the project in its entirety. Your implementation plan should leave no questions unanswered.

How to create an implementation plan in 6 steps

If you want your implementation plan to be comprehensive and beneficial to your project team, you’ll need to follow specific steps and include the right components. Use the following steps when creating your plan to reduce the risk of gaps in your strategy.

1. Define goals

The first step in the implementation process is defining your goals . Determine what you hope to accomplish when your project is complete, like whether you hope to win over a new marketing client or revamp your internal content strategy. Starting with your project objectives in mind can help flesh out your project plan. 

Tips to consider:

Ask questions: When defining your goals, you and your team may want to ask questions about your project such as, “What are we trying to achieve with this project? What deliverables do we hope to produce? Who are the stakeholders we plan to share our project deliverables with?”

Brainstorm risk scenarios: Although you’ll perform a more in-depth risk assessment later on in your implementation plan, brainstorming potential risk scenarios early on gives you a more realistic idea of what you’re able to achieve. 

2. Conduct research

Once you have a broad idea of the project goals you want to achieve, you can hone in on these goals by conducting research such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, or observations. Your research should come from key experts in your field. These experts may be team members or external stakeholders. Your research outcomes should include a list of what your project timeline, budget, and personnel may look like.

Collaborate using shared tools: Collaboration is easier when you have the right communication tools in place to do so. Use a team collaboration tool to share your project goals and get feedback from others, regardless of their location. 

3. Map out risks

You brainstormed risk scenarios in step one of your implementation strategy, and in step three, you’ll map out all the potential risks you may face in your project. Risks can include anything from paid time off and holidays to budget constraints and loss of personnel. 

A great way to map out your risks is by using a risk register. This tool will help you prioritize project risks and prepare for them accordingly. You can also conduct a SWOT analysis , which will identify any weaknesses or threats affecting your project. 

Be flexible and proactive: Mapping out risks is more than just a preparation strategy. If you identify preventable risks during this stage of the implementation plan, you can take action to prevent those risks. This may mean adjusting your initial project goals. 

4. Schedule milestones

Scheduling your project milestones is an important step in the planning process because these checkpoints help you track your progress during execution. Milestones serve as metrics—they are a way to measure how far you’ve come in your project and how far you have left to go. 

To visualize project milestones and keep your entire team on track, use a Gantt chart . With a Gantt chart, you can visually lay out your implementation schedule and show how long you think each task will take.

Add wiggle room: Things don’t always go as planned, even if you do everything in your power to a schedule. By adding wiggle room to your schedule, you can ensure your project stays on track instead of keeping tight milestones and failing to meet them.

Clarify dependencies: Dependencies are tasks that rely on the completion of other tasks. Clarifying your dependencies makes it easier to keep the project on track and hit your milestones.

5. Assign responsibilities and tasks

Every action plan must include a list of responsibilities with team members assigned to each one. By assigning responsibilities, you can assess the performance of each team member and monitor progress more closely. Using a RACI chart can be an effective project management tool for clarifying roles and responsibilities. 

Assigning responsibilities is different from assigning individual tasks. One team member may be responsible for overseeing the project review, while you may assign three other team members to handle the delivery and communication of the project to various teams for review. When you assign responsibilities and tasks, be sure to make your expectations clear. 

Communication is key: When you assign roles, responsibilities, or tasks, it’s best to communicate why you’re choosing one team member over another. Instead of letting team members question why they have specific roles, you can use this step in the planning process as an opportunity to highlight team member strengths.

Track responsibilities in a shared tool: Having a shared tool, like project management software, can give team members clarity on who's doing what and by when.

6. Allocate resources

Resource allocation is one of the best ways to reduce risk. If you can plan out what resources you need for your project and ensure those resources will be available, you’ll avoid the risk of running out of resources mid-project. If you notice that you don’t have enough resources in this step of the implementation process, you can adjust your project accordingly before it kicks off. 

Resources may include money, personnel, software, equipment, and other physical or technical materials. Time can also be a resource because the team members you need to complete the project may be working on other projects.

Tips to consider: Ask yourself the following questions when identifying available resources for your project: 

What is the project’s priority level? 

Who is available to work on this project? 

What budget or tools are available? 

What additional resources do we need? 

Who needs to approve the resource allocation plan?

Following these steps as you create your implementation plan will increase the likelihood of hitting your project goals. Having a checklist of the items to include in your implementation plan can also lead to successful implementation. 

What to include in an implementation plan

Knowing how to create your implementation plan is crucial, but you also need to know what to include in your plan. This checklist includes the six most important items you’ll want to consider if you want to move forward with a successful project. 

1. Objectives

You’ll outline your project objectives in step one of the implementation process. Set your goals and decide what metrics your team will use to measure to monitor progress. By clearly identifying your project objectives, you and your team can measure progress and performance as you move forward.

2. Scope statement

You’ll set the scope of your project in step two when conducting research. Your project scope statement should outline the boundaries you’ve set for your project and broadly define what goals, deadlines, and project outcomes you’ll be working toward. Defining your project scope in the implementation plan can help prevent scope creep when you’re farther along in the project.

3. Outline of deliverables

Deliverables are the tangible goals of your project. Outlining the deliverables you hope to create can serve as a resource when managing time frames, delegating tasks, and allocating resources. 

4. Task due dates

Although the project timeline may change as your project progresses, it’s important to clarify your expected due dates during implementation planning. When you estimate task due dates, you can schedule milestones around these due dates and plan for project completion. You will commonly see Gantt charts used for strategic planning and implementation planning. This is because Gantt charts display information in a follows a linear path, similar to a timeline. 

5. Risk assessment

You’ll conduct your risk assessment in step three of the implementation process. Whether you use a   risk register , SWOT analysis , or contingency plan to identify risks , be sure to include these documents in your plan. That way, others involved in the project can look through your findings and potentially help you prevent these risks. 

6. Team member roles and responsibilities

You assigned roles and responsibilities to team members in step five of your plan, and keeping a detailed record of what these are can hold everyone accountable. Whether you use a RACI chart or another tool to clarify team member roles, there should be a place in your plan for everyone to refer to in case questions arise. 

Your implementation plan will likely be unique to the project you're working on, so it may include other components not listed above. However, you can use the six items above as your guide so you know your plan is comprehensive.

Many aspects of project implementation overlap with strategic planning. As a project manager , working on the project implementation plan while you are also working on the strategic plan can help minimize the total time spent on planning.

Another way to save time during the planning process is to house all of your plans in a work management platform. When your project team is ready to start the implementation process, everything is in one convenient place.

Benefits of having an implementation plan

There are many benefits to implementation planning, with the top benefit being an increased chance of project success. Implementing a project plan creates a roadmap for executing your project so you can prevent issues from occurring. 

Other benefits to having an implementation plan include:

Improved communication between team members and key stakeholders

Better organization and management of resources

Increased accountability for everyone involved in the project

More structured project timeline and daily workflow

Easier collaboration between team members

Going straight into the execution phase without an implementation plan may feel like walking on stage to give a speech without knowing what you’re going to say. Preparation is key for top-notch performance. 

Simplify implementation planning

Knowing the steps for implementation planning is the foundation of project management. A well-planned project leads to a successful project.

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What Is an Implementation Plan? (Template & Example Included)

What Is Project Implementation?

Project implementation, or project execution, is the process of completing tasks to deliver a project successfully. These tasks are initially described in the project plan, a comprehensive document that covers all areas of project management. However, a secondary action plan, known as an implementation plan, should be created to help team members and project managers better execute and track the project .

What Is an Implementation Plan?

An implementation plan is a document that describes the necessary steps for the execution of a project. Implementation plans break down the project implementation process by defining the timeline, the teams and the resources that’ll be needed.

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Implementation Plan Template

Use this free Implementation Plan Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Implementation Plan vs. Project Plan

A project plan is a comprehensive project management document that should describe everything about your project including the project schedule, project budget, scope management plan, risk management plan, stakeholder management plan and other important components. An implementation plan, on the other hand, is a simplified version of your project plan that includes only the information that’s needed by the team members who will actually participate in the project execution phase, such as their roles, responsibilities, daily tasks and deadlines.

Project management software like ProjectManager greatly simplifies the implementation planning process. Schedule and execute your implementation plan with our robust online Gantt charts. Assign work, link dependencies and track progress in real time with one chart. Plus, if your team wants to work with something other than a Gantt chart, our software offers four other project views for managing work: task lists, kanban boards, calendars and sheets. Try it for free today.

Key Steps In Project Implementation

Here are some of the key steps that you must oversee as a project manager during the project execution phase . Your project implementation plan should have the necessary components to help you achieve these steps.

1. Communicate Goals and Objectives

Once you’ve outlined the project goals and objectives, the next step is to ensure that the team understands them. For the project to succeed, there must be buy-in from the project team. A meeting is a good way to communicate this, though having project documents that they can refer to is also viable.

2. Define Team Roles and Responsibilities

The project manager will define the roles and responsibilities and communicate them to the project team . They should understand what they’re expected to do and who they can reach out to with questions about their work, all of which leads to a smooth-running project.

3. Establish the Success Criteria for Deliverables

The project deliverables need to meet quality standards, and to do this there must be a success criteria for handing off these deliverables. You want to have something in place to determine if the deliverable is what it’s supposed to be. The measurement is called a success criteria and it applies to any deliverable, whether it’s tangible or intangible.

4. Schedule Work on a Project Timeline

All projects require a schedule , which at its most basic is a start date and an end date for your project. In between those two points, you’ll have phases and tasks, which also have start and finish dates. To manage these deadlines, use a project timeline to visually map everything in one place.

5. Monitor Cost, Time and Performance

To make sure that you’re keeping to your schedule and budget, you need to keep a close eye on the project during the execution phase. Some of the things you should monitor are your costs, time and performance. Costs refer to your budget , time refers to your schedule and performance impacts both as well as quality. By keeping track of these metrics, you can make adjustments to stay on schedule and on budget.

6. Report to Project Stakeholders

While the project manager is monitoring the project, the stakeholders, who have a vested interest in the project, are also going to want to stay informed. To manage their expectations and show them that the project is hitting all its milestones, you’ll want to have project reports , such as project status reports. These can then be presented to the stakeholders regularly to keep them updated.

Free Implementation Plan Template

Many of the key components listed above are included in our implementation plan template . Use this Excel file to define your strategy, scope, resource plan, timeline and more. It’s the ideal way to begin your implementation process. Download your template today.

What Are the Key Components of an Implementation Plan?

There’s no standard one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to creating your implementation plan. However, we’ve created an implementation plan outline for your projects. Here are its components.

• Project goals & objectives: The project goal is the ultimate goal of your project, while the objectives are the key milestones or achievements that must be completed to reach it.
• Success criteria: The project manager must reach an agreement with stakeholders to define the project success criteria.
• Project deliverables: Project deliverables are tangible or intangible outputs from project tasks.
• Scope statement: The scope statement briefly describes your project scope, which can be simply defined as the project work to be performed.
• Resource plan: Create a simple resource plan that outlines the human resources, equipment and materials needed for your project.
• Risk analysis: Use a risk assessment tool like a SWOT analysis or risk register. There are different tools with different levels of detail for your risk analysis.
• Implementation timeline: Any implementation plan needs a clear project timeline to be executed properly. You should use an advanced tool such as a Gantt chart to create one.
• Implementation plan milestones: You need to identify key milestones of your implementation plan so that you can easily keep track of its progress.
• Team roles & responsibilities: The implementation plan won’t execute itself. You’ll need to assign roles and responsibilities to your team members.
• Implementation plan metrics: You’ll need KPIs, OKRs or any other performance metrics you can use to control the progress of your implementation plan.

How to Write an Implementation Plan

Follow these steps to create an implementation plan for your project or business. You can also consider using project management software like ProjectManager to help you with the implementation process.

1. Review Your Project Plan

Start by identifying what you’ll need for the execution of your implementation plan:

• What teams need to be involved to achieve the strategic goals?
• How long will it take to make the strategic goals happen?
• What resources should be allocated ?

By interviewing stakeholders, key partners, customers and team members, you can determine the most crucial assignments needed and prioritize them accordingly. It’s also at this stage that you should list out all the goals you’re looking to achieve to cross-embed the strategic plan with the implementation plan. Everything must tie back to that strategic plan in order for your implementation plan to work.

2. Map Out Assumptions and Risks

This acts as an extension to the research and discovery phase, but it’s also important to point out assumptions and risks in your implementation plan. This can include anything that might affect the execution of the implementation plan, such as paid time off or holidays you didn’t factor into your timeline , budget constraints, losing personnel, market instability or even tools that require repair before your implementation can commence.

3. Identify Task Owners

Each activity in your implementation plan must include a primary task owner or champion to be the owner of it. For tasks to be properly assigned, this champion will need to do the delegating. This means that they ensure that all systems are working as per usual, keep track of their teams’ productivity and more. Project planning software is practically essential for this aspect.

4. Define Project Tasks

Next, you need to finalize all the little activities to round out your plan. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• What are the steps or milestones that make up the plan?
• What are the activities needed to complete each step?
• Who needs to be involved in the plan?
• What are the stakeholder requirements?
• What resources should be allocated?
• Are there any milestones we need to list?
• What are the risks involved based on the assumptions we notated?
• Are there any dependencies for any of the tasks?

Once all activities are outlined, all resources are listed and all stakeholders have approved (but no actions have been taken just yet), you can consider your implementation plan complete and ready for execution.

Implementation Plan Example

Implementation plans are used by companies across industries on a daily basis. Here’s a simple project implementation plan example we’ve created using ProjectManager to help you better understand how implementation plans work. Let’s imagine a software development team is creating a new app.

• Project goal: Create a new app
• Project objectives: All the project deliverables that must be achieved to reach that ultimate goal.
• Success criteria: The development team needs to communicate with the project stakeholders and agree upon success criteria.
• Scope statement: Here’s where the development team will document all the work needed to develop the app. That work is broken down into tasks, which are known as user stories in product and software development. Here, the team must also note all the exceptions, which means everything that won’t be done.
• Resource plan: In this case, the resources are all the professionals involved in the software development process, as well as any equipment needed by the team.
• Risk analysis: Using a risk register, the product manager can list all the potential risks that might affect the app development process.
• Timeline, milestones and metrics: Here’s an image of an implementation plan timeline we created using ProjectManager’s Gantt chart view. The diamond symbols represent the implementation plan milestones.
• Team roles & responsibilities: Similarly, we used a kanban board to assign implementation plan tasks to team members according to their roles and responsibilities.

Benefits of an Implementation Plan for the Project Implementation Process

The implementation plan plays a large role in the success of your overall strategic plan. But more than that, communicating both your strategic plan and the implementation of it therein to your team members helps them feel as if they have a sense of ownership within the company’s long-term direction.

Increased Cooperation

An implementation plan that’s well communicated also helps to increase cooperation across all teams through all the steps of the implementation process. It’s easy to work in a silo—you know exactly what your daily process is and how to execute it. But reaching across the aisle and making sure your team is aligned on the project goals that you’re also trying to meet? That’s another story entirely. With an implementation plan in place, it helps to bridge the divide just a little easier.

Additionally, with an implementation plan that’s thoroughly researched and well-defined, you can ensure buy-in from stakeholders and key partners involved in the project. And no matter which milestone you’re at, you can continue to get that buy-in time and time again with proper documentation.

At the end of the day, the biggest benefit of an implementation plan is that it makes it that much easier for the company to meet its long-term goals. When everyone across all teams knows exactly what you want to accomplish and how to do it, it’s easy to make it happen.

Implementation Plan FAQ

There’s more to know about implementation plans. It’s a big subject and we’ve tried to be thorough as possible, but if you have any further questions, hopefully we’ve answered them below.

What Is the Difference Between an Action Plan and an Implementation Plan?

The main difference between an action plan and an implementation plan is that an action plan focuses exclusively on describing work packages and tasks, while the implementation plan is more holistic and addresses other variables that affect the implementation process such as risks, resources and team roles & responsibilities.

What Is an Implementation Plan in Business?

A business implementation plan is the set of steps that a company follows to execute its strategic plan and achieve all the business goals that are described there.

What Is an Implementation Plan in Project Management?

Implementation plans have many uses in project management. They’re a planning tool that allows project managers to control smaller projects within their project plan. For example, they might need an implementation plan to execute risk mitigation actions, change requests or produce specific deliverables.

How to Make an Implementation Plan With ProjectManager

Creating and managing an implementation plan is a huge responsibility and one that requires diligence, patience and great organizational skills.

When it comes to a project implementation plan, there are many ways to make one that’s best suited for your team. With ProjectManager , you get access to both agile and waterfall planning so you can plan in sprints for large or small projects, track issues and collaborate easily. Try kanban boards for managing backlogs or for making workflows in departments.

Switching up the activities after a milestone meeting with stakeholders? You can easily update your implementation plan with our software features. Add new tasks, set due dates, and track how far along your team is on their current activities.

Implementation plans are the backbone of an organization’s strategic overall plan. With ProjectManager, give your organization the project management software they need to gain insight into all resources needed, view activities on their lists and collaborate with ease. Sign up for our free 30-day trial today.

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Implementation Plan: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps & Process)

Organizations are successful because of good implementation, not good business plans ~Guy Kawasaki

Planning is necessary to map out what you need to do in order to achieve your goals. However, without the execution of those plans, you won’t get anywhere. The implementation of an idea is how you start your journey towards achieving your goals and eventually reach your destination.

For businesses, an implementation plan plays a crucial role in the development and execution of an idea, project, or methodology. In fact, the  Harvard Business Review reported  that companies with an implementation and execution plan saw 70 percent greater returns than those who don’t have one. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Let’s first quickly understand what is an implementation plan, how do you make one, and how to execute it successfully? Read on…

What is an Implementation Plan? (Definition)

The implementation plan facilitates the execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy by presenting clear implementation steps that need to follow. Thus, an implementation plan is the documented steps you need to take to successfully achieve your implementation pursuits.

Implementation plans are usually made to support the strategic plan created by an organization. Now, what is a strategic plan you ask? Well, a strategic plan is a document defining the strategy by which your team will accomplish certain goals or make decisions. Strategic plans are made to guide a business decision, a new business venture, or an upcoming project or initiative.

Therefore, the goal of the implementation plan is to effectively implement company strategy and lay down the step-by-step process of bringing the project to success.

What are the Benefits of an Implementation Plan?

An implementation plan puts organizational resources to use and develops a tactical plan to execute the strategic initiative. It thus plays a huge role in the success of your overall strategic plan. Even if you have the greatest, iron-clad plan or strategy, it’s totally pointless if you don’t put the plan into action. Here are some of the many benefits of an implementation plan:

1. Provides Clarity

Writing an implementation plan gives you better clarity of thought and improves your own understanding of the project. When you are forced to think things through, you are better able to document as well as communicate the plan to team members, upper management, and get everyone on board.

2. Keeps Everyone on Track

Your implementation plan lays down exactly what tasks need to be done, how to do them, who needs to do them, keeping everyone on board, and removing any sort of confusion or doubts. When everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are, it’s easier to stay on track and keep everyone accountable.

3. Improved Cooperation

Working on projects requires the cooperation and collaboration of many employees. The better the cooperation amongst team members, the better the synergy and the overall execution.

Read more:  How to Create a Strategic Process Improvement Plan?

4. Increased Buy-In

When you have a solid implementation plan that is well researched, documented, and presented, you ensure buy-in from all key stakeholders of your organization. When upper management is on board, it’s easier to get resources allocated to your project and ensure smooth project execution.

6 Key Components of an Implementation Plan

Every implementation plan comprises of some key components that need to be analyzed and thought-through before communicating the plan with your team:

1. Outline Goals/Objectives:  Start with defining the goals and objectives of the implementation plan. What do you want to accomplish? What is the project scope ? Why are these goals important? How do these goals fit into the overall organizational vision and mission?

2. Assign Responsibilities:  Assigning roles and responsibilities provides a clear picture of what needs to be done and by whom. The clearer you define these responsibilities, the easier it will be to keep people accountable.

3. Implementation Schedule:  Schedules help track, communicate, and keep an eye on progress for your project, keeping all stakeholders in the loop with what’s going on.

4. Resource Allocation:  One of the main purposes of an implementation plan is to make sure that your team has access to enough resources in order to execute the plan effectively and without any hiccups. Make sure you know exactly what you need, how much you already have, and how you will procure what’s needed.

5. Define Metrics:  How will you determine project success? Every implementation plan must identify KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to establish how it will measure success and failure. This also allows you to measure progress and celebrate milestones to keep the team excited.

6. Contingency Plan :  Planning for challenges is as important as planning for success. Make a plan for how your team will navigate rough waters in case you go over budget, don’t have enough resources, or are approaching deadlines. This way you won’t get off-track when challenges arise, and you will be able to steer clear of them easily.

Now that you know the key components of an implementation plan, it’s time to put this knowledge to use and learn how to write an implementation plan for yourself…

Read more:  How to Create an Effective Operational Plan for Your Business?

How to Write an Implementation Plan? Follow these Steps and Processes:

Okay Folks, it’s time to get into the ‘how’ of the implementation plan and create a solid document. When creating such a document, you need to be more detailed and thorough, explaining everything clearly to all team members who will be viewing this document.

Make sure you include the following steps in your implementation plan:

Step 1. Introduction

Kickoff your implementation plan with a brief introduction, outlining the vision, mission, and purpose of your project or initiative. You can additionally include how this project ties up with the overall organizational mission and lay down all the assumptions or limitations of your project.

Step 2.  Team Members Involved

In this segment, you can describe the team involved in the implementation of the project. Include the names, roles, and responsibilities of key project stakeholders, and key points of contact.

Step 3.  Tasks

This is an important area in your implementation plan as here you need to describe the key tasks and steps involved in the implementation of the strategy. If you have already begun with a task, note down the status and progress of the task in this section.

Step 4.  Implementation Schedule

An implementation schedule outlines project timeframes and milestones. Schedules keep everyone on track with task progress and help to keep everything on time and under budget.

Step 5.  Resource Management

Describe the resources needed (people, time, money, equipment, software, departmental help, etc.) to support successful implementation. Think through this section thoroughly to ensure smooth project implementation, and support fair asset allocation.

Step 6.  Additional Documentation

In this segment, you can attach any other documentation that supports your implementation plan. This could include proof of successful past project executions or a PDF of your strategic plan.

Step 7.  Define Metrics

Without specifying success metrics, you will never know if you are on the right track or are even executing the right strategy. Define the metrics you will use to measure success and how and when will you review your progress.

Step 8.  Project Approval

If you need upper management’s approval before kicking off implementation, add some space for a formal signoff.

Read more:   Change Management Plan: What, Why, and How to Write?

Use a Documentation Tool like Bit to Create a Robust Implementation Plan

The key to successful planning and implementation is…*drumroll*… DOCUMENTATION. This is exactly why all smart project managers use documentation tools like Bit.ai to create a solid, interactive, and visually appealing implementation plan for their team.

What the heck is Bit.ai? Well, it’s an all-in-one document collaboration platform designed for the modern-day workplace. Using Bit, your team can collaborate in real-time and create implementation plans and all other documents – under one single roof!

1. Pre-Built, Beautiful & Fully Responsive Templates: Okay, you’ve created the implementation plan for your team to understand their goals and responsibilities. But, what if the plan itself looks dull and poorly formatted? Your team members won’t understand a thing, and that’s for sure.

You might not have the time to pay attention to the presentation aspect but don’t worry, because Bit does the formatting and designing for you! Bit.ai has over 90 fully responsive and gorgeous templates . Just pick one, insert your content and let Bit handle the rest.

Few documents templates you might be interested in:

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Business Proposal Template
• Business Plan Template
• Competitor Research Template
• Project Proposal Template
• Company Fact Sheet
• Executive Summary Template
• Operational Plan Template
• Pitch Deck Template

2. Rich Embeds:  What if you could embed all your important files – in one single document? We’re talking about those charts, excel sheets, presentations, and the other files that you created while brainstorming the strategies.

Won’t that make your implementation plan so much more comprehensive? And your team won’t have to jump through different files to get information! Luckily, Bit lets you embed over 100 rich media integrations ! That means you can create media-rich and interactive, modern workplace documents!

3. Real-time collaboration : If your team members work on the implementation plan together and take inputs and ideas from one other, it is bound to be perfect! Luckily, Bit.ai helps you with that.

It allows you and your team to collaborate on a Bit document in real-time using @mentions, highlight features, and comments. Every document comes with a separate comment stream!

4. Organized Workspaces & Folders:  An implementation plan isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” thing. You’ve to customize it for every project that your company undertakes. This is exactly why you need to use Bit! On Bit, you can create infinite workspaces around projects, teams, departments, and clients to keep all your work organized.

There’s nothing like Bit.ai out there when it comes to creating documents like implementation plans! With a FREE account for up to five members, there’s no reason why you should not give this super cool platform a try!

Watch the video below to learn more or sign up for a FREE account and start exploring yourself!

What are You Waiting For?!

Without implementation plans, your strategic initiatives will never see the light of the day. Good implementation planning lays the foundation for successful project execution.

It creates a blueprint which your team can follow to successfully execute projects and measure their progress along the way. With tools like Bit, creating such documentation is easier than ever. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free account and start creating your implementation plan today!

Further reads:

How to Create a Procurement Management Plan: Step by Step Guide

Business Development Plan: What Is It And How To Create A Perfect One?

Risk Management Plan: What, Why, and How to Write?

Cost Management Plan: What, Why, and How?

How to Create a Product Plan the Right Way?

How to Create a Project Management Communication Plan?

What is a Marketing Plan and How to Create One for Your Business?

What is Product Adoption & How to do it Right?

Top Email Automation Software for Marketers!

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About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

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The Ultimate Guide to Implementation Plans

May 4, 2022 - 10 min read

Implementation plans provide step-by-step instructions for everything from digital marketing campaigns to ending hunger in rural communities . They’re used to transform abstract concepts within strategy plans into real-world action. The only downside is that implementation plans can be challenging to pull off. Some industries see as much as a 75% failure rate in plan execution. 

The good news is you can succeed where others have failed by creating a successful implementation plan with the tips and strategies outlined in this guide. 

Keep reading to discover must-have components for implementation plans, a thorough step-by-step planning method, and advice on how to avoid common pitfalls. 

What is an implementation plan?

A project implementation plan (also called a strategic plan) is a combination of strategy, process, and action. It outlines the steps a team will use to achieve a shared objective. An implementation plan covers all aspects of a project , including the budget, timeline, and personnel.

The perfect project plan includes: 

• Objectives, requirements
• Scope assessment
• An outline of deliverables
• Task due dates
• Risk assessment
• Stakeholder, team, and process management plans
• Team member roles and responsibilities
• Resource management
• Communication tools

Roadmap planning breaks down big-picture goals into measurable project phases, tasks, and subtasks. Each category is clearly defined with its own deadlines and resource allocations. Tasks and subtasks are assigned to team members who will complete and approve each one. 

In other words, if the goal is the "what," the implementation plan is the "how."  

An implementation plan is often presented as a written document or planned in a project management solution . The latter is a better fit for this particular roadmap because, as you can probably tell, implementation plans are complex and comprehensive. Implementation plans should all contain solutions for:

• Tasks and subtasks
• Timelines 
• Collaborators
• Any additional resources

It’s also important to note that having a flexible implementation plan is key for dealing with changes that come up once the project is live. 

What are the benefits of implementation planning?

The benefits of implementation planning range from organizational to relationship-building to increased profitability. A solid implementation plan: 

• Creates an actionable roadmap from project inception to completion
• Makes communication simple and crystal clear
• Improves employee retention in the long-term
• Organizes all resources in one manageable place
• Helps businesses be proactive instead of reactive
• Offers transparency to clients and collaborators
• Builds trust among stakeholders
• Holds everyone accountable
• Outlines a daily and weekly workflow the whole team can follow
• Improves the likelihood of buy-in
• Makes collaboration more fluid and synergistic
• Helps businesses commit to long-term goals
• Gets everyone’s thoughts out of their heads and into one accessible place

When do you begin implementation planning?

Because it’s so involved, it’s important that you don’t begin implementation planning too early or too late. 

Why? The process of creating an implementation plan is time-consuming. Most of the tasks involved require you to wait on communication or approvals from multiple stakeholders. The process also requires lots of research, goal-setting, gathering or defining resources, and getting team availability together. 

Avoid planning too early by waiting until the project is officially greenlit. The definition of greenlit means something different to every agency. However, most would agree that a signed contract and successful deposit payment are good markers. 

After those client onboarding tasks are complete, you can begin implementation planning. Remember, the project can’t begin without these plans, so have a system in place to kick off and support implementation planning ahead of time. 

What is an implementation timeline? 

An implementation timeline is a visual representation of all project-related due dates. That includes:

• The final project due date
• Dates your team needs to complete each phase by 
• Due dates for individual tasks and subtasks 

These dates aren’t set in stone yet. However, accurately forecasting effort and mini-milestones now will make the implementation phase that much easier. 

Implementation timelines are often represented by visual Gantt charts . A Gantt chart uses bars to track the progress of each phase, task, and subtask all at once. Wrike users can add task dependencies, which trigger automatic chart updates and notifications to team members in charge of the next steps. 

Gantt charts also help project managers identify possible roadblocks. With every single step laid out, it’s easy to see where resources are stretched too thin and whether or not milestones are realistic. 

How do you make an implementation plan?

Follow these steps to create a successful implementation plan: 

• Choose an implementation planning tool Project management solutions like Wrike can help teams share information, start and complete approvals, and set up timelines with ease. 
• Holidays or upcoming PTO
• Delivery time for goods and materials
• Additional training or onboarding of outside team members
• Review the strategic plan Ask yourself, where do the implementation plan and strategic plan align so far? Where does it conflict? When in doubt, always edit your implementation plan to support your strategic plan. 
• What the project is
• Why it’s important
• Who is involved 
• What is each person’s role in the project 
• What all parties hope to achieve
• The obstacles you foresee and how your team will overcome them
• Which ROIs you’ll use to measure success
• Is available for the project as a whole 
• Should be allocated to each key phase
• Will be monitored, and who will oversee it
• Will be broken down into trackable categories
• Collect related materials Gather the documents you need to plan and execute the project all in one place. Include data from past projects that may help you accurately forecast this one. 
• Define how progress will be measured and monitored Choose KPIs that align with your project goals, then chart progress within your project management solution. Come up with a plan for who is in charge and how often they’ll check in. 
• Outline management buy-in criteria Get crystal clear on what managers are looking for, what information they need to approve or reject, and any other information that will decrease resistance. 
• Do a stakeholder analysis Create a chart that defines each stakeholder’s level of impact, influence, and attitude. Explain the evaluations further and create an action plan for each person or group. 
• Clarify day-to-day operations Include a work plan that goes over which processes will be used, which will be changed, and how future changes will be dealt with down the road. Choose who is responsible for approving, managing, and finalizing adjustments as they come up. 
• Everyone’s preferred mode of communication
• What type of updates are expected when 
• And how information will be shared  Also, designate communication channels and leaders who will oversee them.  Don’t forget to loop in both your implementation leader and strategy director. Stakeholders do not need to sign off on this section. However, you may choose to share it with them so they can see how you plan to keep everyone on track. 
• Identify key project phases, tasks, and subtasks Break the project goal down into actionable steps. Give each phase a name, deadline, and set of related tasks. Use project status updates in Wrike to communicate task and subtask due date expectations with everyone involved. Updates are formatted as dropdown menu options which make it easy for individuals to quickly update the entire team when they’ve moved on to the next step.  After, assign team members to complete and approve each task. Set up task dependencies within Wrike, so status notifications are automatically sent to those who were waiting to move on to the next step. 
• Go over security needs If your project deals with sensitive data, outline what you’ll need to keep the entire project and team compliant throughout. List all digital and physical information sources that require privacy (think sensitive company financial data, home addresses, credit or bank account information, etc.). 
• Provide a glossary Include industry terms that clients, stakeholders, and teams will need to know throughout the course of the project. Add project-related abbreviations, slang, or resource nicknames you expect will come up in communications. 

What are the components of an implementation plan?

There are 13 components every implementation plan needs to have:

• Selected tools
• Preliminary research
• Strategic plan alignment
• Project summary
• Resource and materials list
• Goal monitoring and measurement
• Buy-in criteria
• Stakeholder management
• Operations plan
• Management plan
• Key phases and tasks
• Glossary of terms

A simple implementation plan template

Your own project implementation plan will have lots of information included, but a simple table including the steps needed to launch the project is always a good place to start.

In this example, a small business is preparing to launch an online store to sell its products. Let's take a look at how this looks on a simple table. 

What are implementation planning best practices?

• Always be as specific as possible 
• Don’t shy away from consulting experts and conducting additional research as needed 
• Pull data from similar past projects (successful and unsuccessful), then apply what you learned 
• Remember that 100% alignment between all stakeholders and personnel across the board is unrealistic 
• Use a project management solution to quickly update plans when changes come up 
• Centralize communication to save time and keep everyone on the same page 

What information do you put in an implementation schedule?

Include an outline of the project timeline, goals, and tasks to keep teams on the same page. Combine that with key updates on:

• The progress of major phases
• Adjustments made to budgets, timelines, or personnel
• Upcoming challenges and planned solutions

Implementation schedules are also meant for stakeholders, so the information you put in one needs to be tailored toward their needs. Identify each stakeholder’s level of involvement and what information they want to receive. 

What is the implementation process?

The implementation process is the step-by-step plan a team follows to achieve a shared objective. Each step is concrete and actionable. These instructions should be easily understood by anyone who reads them. 

What is a good implementation plan example? 

One good implementation plan example comes from Outdoor Equipment Manufacturer MTD . The brand uses Wrike to optimize its complex product development process. 

Their projects involve having multiple active tasks open across a variety of teams at the same time. As a result, their implementation plan relies on custom workflows, visual progress updates, and a bird’s eye view of what’s going on across the entire organization. 

Who creates implementation plans?

Project managers create implementation plans. They may choose to collaborate with team leads, subject experts, suppliers, and stakeholders to add important details. However, project managers are responsible for drafting, revising, and monitoring implementation plans the whole way through. 

What are the challenges of an implementation plan?

• Foggy vision Implementation plans are only as good as the strategy they’re based on. Connect back to your original goals and strategy plan frequently when drafting the implementation process. 
• Bad communication Instant messenger notes and email updates tend to get lost over the course of a project. Centralize all communication in your project management platform. In Wrike, use @ mentions to loop in stakeholders and collaborators. 
• Lack of training Hire outside specialists or plan time for proper employee training on new projects, especially if those skill sets come with a learning curve. 

How to use Wrike as implementation planning software

Create a foolproof project plan using Wrike’s visual Gantt charts, detailed task options, and robust templates . Each of these features helps project managers easily make and monitor progress. Use our two-week free trial to save time with customizable implementation plan templates you can use over and over again.

Maria Waida

Maria is a freelance content writer who specializes in blogging and other marketing materials for enterprise software businesses.

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Strategic Implementation: More Than Just Implementing Strategy

By Kate Eby | November 27, 2017 (updated December 4, 2021)

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Strategic implementation is a key ingredient of modern business: Once an organization creates a strategy to meet its goals, implementation is the next step for successful execution. Essentially, the implementation phase outlines how a company plans to achieve its goals. Business theories and frameworks help guide strategic formulation, implementation, and execution. This article explains strategic implementation and how it differs from other strategy tactics. You’ll learn about key steps and pitfalls, review some examples, and get expert insights.

What Is Strategic Implementation?

There are numerous definitions of strategic implementation on the web, including the following:

Business Dictionary : The activity performed according to a plan in order to achieve an overall goal. For example, strategic implementation within a business context might involve developing and then executing a new marketing plan to help increase sales of the company's products to consumers.

The Houston Chronicle : The process that puts plans and strategies into action to reach goals. A strategic plan is a written document that lays out the plans of the business to reach goals, but will sit forgotten without strategic implementation. The implementation makes the company’s plans happen.

OnStrategy : The process that turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.

What these and other definitions have in common is that they discuss turning a theoretical plan (about an organization’s direction) into manageable tasks that team members can perform to achieve the stated goals.

Once an organization creates a strategy, it needs to be implemented, and then executed. Here are the high-level steps in strategic implementation (which we will discuss in detail later):

• Communicate
• Align initiatives with strategy
• Engage staff and outside stakeholders
• Allocate resources
• Make structural adjustments
• Create strategic evaluations

Strategy Implementation vs. Strategic Implementation

Whether or not a difference exists between strategy implementation and strategic implementation depends on who you ask.

Ray Mckenzie, Founder and Managing Director of Red Beach Advisors , says, “Strategy implementation is a larger umbrella, or a holistic view of what’s going to happen, and looks at products and pricing and how we function as business. Strategic implementation is a plan for implementation of a specific objective: For example, if I have a piece of software that I want installed in three months.” One scenario might be if you want to integrate CRM software into your organization, you’ll need to identify the steps to take to execute the integration.

Lloyd Baird is the Jon M. Huntsman Visiting Professor at Utah State University . Of the difference between the two phrases, he says, “It depends on what organization or company you are talking to.”

In this article, we’ll treat strategy implementation and strategic implementation as synonymous.

Getting Strategic

As organizations evolve, they often change from a reactive to proactive operational style. It’s at this point that an organization begins strategic planning, which leads to strategic implementation.

Formulation, Implementation, and Execution

Strategy formulation (also known as planning), implementation, and execution are intertwined, but each are distinct. Formulation is the creation of a framework that guides decisions. Implementation is preparation and putting elements of the strategy into place. Execution is the decisions made and activities performed throughout the company, with the objective of meeting goals outlined in the strategy.

For example, imagine you're the coach of a football team in a critical 4th-and-1 situation. In this case, the terms would function as follows:

• Formulation: You select a play from your playbook, with the objective of getting a first down.
• Implementation: The players position themselves on the field as outlined in the chosen play, and you place the best offensive linemen up front, and the sturdiest running back in the backfield.
• Execution: The ball is snapped, the linemen push their defensive counterparts back, and if all goes well, they open up enough ground so that when the running back gets the handoff, he can move it across the line of scrimmage for a first down.

Smartsheet offers many templates to assist with strategic formulation.

Thinking About Strategic Implementation

In his paper Strategy Implementation as Substance and Selling , author Donald C. Hambrick and Albert A. Cannella, Jr., state  “… implementation must be considered during the formulation process, not later, when it may be too late.” They continue, “The strategist will not be able to nail down every action step when the strategy is first created, nor … should this even be attempted. However, he or she must have the ability to look ahead at the major implementation obstacles and ask, ‘Is this strategy workable?’”

Corporate Strategy and Business Unit Strategy

Executives create the corporate strategy, which determines the company’s lines of business. It also addresses how business units can work together to increase efficiency. Business unit strategy is created by the leader of each unit, and revolves around how the corporate strategy is put into action. In other words, corporate strategy determines what happens, and business unit strategy determines how it happens.

To align corporate and business unit strategies, executives must encourage the development of business unit strategies that both contribute to corporate strategy objectives and respond to their competitive situation, whether geographical or functional.

In a 1984 paper titled Business Unit Strategy, Managerial Characteristics, and Business Unit Effectiveness at Strategy Implementation , authors Anil K. Gupta and V. Govindarajan explain, “The absolute performance of a business entity depends not just on the effectiveness of its internal organization in implementing the chosen strategy, but also on industry characteristics and the choice of strategy itself.”

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Why Is Implementation Important?

Executives formulate the strategy that business units will execute. However, implementation requires the participation of the entire organization, so implementation is as important — if not more so — than the strategy itself. For example, you can buy seeds and plant them in your garden with the goal of serving a home-grown salad every night at dinner, but that doesn’t ensure that you’ll reach your goal. If you plant at the wrong time of year, if the seeds are not viable in your climate, or if the soil is depleted, you’ll still be buying vegetables from the store for a long time to.

Because strategic implementation is the most important, it’s also the most difficult to achieve. A 1989 Booz Allen study found that 73 percent of managers thought that strategic implementation is more difficult than formulation, 72 percent think that it takes more time, and 82 percent say it’s the part of the process over which they have the least control. But there’s been progress. In a 2015 survey of reports titled Strategy implementation: What is the failure rate? , authors Carlos J.F. Cândido and Sérgio P. Santos conclude that the implementation failure rate has fallen from the between 70-90 percent in the mid 1980s to about 44 percent in the early 2010s.

There are many reasons that strategies can fail. A bad plan (e.g. one that has unrealistic goals), or poor execution (e.g. not adapting to changing conditions) can cause failure, but since implementation is the key aspect, there are more possible pitfalls, including the following:

• Stakeholders Don’t Buy-In: Those who are responsible for executing a strategy won’t want to do it if they don’t believe in it. Ray McKenzie says, “Not having completed buy-in from the team is first and foremost. If people don’t buy-in, it won’t get completed.”
• Resources Aren’t Aligned with Strategy: For example, if you want to sell red balloons, but fill your warehouse with blue ones, you won’t meet your goals.
• Incentives Aren’t Aligned with the Strategy: This happens when you reward people for completing tasks that don’t contribute toward the key performance indicators (KPIs) .
• You Don’t Plan to Adjust: Lloyd Baird says, “There’s an old military saying: Your battle plan is great until you contact the enemy, then everything changes. Things are changing so fast in organizations that if you don’t have a method to adapt, evaluate, and change, you’re going to fail. The people that are really good are the ones who are adapting along the way.”
• Continuing To Do Things that Used To Work: Rather than relying on old mechanisms for success, stay current with trends and tools.
• Internal Politics: Turf battles or personal disputes can prevent an organization from properly implementing a strategy.
• Accountability Void: When implementing a strategy, everybody involved must be made aware of their responsibilities, and the consequences of not meeting them.
• No Milestones: As Ray McKenzie explains, “A strategy only works for a period of time — you have to have an outline of those dates.”
• Lack of Empowerment: This happens when people and teams aren’t given the authority, resources, and tools to execute the strategy.
• Communication Breakdown: If the organization is not sharing the strategy, or is sharing it in the wrong ways, the team won’t understand it.

Challenges and Criticisms of Strategic Implementation

Like any business process, strategic implementation has its share of challenges and criticisms. However, if an organization is aware of the limitations of strategic implementation and the obstacles that may arise, they can overcome potential challenges.

Key Leadership Theories for Implementation Strategy

Leadership theories guide how executives think about the world and their organization’s place in it. A couple important, related theories are discussed below.

Tipping Point Theory

• What It Is: The nce a critical mass of people gets behind something, it spreads quickly. Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book, The Tipping Point, provides many examples of this theory in action, from the changes in the Bill Bratton-led NYPD in the 1990s that resulted in a dramatic drop in crime, to the way Hush Puppies shoes became popular again once key people in the fashion world started wearing them. The makeup of a critical mass will vary by organization: It could be a majority, or it could be a small group of influential people.
• How It Can Help with Strategic Implementation: While implementing a strategy, executives can identify what constitutes a critical mass in each business unit, and work to get those people invested in the strategy. Once those team members are on board, they’ll bring the rest of the team along.

Blue Ocean Theory

• What It Is: It sprang out of a marketing theory with the same name, which posits that companies should create opportunities in market areas where there isn’t much competition to provide greater growth opportunities. For example, Southwest Airlines became a major player by combining customer-focused service, low prices (partly achieved by flying from secondary airports and partly by using only a single aircraft), and flying to underserved areas. As a leadership theory, Blue Ocean tasks leaders with undertaking the activities that increase team performance, listening to feedback from all parts of their organization, and developing leaders at all levels.
• How It Can Help with Strategic Implementation: Having leaders at many levels focus on activities that increase team performance and listen to every level, the strategies they develop will be easier to implement. This method helps the leaders generate some built-in buy-in. By walking the leadership walk, others are more likely to follow along.

What Do You Mean by Strategic Evaluation?

Strategic evaluation is a type of business performance measurement (BPM) system. In a 2007 paper Towards A Definition of a Business Performance Measurement System , Monica Franco-Santos et al. describes it as, “...a set of metrics used to quantify both the efficiency and effectiveness of actions; or as the reporting process that gives feedback to employees on the outcome of actions.” Strategic evaluation (often written as strategic evaluation and control, when it’s used as part of a strategic management model) is a cyclical process that helps managers and executives determine whether programs, projects, and activities are helping an organization meet their strategy’s goals and objectives. In short, it can help an organization stay on and get back on track.

Strategic evaluation is performed during the execution phase, but you create the process during implementation. There’s always a need to get and analyze feedback to find out what is and isn’t working, identify ways to fix what’s not working, and record the lessons learned for future strategies. There are four high-level steps in the strategic evaluation process:

• Set benchmarks
• Compare results against benchmarks
• Analyze the differences
• Take corrective actions

There are a few different facets of strategic evaluation. Each facet is important and shouldn't be ignored, as using all four ensure that you’ll discover any possible root causes of a problem.

• Premise: Were the strategic goals realistic and achievable?
• Implementation: Was the process of implementing organizational changes based on the strategy performed properly?
• Strategic Surveillance: Are processes and tasks being performed as expected, and if so, are they getting the desired results?
• Special Alerts: While strategic evaluation should take the long view, and not focus too much on short-term fluctuations, it needs to evaluate how changing market conditions and competitors’ actions, as well as unexpected events, affect the strategy. Taking this view will highlight those surprises and changes — then you can implement contingency plans and bring in crisis management teams if required to change the strategy’s execution.

Strategic evaluations are a great way to learn. Ray McKenzie says, “Have a follow-up with the team to see what worked, or if you should do things differently next time around."

How Strategic Implementation Works in Different Organizations

With the rise of mass production in the 19th century, companies began to centralize key functions like sales and finance, which led to economies of scale. Later, as some firms became diversified and began to increase their market, they created business units that focused on product lines or geographical regions. The firms may have lost some of the previously gained economies of scale, but they were able to better react to market conditions.

Centralized organizations could use strategic implementation to make shared services more efficient. Diversified organizations could coordinate processes and goals between various regional offices or product-focused groups.

Later, companies started using the matrix organization to try to take advantage of both the economies of scale created by centralization, and the adaptability of the geographical or product-focused organizations. Matrix organizations are difficult to coordinate. Implementing a strategy can help everyone focus on the same goals.

In the 1990s, the business process reengineering (a version of this is know as Total Quality Management, or TQM ) drove the creation of organizations that were organized around processes. Again, implementing a strategy can help everyone focus on the same goals.

Going forward, virtual, networked, and “Velcro” organizations (a concept where the organization can be pulled apart and put back together in response to changes in the business environment, or as Lloyd Baird says, “a network of relationships”) will have the same issues that strong strategic implementation can help.

What Is Involved in the Implementation Process

After formulating and finalizing a strategy, it’s time to share it with the organization. Next, you may need to make changes to the organization in preparation for the execution phase. The steps to take are as follows:

Communicate: Everyone in the organization, and some outside, must learn about the strategy, how it affects them, and what changes they’ll need to make to support it. As you cascade the strategy throughout the organization, different groups will need to be made aware of the parts that are important to them. Sales and marketing teams will want to hear more about the sales goals, while IT will be more concerned about changes to the network and new required software. A vendor will need to know what changes they’ll need make to the materials they provide.

Engage Stakeholders: After communicating the goals, managers and staff (as well as any contractors or vendor affected) need to understand the importance of the strategic goals, their role in strategy execution, their responsibilities, and the impact of meeting or not meeting the goals or fulfilling their responsibilities. Using stakeholders throughout the organization to be champions of the coming changes will make the job easier.

Align Initiatives with Strategy: You’ll likely need to update processes, swap out tools, and make other changes to ensure company activities are contributing to the KPIs laid out in the strategy.

Allocate Resources: What needs to be bought or moved to prepare for execution? What funding needs to be allocated to strategic, operational, and capital expense budgets?

Make Structural Adjustments: Do you need to hire new people? Will there be a round of layoffs? Will you need to change any reporting structures? Are new vendors or contractors required? This is the hardest part of the implementation to perform.

Create a Strategic Evaluation: Implement repeatable processes that will check progress toward the goals, and provide data to executives and managers to determine what changes need to be made to the strategy or it’s execution to keep the organization on track to meeting the goals.

The Three Cs of Strategic Implementation

In a 2012 Forbes article , Scott Edinger composed a concise checklist of considerations. When preparing to implement, keep these in mind:

• Clarify: Avoid high-level statements that only resonate with the C-suite. Write your strategy in a way that connects with front-line employees and managers.
• Communicate: Spread the message in as many ways as you can. Connect the strategy to each group's’ core purpose.
• Cascade: Translate the strategy into actions through the organization. Managers at every level will be the ones who handle this.

5 Changes That Support Successful Implementation

Another lens to look through is, “What changes need to be made to implement the strategy?” You can divide the answer into five groups:

• People: Train or hire the right (and the right number of) individuals to implement plans. Ray Mckenzie advises, “Build a team of people who are key and can help you move your strategy forward.”
• Resources: Get funding and sufficient time to implement required changes.
• Organization: Restructure the company to support the strategic goals.
• Systems: Acquire the tools needed to perform the required processes.
• Culture: Work to create an environment that prioritizes the actions needed to reach the stated goals.

McKinsey 7S Framework

The McKinsey 7S framework is an organizational tool developed at the McKinsey & Company consulting firm in the 1980s, by Robert H. Waterman and Tom Peters. The framework can be used in many ways, including to determine how well an organization is prepared to change in order to implement a strategy.

Here are the 7Ss:

• Strategy: What needs to to be implemented
• Structure: The chain of command
• Systems: The tools used to perform tasks and complete processes
• Skills: What employees can do
• Style: How the leaders lead
• Staff: The employees
• Shared Values: The core values, expressed through the corporate culture

These can be divided into the hard Ss (Strategy, Structure, Systems), which are tangible, and the soft Ss (Skills, Style, Staff, Shared Values), which are intangible. In order to ensure smooth implementation, align each of these categories.

Examples of Successful and Unsuccessful Implementation Strategies

As previously mentioned, because strategy formulation, implementation, and execution are intertwined, it may difficult to know which phase is the cause of strategic failure. Here are some quick examples of success and failure where implementation is key.

Wal-Mart: The corporation became the retail giant they are by having low prices. They made lower margins by having high volume. In order to do that, they implemented a supply chain strategy that reduced operating costs. As they grew, their strategy was to use their size as a bargaining chip with suppliers to get even lower prices.  

J.C. Penney: Penney’s was a major retailer in the U.S. for many years, but when the landscape changed, they kept doing the same things. When the company finally brought in new leadership in 2011, they implemented a strategy that eliminated coupons that customers used and lowered their regular prices. They also changed their retail mix. When sales began to fall, they maintained their implemented strategy without adjusting. If they had taken advantage of the data from strategic evaluations and had responded appropriately, they might have been able to salvage the parts of their strategy that were working.

Apple: In the late 1990s, Apple was close to going out of business. They had many products that didn’t sell. When Steve Jobs returned, he implemented a strategy that reduced the number of products, and worked to develop new ones. This approach eventually led to the invention of the iPod. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, but it was the first to catch on because of its ease of use and storage capacity. This, in essence, was an application of the Blue Ocean theory: Apple found a market segment that wasn’t very competitive, and created a product that was better than what was available. For a long time, Apple was the dominant player in that market segment.

Google: While Google is successful in most ventures (search, email, maps), they have had some notable stumbles. One is Google Glass, the company’s wearable computer. While the idea was good, the device was very expensive, was not easy to use, there were concerns about privacy, and was an unattractive pair of glasses. Mostly, there was no real compelling reason to use it. Google Glass was a failed application of the Blue Ocean theory, and also another failure to adapt to data from strategic evaluations.

Strategic Implementation without Disruption

Strategic implementation can involve the restructuring of reporting relationships: adding, deleting, or updating processes, or even layoffs. This process can be painful for employees, and can cause problems when it’s time to execute strategy.

Restructuring can be expensive, and the new structure can create issues as troublesome as those you are trying to solve. Employes have to adapt to the new structure and may be dissatisfied. As a result, a lot of tacit institutional knowledge can be lost as people get shuffled around or worse, leave the company. Restructuring may also result in maintaining legacy systems until they can be phased out, which causes unnecessary expense. Additionally, some people won't be able to fully focus on the new strategy while they keep legacy systems running.

It's far less disruptive to choose an organizational design that’s flexible and can be adapted without major conflicts, and then formulate strategies that can be easily implemented.

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton recommend the balanced scorecard framework, which they co-created in the 1990s. They believe that this framework will minimize the need to go through disruptive restructuring when new strategies change due to the following reasons:

• It focuses on the strategic agenda of the organization.
• It recommends monitoring a small number of data points.
• It looks at both financial and non-financial data.

The implementation of this framework is beyond the scope of this article, but you can read an explanation of its benefits via the Harvard Business Review .

Sometimes disruptive restructuring is necessary. If it can’t be avoided, here are some steps to make it more manageable:

• Break the strategy into smaller chunks, so the disruption is spread over a longer time frame.
• Communicate directly to affected employees. Explain why the changes are needed, and retrain them to adapt to the new structure.
• Use a version of the strategic evaluation process that focuses on the affected employees, have them report their on satisfaction levels, and adjust the strategy based on that feedback to lessen the impacts.

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Strategy Implementation: Process, Models & Example

Strategy implementation is the process where strategies and methods are put into action to fulfill an organization’s objectives, goals, and mission. This step comes after the strategic planning and decision-making process.

What is a Business Strategy? What are examples of business strategy?

Strategy Implementation Models

There are many different models and frameworks that can be used to guide the process of strategy implementation. Here are a few of the most commonly used models:

• Balanced Scorecard:  Developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, this model uses a balanced set of financial and non-financial metrics to measure performance. It considers four perspectives: financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth.
• McKinsey 7S Framework:  This model emphasizes the importance of coordinating seven key organizational elements for successful implementation: structure, strategy, systems, staff, style, skills, and shared values.
• Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model:  Although not a strategy-specific implementation model, John Kotter’s model is widely used in strategic change scenarios. The eight steps include creating a sense of urgency, forming a guiding coalition, creating a vision for change, communicating the vision, removing obstacles, creating short-term wins, building on the change, and anchoring the change in corporate culture.
• OKR (Objectives and Key Results):  This goal-setting framework helps organizations implement the strategy by defining objectives and tracking measurable results.
• OGSM (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures):  This model provides a clear and visual structure to help organizations align their strategies with operational actions and expected outcomes.
• PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act):  This iterative four-step management method is used in businesses to control and continuously improve processes and products.
• Strategy Map:  A strategy map is a visual tool designed to communicate a strategic plan and achieve high-level business goals.

The best model for any given organization will depend on the nature of the organization, the specific strategies being implemented, and the context in which they operate.

Strategy Implementation Process

The strategy implementation process is a complex process that involves turning strategic plans into actions and then measuring the effectiveness of those actions in achieving the organization’s goals. Although it can vary based on specific models and business environments, a typical strategy implementation process may include the following steps:

• Developing an Implementation Plan:  The first step in the process is to develop a detailed plan for implementing the strategy. This plan should clearly outline the tasks that need to be accomplished, who is responsible for each task, when each task needs to be completed, and what resources are required.
• Resource Allocation:  Resources need to be efficiently allocated to support the strategy. This could involve financial resources, human resources, materials, or time. It’s also important to ensure that the organization can implement the strategy.
• Organizational Structure Adjustments:  Sometimes, the existing organizational structure may need to be modified or redesigned to support the strategic goals. This could involve changes in roles, responsibilities, reporting lines, etc.
• Strategy Communication:  It’s important to communicate the strategy across the organization. All employees should understand the strategy, their role in it, and how their work contributes to strategic objectives.
• Employee Training and Development:  Employees may need new skills or knowledge to carry out their roles under the new strategy. This might require training, mentoring, or hiring new staff.
• Performance Management:  Set clear performance standards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor progress toward strategic objectives. Regularly review performance and provide feedback.
• Leadership and Management Support:  Leaders and managers should commit to the strategy, set a good example, and motivate their teams.
• Review and Adjust:  Strategy implementation is not a one-time activity. Regularly review progress and make necessary adjustments. This might involve changing aspects of the strategy, altering the implementation plan, or reallocating resources.

Strategy implementation can be challenging, but following a structured process can increase the chances of success. Remember that effective strategy implementation requires a long-term commitment and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Strategy Implementation Example

Let’s look at an example of a company implementing a new strategy. This example is hypothetical and simplified but gives a basic idea of the process.

Company ABC, a retail business, has decided to implement a new strategy of focusing more on e-commerce sales to adapt to the increasing trend of online shopping. Here’s how they could implement this strategy:

• Develop an Implementation Plan:  ABC creates a detailed plan with objectives such as developing a user-friendly online shopping platform, increasing the online product range, and implementing digital marketing campaigns.
• Resource Allocation:  ABC allocates funds for website development, digital marketing, and e-commerce logistics. They also allocate personnel resources, assigning teams to manage the new online shopping platform, customer service, and digital marketing.
• Organizational Structure Adjustments:  ABC modifies its organizational structure, establishing a new e-commerce department and hiring a Head of E-commerce.
• Strategy Communication:  ABC’s CEO communicates the new strategy to all employees through a town hall meeting. They explain the strategic shift, its reasons, and how it affects different parts of the organization.
• Employee Training and Development:  ABC arranges training programs for its customer service and sales teams to help them adapt to the new e-commerce environment. They also hire new staff with digital marketing and e-commerce experience.
• Performance Management:  ABC sets KPIs related to online sales volume, website traffic, and customer satisfaction rates. They introduce a performance dashboard to track these metrics.
• Leadership and Management Support:  ABC’s management team fully supports the new strategy. They lead by example, show enthusiasm and commitment, and regularly update staff on progress.
• Review and Adjust:  After the first quarter, ABC reviews the results. They see an increase in online sales, but customer feedback indicates some issues with the new online platform. ABC takes this feedback and makes necessary adjustments, enhancing the website’s user interface and fixing technical bugs.

This example demonstrates the importance of planning, resource allocation, organizational adjustments, communication, and ongoing review in the strategy implementation process. It’s also worth noting that even well-planned strategies may need adjustments based on feedback and performance results.

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6 Tips for Transitioning from Strategy Formulation to Implementation

• 17 Nov 2022

Strategy formulation is key to a successful business, but it's only effective when implemented correctly. Some professionals are experienced in developing comprehensive business plans, while others are well-versed in execution —more commonly known as "thinkers" versus "doers."

A balanced combination of both is an invaluable asset to any business. If you're struggling to bring your business strategy across the finish line, here are tips for transitioning from strategy formulation to implementation and a deeper understanding of why it's essential to your company's long-term success.

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Formulating a Successful Strategy

Developing an effective strategy requires in-depth knowledge, critical thinking, and careful planning. While several frameworks can help set the foundation, Harvard Business School Online's Business Strategy course uses the value stick.

The value stick is a visual representation of value-based strategy and can help you formulate a business model that factors in pricing, product positioning, and vendor management. Value-based strategy relies on customers' perceived value of the products or services being sold and determines the organization's prices, costs, and supplier strategy.

Some key terms for formulating a value-based strategy include:

• Willingness to pay (WTP): The price customers are willing to pay for a product or service. The margin between a customer's WTP and the actual price is deemed "customer delight," or customers' perceived received value.
• Price: The price the product is sold for. The margin between the price and cost is the firm margin, or the money the business makes.
• Cost: The cost of manufacturing the product.
• Willingness to sell (WTS): The lowest price a supplier is willing to accept for its services. The margin between WTS and cost is called "supplier surplus" or "supplier delight"—the value suppliers believe they're receiving.

This is just one framework for formulating a successful strategy. You can use similar tools, but the best option will always depend on your company's strategic planning needs . To ensure you're on the right path to an effective business strategy, here are six tips for formulating and implementing successfully.

6 Tips For Transitioning from Formulation to Implementation

After formulating a well-developed business strategy, it's time to execute, which is easier said than done. Strategy execution often poses several challenges that can be hard to overcome.

According to the HBS Online course Business Strategy , there are three characteristics of strategy implementation that make the process difficult for many companies:

• Boring: Strategy tends to be exciting; implementation, by comparison, can be rather mundane
• Time-consuming: The best strategies typically require years to implement effectively
• Detail-oriented: Good strategy implementation requires an attention to detail many managers don't have

To prevent these obstacles and ensure a smooth transition from formulation to successful implementation, here's an overview of what you can do to set your business strategy up for success .

1. Set Clear Goals

A simple and effective way to transition from formulation to execution is to set clear strategic goals . Strategic goals are measurable, actionable objectives that align with an organization's purpose and long-term vision. These goals ensure that individuals implementing the strategy have clear guidelines on how to define successful execution.

“When we set goals, we like to imagine a bright future with our business succeeding,” says HBS Professor Robert Simons in Strategy Execution . “But to identify your critical performance variables, you need to engage in an uncomfortable exercise and consider what can cause your strategy to fail.”

Planning in advance and identifying possible weaknesses in your strategy can help you achieve these business goals and objectives without additional roadblocks.

2. Create a Value Map

A value map is a visual tool that helps organizations determine the needs, pain points, or desires its products or services can solve or fulfill for potential customers. It's a tool that illustrates a business's potential value drivers, the factors that influence customers' willingness to pay for a product or service. Identifying and mapping value drivers can be used to formulate an organization's value proposition and key differentiators.

According to HBS Online's Business Strategy course, there are five steps to creating an effective value map:

• Identify value drivers: Determine 10 purchasing criteria customers use when choosing between your product and competing products.
• Rank value drivers: Rank those 10 criteria from most to least important.
• Rate your company's performance: For each value driver, rate how your company is performing from a score of one (poor) to five (excellent).
• Rate your competitors' performance: Repeat this process for two or three of your main competitors.
• Review your value map: Ask yourself if your findings accurately reflect the market's competitive situation, your company's strengths and weaknesses, and if there are actionable next steps to mend any competitive gaps.

By creating a value map, you can review your business's performance and discover new opportunities to improve your position in the market. A value map can also rank how well your company is attracting and maintaining talent compared to competitors.

3. Strengthen Important Value Drivers

Once you've identified your key value drivers, the next step of execution is to strengthen them. Yet, it's important to focus on strengthening the most important ones rather than all of them.

"If you strive to be exceptional everywhere and spread resources evenly across all your value drivers, you end up being mediocre throughout," says Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, who teaches Business Strategy .

Once you've identified the most important value drivers, strengthening them requires generating creative ideas . Since enhancing value drivers can be a relatively vague task, creativity provides ideas and direction. Don't be afraid to think outside the box, take risks, or even fail. Through experimentation and testing, new ideas can strengthen your value drivers and propel your business forward.

4. Create a Plan For Evolving Your Value Proposition

A value proposition is a short statement explaining the value your company provides and how your product or services differ from competitors. As the business landscape and market shift, so must your value proposition.

Competitors often become imitators or substitutes, which can cannibalize your revenue. To stay on top, your strategy—including your value drivers and value proposition—will have to evolve continually.

5. Delegate Work Effectively

Successful strategy implementation can be an overwhelming, multi-step process. It's important for managers to delegate effectively . By assigning tasks to other team members, leadership can spend more time focusing on bigger picture elements and:

• Engage other team members
• Share core business values
• Encourage strategy buy-in
• Win together and boost team morale

6. Continue to Review Performance

While these tools can be helpful for any strategy implementation, they don’t guarantee success without constant review and oversight. A successful strategic plan that drives value for a business and its customers requires continuous performance reviews and improvements.

One factor of strategy implementation to review is your employees. According to Strategy Execution , it can be beneficial in some cases to use ranking systems when reviewing employee performance to ensure your strategic initiatives receive the support needed to succeed long term.

“Ranking systems have really good features that managers can use to stimulate performance,” says HBS Professor Susanna Gallani in Strategy Execution . For example, employees who are highly motivated by personal achievement often thrive as a result of ranking systems.

It’s also important to continuously review your strategy, even after implementation. To ensure you get the most out of this review process, consider setting up a standardized operating procedure (SOP) for a designated task owner to run regularly to analyze and determine if an update is necessary. This can help you avoid common pitfalls of business strategy failures.

Why Business Strategy Formulation and Execution Are Important

Business strategy is an essential component of long-term growth and success. It offers value to customers, encouragement to key stakeholders, purpose for your company initiatives, and direction to your team. Yet, formulation only gets you so far.

Don't lose momentum during the implementation phase—ensure all your hard work pays off. With the right framework, you can create value for your customers and implement a frictionless strategy to achieve outstanding financial results.

Are you interested in learning about strategy implementation? Explore Business Strategy and Strategy Execution , two of our online strategy courses , to develop your strategic planning and implementation skills. To determine which strategy course is right for you, download our free flowchart .

This post was updated on November 3, 2023. It was originally published on November 17, 2022.

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Project management

Implementation plan: What to include and 5 essential steps

A project plan or project implementation plan is a key strategic document that keeps teams on track throughout a project, indicating how a project is expected to run along with who’s responsible for what. It’s an extremely valuable planning tool — one that can be the difference between project success and project failure.

It’s also a fairly comprehensive document, and if you’ve never built one before, the concept can feel a bit overwhelming.

In this post, we’ll give you a five-step plan for building and implementing a project plan. First, we’ll walk you through what a project implementation plan looks like, why you should create one for every project, and what each plan should include.

• What is a project implementation plan?

A project implementation plan is a document that defines how a project will be executed. Implementation plans outline the project's goals, scope, and purpose, as well as listing the resources (including team members) necessary for a successful project.

Project implementation plans are sometimes called “strategic plans” because they lay out the strategy proposed for a project. But we like the longer name because it conveys more than just strategy: It suggests a process going into action, and it answers the question of how a team will arrive at a goal.

A project implementation plan serves as a critical reference point throughout the project's lifecycle, ensuring everyone is on the same page and everything is on the right track. It's a vital document for guiding decision-making, mitigating risks, and ultimately ensuring the successful completion of the project from start to finish.

The Teamwork.com guide to project management

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• Why every project should start with an implementation plan

Why start each project with an implementation plan? Simple: because you want the project to succeed, and you want an objective way to know if it succeeded.

Starting each project with an implementation plan accomplishes quite a bit for most teams and businesses, primarily because it creates a shared sense of vision and understanding and points toward a clearly defined goal.

Most teams realize these four benefits (and plenty more) when they create a thorough and functional project implementation plan:

It creates an actionable roadmap of the scope of work

Projects run the gamut from extremely simple to lengthy and complex. The more complicated and interconnected the project, the greater the chance for confusion.

Whatever the level of complexity, chaos ensues when team members aren’t clear on what to do, when to do it, or why they’re doing it.

A project implementation plan is the antidote to this kind of chaos because it shows all parties what the path forward looks like (the roadmap ) — as well as what is and isn’t on that path (the scope of work).

It makes goals and communication transparent to all stakeholders

When all parties understand the goals of a project, you lessen confusion around those goals. There may still be disagreement on how to best achieve a goal, but there’s no confusion about what the team is aiming to accomplish.

Also, a central, accessible document containing all relevant aspects of a project creates a single source of truth for teams, managers, executives, vendors, customers, and more. When anyone and everyone associated with a project is working from the same playbook, teams and businesses enjoy clearer, more focused, and more transparent communication .

It holds your team members accountable

Around 70% of businesses report having at least one failed project in the last year. We’ve all been part of a project where no one seemed accountable for problems or even total project failure. Of course, no one likes taking the blame and finding a scapegoat isn’t always terribly productive. Still, if you have a team member or business unit that’s consistently failing to deliver, you want to know.

A strong project implementation plan makes clear who’s responsible for what within a project. It gives project managers and team leads a stronger understanding of task accountability, helping to hold team members accountable for their work.

And most of the time, better accountability comes with better results!

It helps your entire team stay on the same page

You’ll never completely eliminate scope creep (something that occurred within more than a third of projects in 2021), nor should you. Parameters for various deliverables or even the entire project can and do change over the course of a project, and sometimes a change in scope is clearly the right decision.

But not all scope creep is good. Especially with longer or more complex projects, it’s common for team members to lose focus on the top-level goals — not to mention the specific steps needed to reach those goals.

This loss of focus is preventable, though, as is the scope creep that grows from it. A project implementation plan keeps the big-picture goals and the steps required to meet them in focus. When a change in scope is warranted, it should be documented within or alongside the implementation plan.

• Essential components of a great implementation plan

Most well-designed implementation plans contain these essential items, though it’s important to note that implementation plans vary widely, just like the projects they’re attached to.

These elements comprise a solid foundation for your next implementation plan. Start with these, but feel free to add additional elements that make sense for your industry or project type.

1) Scope statement

The scope statement outlines the scope of the project — essentially, what work will be performed in the project (and what work would be considered out of scope).

2) Project milestones, goals, and key objectives

Project goals are the high-level outcomes the project aims to achieve. Key objectives are the steps or intermediate outcomes that will occur throughout the project in support of the project goals. Project milestones are the points of measurement along the way, usually significant or tangible in some way.

Examples of milestones across a few industry contexts include wireframe completed, beta launch, copy drafted, or the completion of a phase, segment, or function that’s part of the whole.

3) Detailed resource plan

A project’s resource plan indicates which human resources are involved along with their time or workload commitment. You should also include materials and equipment (typically, only what’s beyond the standard stuff every employee already has) needed for successful project completion.

4) Estimated implementation timeline

A key element of any implementation plan is a concrete timeframe for the project (and its implementation). These dates are rarely perfect at the outset of a project, but they provide a goal to work toward and give stakeholders some context for what they’re signing off on.

Most project teams use project management software for creating project timelines , often in the form of a Gantt chart.

5) Implementation plan milestones

Your implementation plan may benefit from its own set of internal milestones, separate from the broader project milestones. These internal milestones are more useful on highly complex projects with multiple levels of approval and numerous departments supplying information.

Implementation plan milestones could look like these: initial stakeholder information gathered, plan drafted, plan discussed and feedback incorporated, final sign-off by all stakeholders.

6) Implementation plan KPIs & metrics

Your key performance indicators (KPIs) or other metrics reveal how well the team is accomplishing the implementation plan. Establish measurable indicators, state what they are within the plan itself, and then track them over the course of the project.

Here, a quality project management tool is essential if you want to succeed with measurements that span the length of a project.

• 5 easy steps to create your project implementation plan

Now you know what needs to go into your project implementation plan — but how do you actually create one and get the implementation process started?

We know this process can seem daunting at first, and it does take some upfront work. But the process doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. Follow these five easy steps to create an implementation plan that helps keep your project and your team on track. Then, as future projects arise, use these questions as a template of sorts to create a quality implementation and management plan for each one.

Teamwork.com’s project management template is an easy way to start building your plan today.

• 1) Define your goals and milestones

Before you can create a plan for how to get where you want to go, you need to spend some time deciding where you want to go .

So, before you start building out any other part of a project implementation or action plan, start by devoting time to the what and the where:

What are you trying to accomplish? (Project-level goals)

What needs to happen to reach those goals? (Project objectives)

What are the intermediate steps or milestones that demonstrate progress along the path toward the project’s goals? (Project milestones)

Once you establish goals, objectives, and milestones — and achieve buy-in from key stakeholders and project team members on those goals and milestones — you’re ready to proceed to step two.

• 2) Conduct research by interviewing, surveying, or observing

Research is one key element of a successful implementation plan. In many project contexts, this research looks like interviewing or surveying various stakeholders, subject matter experts, department leaders, and so on — gathering the information necessary to build your implementation strategy.

Sometimes observation is a key strategy as well: Watching what another team (or vendor or external organization) does or has done on a similar project can provide valuable insights.

• 3) Brainstorm and map out potential risks

Every project has inherent potential risks. Some of these can be foreseen, while others seem to come out of nowhere. Take the pandemic as one example of the latter category. Yes, businesses should have business continuity and disaster management policies in place, but few — if any — businesses had a concrete plan of action lined up for a global pandemic.

So, there are risks you can’t plan for and could never predict. But there are plenty of risks that, with a little bit of brainstorming and planning, should be easy to discover. These are the ones you need to target as you perform a risk assessment.

Map out the known risks, along with potential impacts and mitigation strategies for each one. Some risks are entirely avoidable so long as you take appropriate risk management actions. Others may not be completely preventable, but having a plan in place will greatly reduce their impact.

• 4) Assign and delegate essential tasks

Every good implementation plan will include a work plan or action plan that lists out the tasks within the project to a certain level of granularity. These tasks eventually get plugged into a calendar or schedule of some sort, often within project planning software suites like Teamwork.com .

No matter what method or platform you’re using, at this stage, you need to map out or schedule these tasks. As a part of this step, make sure you assign and delegate tasks to specific resources (or, at minimum, specific departments or work groups).

This step is key to successful project execution, as it assigns responsibility and accountability for every task included in the plan, bringing clarity to who’s doing what and when.

• 5) Finalize your plan and allocate resources

Next up is allocating resources. You already assigned tasks to people (or departments) in the previous step, so what do we mean here that’s any different?

Put simply, there’s a difference between putting on paper that “Sam will handle task 35” (assigning tasks) and actually making sure that Sam has the capacity to handle task 35 (allocating resources).

In step 4, all you really did was determine who’s doing what. Now, during resource allocation, you make sure that your assignment plan is achievable. Resource allocation means assigning tasks to resources that are actually available. In other words, you need to make sure task 35 doesn’t land on Sam’s desk the same day as 10 other tasks.

Last, once everything else about your plan has been crafted, vetted, and approved, it’s time to finalize the plan. Usually, this involves sending out the completed plan for a final round of approvals.

Once approved, the project implementation plan becomes a single source of truth for the team and other stakeholders. So make sure to store the plan in a central, accessible location. ( Teamwork.com is a great place for this , if you ask us!)

• Create an effective project plan with Teamwork.com

Creating a project implementation plan requires careful planning and attention to innumerable details, but the results are worth the investment. Increase your project success rate, productivity, morale, and more by keeping teams focused on the right shared outcomes.

We’ve hinted at this a few times already, but project implementation planning (along with all the other documents and documentation you need to prepare to get a project off the ground) is infinitely easier when you use the right tools.

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Implementation

Organizations are facing an unprecedented challenge to chart a path to the next normal. The pandemic has upended working norms and operating models at every level. The path forward requires change, and organizations are not only seeking solutions to safeguard their workforce and improve their performance in the short term, but also to ensure their transformations are sustainable over time. We believe execution excellence will be key to thriving in the next normal as organizations restart and reimagine operations

in a new reality. Diagnosing the specific barriers to successful implementation and delivering targeted interventions that transform business models are critical for sustaining lasting impact. From implementing on-site workforce safety protocols, to building capabilities to lead during times of change, to regenerating stalled sales pipelines and reenergizing cost and productivity initiatives, we are helping organizations identify the change required to succeed and working with them to unlock the next level of performance.

How we help clients

Assess execution readiness, upskill execution capabilities, navigate transition and recovery, imagine the full potential of a transformation, strategy roll-out, rapid cash generation, improvements replication, program and project management, capability building and coaching, performance management, our approach, we help our clients achieve impact from strategy through implementation..

Our core belief is that a transformation needs different types of expertise depending on where an organization is in the process. We bring people together with different and complementary profiles over the course of any transformation with the continuity of a core client service team, as shown in the conceptual graphic below

Diagnose with execution assessment

Design with bottom-up planning, implement and sustain, featured capability.

Interested in a career in Implementation?

Connect with our implementation practice.

Theories, Models, & Frameworks

One of the cornerstones of implementation science is the use of theory.

Unfortunately, the vast number of theories, models, and frameworks available in the implementation science toolkit can make it difficult to determine which is the most appropriate to address or frame a research question. There are dozens of theories, models, and frameworks used in implementation science that have been developed across a wide range of disciplines, and more are published each year.

Two reviews provide schemas to organize implementation science theories, models, and frameworks and narrow the range of choices:

Bridging research and practice: models for dissemination and implementation research (Tabak, Khoong, Chambers, & Brownson, 2013) Tabak et al’s schema organizes 61 dissemination and implementation models based on three variables: 1) construct flexibility, 2) focus on dissemination and/or implementation activities, and 3) socio-ecological framework level.

Doing Research

Frame your question, ⇥ pick a theory, model, or framework, identify implementation strategies, select research method, select study design, choose measures, get funding, report results.

The authors argue that classification of a model based on these three variables will assist in selecting a model to inform D&I science study design and execution. For more information, check out this archived NCI webinar with presenters Dr. Rachel Tabak and Dr. Ted Skolarus: 💻 Applying Models and Frameworks to D&I Research: An Overview & Analysis .

✪ Making sense of implementation theories, models, and frameworks (Nilsen, 2015) Per Nilsen's schema sorts implementation science theories, models, and frameworks into five categories: 1) process models, 2) determinants frameworks, 3) classic theories, 4) implementation theories, and 5) evaluation frameworks.

Adapted from: Nilsen P. Making sense of implementation theories, models and frameworks. Implement Sci . 2015;10(1):1-13.

Below, we borrow from Nilsen’s schema to organize overviews of a selection of implementation science theories, models, and frameworks. In each overview, you will find links to additional resources.

Open Access articles will be marked with ✪ Please note some journals will require subscriptions to access a linked article.

What are you using implementation science to accomplish.

• To describe or guide the process of translating research into practice
• To understand and/or explain what influences implementation outcomes
• To evaluate implementation

Process Models

Examples of use.

• ✪ Results-based aid with lasting effects: Sustainability in the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative ( Globalization and Health , 2018)
• ✪ Study Protocol: A Clinical Trial for Improving Mental Health Screening for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Pregnant Women and Mothers of Young Children Using the Kimberley Mum's Mood Scale ( BMC Public Health , 2019)
• ✪ Sustainability of Public Health Interventions: Where Are the Gaps? ( Health Research Policy and Systems , 2019)

In 2018 the authors refined the EPIS model into the cyclical EPIS Wheel, allowing for closer alignment with rapid-cycle testing. A model for rigorously applying the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework in the design and measurement of a large scale collaborative multi-site study is available Open Access (✪) from Health & Justice .

• ✪ Systematic review of the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework ( Implementation Science , 2019)
• A Review of Studies on the System-Wide Implementation of Evidence-Based Psychotherapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the Veterans Health Administration ( Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research , 2016)
• Advancing Implementation Research and Practice in Behavioral Health Systems ( Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research , 2016)
• ✪ A model for rigorously applying the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework in the design and measurement of a large scale collaborative multi-site study ( Health and Justice , 2018)
• Characterizing Shared and Unique Implementation Influences in Two Community Services Systems for Autism: Applying the EPIS Framework to Two Large-Scale Autism Intervention Community Effectiveness Trials ( Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research , 2019)
• 💻 WEBINAR: Use of theory in implementation research: The EPIS framework: A phased and multilevel approach to implementation
• ✪ A two-way street: bridging implementation science and cultural adaptations of mental health treatments ( Implementation Science , 2013)
• ✪ “Scaling-out” evidence-based interventions to new populations or new health care delivery systems ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ Implementing measurement based care in community mental health: a description of tailored and standardized methods ( Implementation Science , 2018)
• ✪ "I Had to Somehow Still Be Flexible": Exploring Adaptations During Implementation of Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Primary Care ( Implementation Science , 2018)
• An Implementation Science Approach to Antibiotic Stewardship in Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centers ( Academic Emergency Medicine , 2020)
• Using the Practical, Robust Implementation and Sustainability Model (PRISM) to Qualitatively Assess Multilevel Contextual Factors to Help Plan, Implement, Evaluate, and Disseminate Health Services Programs ( Translational Behavioral Medicine , 2019)
• Stakeholder Perspectives on Implementing a Universal Lynch Syndrome Screening Program: A Qualitative Study of Early Barriers and Facilitators ( Genetics Medicine , 2016)
• Evaluating the Implementation of Project Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) in Five Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Hospitals ( The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety , 2018)

In 2012 Meyers, Durlak, and Wandersman synthesized information from 25 implementation frameworks with a focus on identifying specific actions that improve the quality of implementation efforts. The result of this synthesis was the Quality Implementation Framework (QIF) , published in the American Journal of Community Psychology . This framework is comprised of fourteen critical steps across four phases of implementation, and has been used widely in child and family services, behavioral health, and hospital settings.

• ✪ Practical Implementation Science: Developing and Piloting the Quality Implementation Tool ( American Journal of Community Psychology , 2012)
• Survivorship Care Planning in a Comprehensive Cancer Center Using an Implementation Framework ( The Journal of Community and Supportive Oncology , 2016)
• ✪ The Application of an Implementation Science Framework to Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs: Be a Champion! ( Frontiers in Public Health , 2017)
• ✪ Developing and Evaluating a Lay Health Worker Delivered Implementation Intervention to Decrease Engagement Disparities in Behavioural Parent Training: A Mixed Methods Study Protocol ( BMJ Open , 2019)
• Implementation Process and Quality of a Primary Health Care System Improvement Initiative in a Decentralized Context: A Retrospective Appraisal Using the Quality Implementation Framework ( The International Journal of Health Planning and Management , 2019)

Determinant Frameworks

Learn more:.

• Statewide Implementation of Evidence-Based Programs ( Exceptional Children , 2013)
• Active Implementation Frameworks for Successful Service Delivery: Catawba County Child Wellbeing Project ( Research on Social Work Practice , 2014)
• The Active Implementation Frameworks: A roadmap for advancing implementation of Comprehensive Medication Management in primary care ( Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy , 2017)

For additional resources, please visit the CFIR Technical Assistance Website . The website has tools and templates for studying implementation of innovations using the CFIR framework, and these tools can help you learn more about issues pertaining to inner and outer contexts. You can read the original framework development article in the Open Access (✪) journal Implementation Science .

• ✪ Evaluating and Optimizing the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) for use in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review ( Implementation Science , 2020)
• ✪ A systematic review of the use of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to produce actionable findings: A rapid-cycle evaluation approach to improving implementation ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research: Advancing implementation science through real-world applications, adaptations, and measurement ( Implementation Science , 2015)
• 💻 WEBINAR: Use of theory in implementation research: Pragmatic application and scientific advancement of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) (Dr. Laura Damschroder, National Cancer Institute of NIH Fireside Chat Series )

In 2005, Dr. Susan Michie and colleagues published the Theoretical Domains Framework in BMJ Quality & Safety , the result of a consensus process to develop a theoretical framework for implementation research. The primary goals of the development team were to determine key theoretical constructs for studying evidence based practice implementation and for developing strategies for effective implementation, and for these constructs to be accessible and meaningful across disciplines.

• ✪ Validation of the theoretical domains framework for use in behaviour change and implementation research ( Implementation Science , 2012)
• ✪ Theoretical domains framework to assess barriers to change for planning health care quality interventions: a systematic literature review ( Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare , 2016)
• ✪ Combined use of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF): a systematic review ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ Applying the Theoretical Domains Framework to identify barriers and targeted interventions to enhance nurses’ use of electronic medication management systems in two Australian hospitals ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ A guide to using the Theoretical Domains Framework of behaviour change to investigate implementation problems ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ Hospitals Implementing Changes in Law to Protect Children of Ill Parents: A Cross-Sectional Study ( BMC Health Services Research , 2018)
• Addressing the Third Delay: Implementing a Novel Obstetric Triage System in Ghana ( BMJ Global Health , 2018)

The original framework development article, Enabling the implementation of evidence based practice: a conceptual framework is available Open Access (✪) from BMJ Quality & Safety .

• Ingredients for change: revisiting a conceptual framework ( BMJ Quality & Safety , 2002)
• Evaluating the successful implementation of evidence into practice using the PARIHS framework: theoretical and practical challenges ( Implementation Science , 2008)
• ✪ A critical synthesis of literature on the promoting action on research implementation in health services (PARIHS) framework ( Implementation Science , 2010)
• ✪ A Guide for applying a revised version of the PARIHS framework for implementation ( Implementation Science , 2011)
• 💻 WEBINAR: Use of theory in implementation research; Pragmatic application and scientific advancement of the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARiHS) framework

Classic Theories

In 2017 Dr. Sarah Birken and colleagues published their application of four organizational theories to published accounts of evidence-based program implementation. The objective was to determine whether these theories could help explain implementation success by shedding light on the impact of the external environment on the implementing organizations.

Their paper, ✪ Organizational theory for dissemination and implementation research , published in the journal Implementation Science utilized transaction cost economics theory , institutional theory , contingency theories , and resource dependency theory for this work.

In 2019, Dr. Jennifer Leeman and colleagues applied these same three organizational theories to case studies of the implementation of colorectal cancer screening interventions in Federally Qualified Health Centers, in ✪ Advancing the use of organization theory in implementation science ( Preventive Medicine , 2019).

In 2005 the NIH published ✪ Theory at a Glance: A Guide For Health Promotion Practice 2.0, an overview of behavior change theories. Below are selected theories from the intrapersonal and interpersonal ecological levels most relevant to implementation science.

There are two intrapersonal behavioral theories most often used to interpret individual behavior variation:

The Health Belief Model : An initial theory of health behavior, the HBM arose from work in the 1950s by a group of social psychologists in the U.S. wishing to understand why health improvement services were not being used. The HBM posited that in the health behavior context, readiness to act arises from six factors: perceived susceptibility , perceived severity . perceived benefits , perceived barriers , a cue to action , and self-efficacy . To learn more about the Health Belief Model, please read "Historical Origins of the Health Belief Model" ( Health Education Monographs ).

The Theory of Planned Behavior : This theory, developed by Ajzen in the late 1980s and formalized in 1991 , sees the primary driver of behavior as being behavioral intention . Through the lens of the TPB, behavioral intention is believed to be influenced by an individual's attitude , their perception of peers' subjective norms , and the individual's perceived behavioral control .

At the interpersonal behavior level , where individual behavior is influenced by a social environment, Social Cognitive Theory is the most widely used theory in health behavior research.

Social Cognitive Theory : Published by Bandera in the 1978 article, Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change , SCT consists of six main constructs: reciprocal determinism , behavioral capability , expectations , observational learning , reinforcements , and self-efficacy (which is seen as the most important personal factor in changing behavior).

Examples of use in implementation science:

The Health Belief Model

• ✪ Using technology for improving population health: comparing classroom vs. online training for peer community health advisors in African American churches ( Implementation Science , 2015)

The Theory of Planned Behavior

• ✪ Assessing mental health clinicians’ intentions to adopt evidence-based treatments: reliability and validity testing of the evidence-based treatment intentions scale ( Implementation Science , 2016)

Social Cognitive Theory

• ✪ Systematic development of a theory-informed multifaceted behavioural intervention to increase physical activity of adults with type 2 diabetes in routine primary care: Movement as Medicine for Type 2 Diabetes ( Implementation Science , 2016)
• Diffusion of preventive innovations ( Addictive Behaviors , 2002)
• ✪ Diffusion of Innovation Theory ( Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics , 2011)

Implementation Theories

• ✪ Implementing community-based provider participation in research: an empirical study ( Implementation Science , 2012)
• ✪ Context matters: measuring implementation climate among individuals and groups ( Implementation Science , 2014)
• ✪ Determining the predictors of innovation implementation in healthcare: a quantitative analysis of implementation effectiveness ( BMC Health Services Research , 2015)
• Review: Conceptualization and Measurement of Organizational Readiness for Change ( Medical Care Research and Review , 2008)
• ✪ Organizational factors associated with readiness to implement and translate a primary care based telemedicine behavioral program to improve blood pressure control: the HTN-IMPROVE study ( Implementation Science , 2013)
• ✪ Towards evidence-based palliative care in nursing homes in Sweden: a qualitative study informed by the organizational readiness to change theory ( Implementation Science , 2018)
• ✪ Assessing the reliability and validity of the Danish version of Organizational Readiness for Implementing Change (ORIC) ( Implementation Science , 2018)
• ✪ Development of a theory of implementation and integration: Normalization Process Theory ( Implementation Science , 2009)
• ✪ Implementation, context and complexity ( Implementation Science , 2016)
• ✪ Exploring the implementation of an electronic record into a maternity unit: a qualitative study using Normalisation Process Theory ( BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making , 2017)
• ✪ Implementation of cardiovascular disease prevention in primary health care: enhancing understanding using normalisation process theory ( BMC Family Practice , 2017)
• ✪ Using Normalization Process Theory in feasibility studies and process evaluations of complex healthcare interventions: a systematic review ( Implementation Science , 2018)

Evaluation Frameworks

The framework development article, ✪ Outcomes for Implementation Research: Conceptual Distinctions, Measurement Challenges, and Research Agenda , is available through Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research .

In 2023, Dr. Proctor and several colleagues published Ten years of implementation outcomes research: a scoping review in the journal Implementation Science , a scoping review of 'the field’s progress in implementation outcomes research.'

• Toward Evidence-Based Measures of Implementation: Examining the Relationship Between Implementation Outcomes and Client Outcomes ( Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment , 2016)
• ✪ Toward criteria for pragmatic measurement in implementation research and practice: a stakeholder-driven approach using concept mapping ( Implementation Science , 2017)
• ✪ German language questionnaires for assessing implementation constructs and outcomes of psychosocial and health-related interventions: a systematic review ( Implementation Science , 2018)
• The Elusive Search for Success: Defining and Measuring Implementation Outcomes in a Real-World Hospital Trial ( Frontiers In Public Health , 2019)

In 1999, authors Glasgow, Vogt, and Boles developed this framework because they felt tightly controlled efficacy studies weren’t very helpful in informing program scale-up or in understanding actual public health impact of an intervention. The RE-AIM framework has been refined over time to guide the design and evaluation of complex interventions in order to maximize real-life public health impact.

This framework helps researchers collect information needed to translate research to effective practice, and may also be used to guide implementation and potential scale-up activities. You can read the original framework development article in The American Journal of Public Health . Additional resources, support, and publications on the RE-AIM framework can be found at RE-AIM.org . The 2021 special issue of Frontiers in Public Health titled Use of the RE-AIM Framework: Translating Research to Practice with Novel Applications and Emerging Directions includes more than 20 articles on RE-AIM.

• What Does It Mean to “Employ” the RE-AIM Model? ( Evaluation & the Health Professions , 2012)
• The RE-AIM Framework: A Systematic Review of Use Over Time (The American Journal of Public Health , 2013)
• ✪ Fidelity to and comparative results across behavioral interventions evaluated through the RE-AIM framework: a systematic review ( Systematic Reviews , 2015)
• ✪ Qualitative approaches to use of the RE-AIM framework: rationale and methods ( BMC Health Services Research , 2018)
• ✪ RE-AIM in Clinical, Community, and Corporate Settings: Perspectives, Strategies, and Recommendations to Enhance Public Health Impact ( Frontiers in Public Health , 2018)
• ✪ RE-AIM Planning and Evaluation Framework: Adapting to New Science and Practice With a 20-Year Review ( Frontiers in Public Health , 2019)
• ✪ RE-AIM in the Real World: Use of the RE-AIM Framework for Program Planning and Evaluation in Clinical and Community Settings ( Frontiers in Public Health , 2019)

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Implementation of Business Models

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In the context of business model management, the implementation of business models follows the business model design process. The result of the design process is an integrated business model that contains all nine partial models and serves as a construction plan for implementation. Practical implementation takes place on the partial model level and ends with the complete implementation of the business model.

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Wirtz, B.W. (2020). Implementation of Business Models. In: Business Model Management. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48017-2_13

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