References

Here are some references we used.

Textures:
www.cgtextures.com

All quotes have been extracted from
www.landonreiszahnarchitects.com

Pictures have been taken from many places but all rights belong to the original architects

Final Fabrication

The final fabrication of our Bodo Cultural Centre has finally been realised after weeks of hard and consistent work. After receiving feedback from our last submission we needed to include more interactivity, add interior textures, create landscaping near the surrounding buildings, add more AI and include interior furniture. We feel that we have successfully addressed all these elements within the final stage of our fabrication.

Our intent for this final submission was to create a successful environment within Crysis that adhered to and fulfilled the architects and our initial outcomes:

· a social, public and communal space;
· a space that connects both the local community and its visitors;
· a space that responds to the expectations and imagination of both the local community and its visitors – tourists and/or migrants;
· a space that enhances the local democratic and social traditions, as well as the natural and pre-existing built environment;
· a space that seeks interaction (open to communal and diverse ranges of activities), playfulness and poetic contemplation
· an accessible space, a place to be proud of and belong to.
· a glistening jewel which plays with the diverse qualities of light in the arctic region and brings the spectacular atmosphere of the northern landscape into the buildings
· an urban project that seeks to create a cultural ecology
· a space intrinsically linked to the sense of human scale, participation and creativity.

Working on from our last submission we have included detailed immediate surroundings to the building in the form of parks and communal walkways that lead from the pier along the sides of the building. We have designed the landscaping to reflect the sense of community use and public space that is an essential aspect of the Bodo Cultural Centre. The juxtaposition between the stark white features of the culture centre and the surrounding landscape and harbour further enhances the architects notion of creating a building which emulates the ‘natural glacial topographies and the rigid city grid’ of Bodo harbour. We have explored this through the addition of detailed harbour features in the form of drainage pipes that lead out to sea, access ladders along the piers into the water, as well as rock walls that run the length of the pier. We feel that the implementation of these elements creates a greater sense of understanding and coherency within our environment and creates a realistic representation of what the harbour would actually look like in Bodo.

Being a highly conceptually motivated building, we have expressed particular efforts in modelling the environment and context of which the Centre belongs so we have also implemented much more realistic 'time of day' features which represent the overall environment within Bodo and the harbour. The inclusion of interior furniture and realistic textures inside and outside the building further enhances the overall sense and understanding of the space within the crysis environment.

It can be seen that the forms and masses of the Culture Centre emulate carved forms and a same solid mass; through this final stage we have developed and refined the angular and irregular walls that make up the shell for the Culture Centre. After receiving feedback there were certain elements within our building that needed to be analysed and re-evaluated. We feel that we have successfully implemented these changes within our building to create a more uniform and consistent culture centre. Within our environment we have also implemented various elements from our specialisation tutorials, such as advanced AI, custom loading screens and videos as well as custom animated models.

Within the final submission we have further developed the most significant element to the Bodo Culture Centre is how well people can use the spaces created by the forms. We have considered people using our space from a macro perspective (walking through the city) and then from a micro perspective (using the actual Centre). Through artificial intelligence we have been able to analyse and understand the dialogue between The Cultural Centre and the people who use it.

Finally, we have successfully managed to implement our own custom trailer videos at the start of the game launch. This then leads on to the menu where we import our custom map and it starts loading along with a custom loading image. We have then packaged the map so that a cut scene is triggered as soon as the game starts, which flows through the map up to our building where the cut scene stops and we can walk around and explore our building.

All in all we feel that we have successfully and coherently realised our final fabrication environment of the Bodo Culture Centre. The realisation and achievement of our intentions has created a successfully and pleasing environment within Crysis that adhered to and fulfilled the architects and our initial outcomes.

More Final Images

There are many more images on the team blog, here are a few select ones.

Specialisation

My specialisation area was AI. I wrote 3 tutorials on how to program AI to achieve various tasks. These tutorials vary from Beginner to Medium to Hard. They can be found either on the wetpaint wiki or on this blog. I suggest you do them in order.

The first tutorial teaches you how to create AI that follows a path. The second 2 tutorials talk about making AI randomly walk to tag points and doing tasks.

I think i got along way with my tutorials and learnt alot about my specialist area. It would be good to continue to work on the area and see how far i could take it. I didn't quiet get as far as i orginally set out, but that is because it seems impossible to have completely random AI, they need to be told where to go to a large extent.

AI Problems

In our final fabrication there is a few problems, one major problem is that the major AI objects do not work, some stage in the last few days of the project the Random AI disappeared, this means we are missing a lot of the crwod behaviour. In some original fabrications we had a fair number of people randomly walking around and doing things. This would have really added to the environment but we did not have time to reimplement it into the environment, as well as when we tried to place it all back in we had alot of problems with the program crashing.

Contribution

Here is a list of some of my contributions.

Building Model:

> Find objects (artworks, furniture, lighting etc)

Surrounding Buildings:

> Research
> Modelling
> Façade
> Textures

Presentation:

> 10 Still Images
> Trailer video
> 2 minute video
> Cut scenes within crysis
> Presentation boards

Crysis Environment:

> Skyboxes
> Time of day
> AI
> Birds (seagulls)
> Sound (natural / artificial)
> Water (level, colour, movement)

Individual:

> Blog
> Specialisation

Final Fabrication

So we have finally finsihed out final fabrication. I am quite happy with how it turned out. There are still some problems but there are also some very good parts. We put alot of effort into finishing this fabrication and doing our final videos.

The way the environment turned out was really good, we have good attention to detail and it really gives people a great idea of the building and how it fits into the harbour and environment.

The AI gives a good sense of the community aspect of the building and the environment.

30 sec Teaser Trailer

2 Minute Extended Trailer

More Screens

Some Screen Shots

Team Meeting

Today we met up at uni again to get as much done as possible, and to finish off the main environment. The main areas to work on where:

Implement final building model

Cut Scenes

Screenshots

Level Loading Screen


We started off doing the cut scenes which where fairly easy to put in, it is just a case of moving the camera around and recording, and then telling the game when to load the cuts from the flow graph. So we placed in 2 Scenes, one for the start of the level and one for the end.

While doing this we realised all the AI i placed in on Saturday was missing. So sometime between me leaving on Saturday and Today someone has edited something and deleteded my big AI system. This means we will have to rely on the AI paths and basic AI for the level because there isn't enough time to place it all back in.

When Ken got to uni we implemented the final building model with much higher detail that the previous one. While he was doing this, Alichia and I worked out how to place level loading screens in, so when we load our level from the game a picture of our building shows up.

Finally we took a few screen shots to palce on our presentation boards. I will upload these later.

Team Meeting

So yesterday we all got together at uni again to work on the environment. We wanted to get as much done as we could. The main things we where working on was.

AI - Make the AI as Random as possible

Loading Videos - Make the game display our own personal loading screens

Cutscenes - Make some cut scenes for our environment

Building Model - Finalise the building


We completed alot of work and got most of these things done. Firstly i created a big AI system involving about 30 people who all randomly walk around the building and do various things. After that was implimented i made some quick loading videos in After effects. Me and Alichia then implimented these into the game so that when you start the game our screens show up instead of the default crysis ones. This adds a good look to our environment.

While we where doing this Ken was working on the model and finalising it.

I worked out how to do cut scenes and an elevator but we didnt have time to place them in the level itself.

Hard Specialisation Tutorial

For my hard specialisation tutorial I added onto my medium one. In the medium one we created AI that pretty much walks around randomly. In this tutorial I extended onto that to make the people walk around stop for a little bit and then complete a random action.

This tutorial is posted up on the Wetpaint Wiki.

http://arch1392-collaboration-2009.wetpaint.com/page/Tutorials

Medium Tutorial

For my medium tutorial I have created random AI. This tutorial tells you how to create a number of tagpoints around the environment and make the AI randomly walk between these points. Once they get to one point they will walk on to another point.

The tutorial is located on the Wetpaint Wiki

http://arch1392-collaboration-2009.wetpaint.com/page/Tutorials

Week 11 Lecture

For week 11, Russle Lowe came in to talk about real time environments and how he has used them. Russle is a lecturer at UNSW and takes a number of real time courses.

He is currently working on a big hospital project and he is using Real-Time to allow doctors and nurses and others to walk around the hospital. This means they can check if there is adequate spacing and other things in the rooms. They already ran into one problem where the lift in the rooms for heavy people didn't have enough room to work and it also collided with the doors when opened. This may not have come up if they where not using real time and could have been a really big expensive problem if the hospital had been built with it like that.

He then went on to show us some of his work in Crysis, such as a piece he is working on to go in a small Sydney alley way. He is working on the theory that global warming happens and the water level rises to flood a lot of the city.

Week 11 Excursion

For Week 11 we went on a little trip up to the UNSW Scientia building. Up in this build is what they call iCinema. iCinema is basically a 360 degree 3D cinema room. It is set up with 12 projectors each projecting onto a giant curved projection screen. The images projected are 3D images so you must use 3D glasses to get the full effect.

They showed us a number of videos showing off how this cinema could be used. One was simply a video taken from a car showing a 360 Degree panoramic so it was like you are actually driving the car and can look around.

The other main one they showed us was an interactive real time environment that could be used to educate miners of the dangers they may face. It showed how this type of technology could be used in many ways, specially in the way of real time environments.

Progress

So after the Presentation and the Crits from other groups we have decided on some areas that we need to work on. More detailed Crit comments are on the team blog.

Summary of crits from other groups.
- Need more interactivity in the building
- interior spaces need more textures
- Better surrounding landscape
- Texture and detail the surrounding buildings
- materials and textures
- more AI
- interior furniture

So as we make our final environment we wil all work on different areas to fix these problems.

Basic tutorial

Here is a link to my basic tutorial on creating AI that drives along a path

Tutorial Link

Week 10 Lecture

Week 10's guest lecture was from Andrew Wallace. Andrew recently graduated from UNSW doing Architecture and is now working for LCA (Lara Caldera Architects).

Andrew has explored many real time engines to help promote architecture. Has has done some excellent work with Crysis recently. He showed us a few of his big projects including one to do with a school in Africa and one to do with Sydney Harbour. He uses ArchiCad to create the models and then puts them in real time environments.

He alos explained how LCA was starting to use real time environments to show off architecture to new and existing clients and he explained how he thought the development of real time environments would greatly improve the field of architectural visualisation.

Week 9 Studio

Week 9's guest speak was Shilo McClean. Shilo is writer, lecturer and specialist in the field of digital visual effects in the film industry.

Shilo talked about how digital effects and digital computer graphics and film had been derived largely from computer games, and how the film industry has started to accept and appreciate the use of computer graphics. She explored how computer graphics could be used to aid the story telling process. She also went on to demonstrate how different fields that use film or video have also been adopting computer graphics to help portray their message. One example she gave was to do with a documentary on "Hurricane Katrina" by Spike Lee.

Special effects, computer animation and computer graphics and film used to be looked down on in the film industry and was assumed that it would destroy the film and take away from the story. Shilo was once told "you can't put it into the script if you can't capture it on film". This comment has been greatly proven wrong with the advance in computer graphics, specially in big budget films as transformers, harry potter etc.

She explained the differt types of effects or computer graphics that the industry uses, they are mainly:

Fantastical effects - This is where effects and computer graphics are sued to create a fantasy world or fantasy story. Heavily based on computer graphics and present here.

Hybrid-real - This is where there is a mixture between real and computer graphics to get the story across. The idea is to make the difference between real and computer invisible so the viewer can't tell which is which.

Hyperrealist - This is computer graphics that are so real and lifelike that is is difficult to tell if it is real or computer generated.

Surrealist - This is the use of computer effects and graphics to portray an almost dream out of this world feeling. It is almost impossible to achieve this effect with out computer graphics.

Week 8 Crit

Team: Digitalism

Pros: Digitalism have a strong concept for their design. It is a concept and design that can be quite emotional to people, as it has a strong history behind it. Due to this the whole concept and realisation is quite strong. Rather than just being a random building or environment it has a background, history and emotions.

The building itself was well realised, it had been built well and a lot of effort into the actual building itself. It is a believable and strong building that works with the concept and the environment.

Cons: The surrounding environment isn't really resolved, and doesn't fit in with the concept. While the immediate surrounding buildings are modelled they do not give a sense of busy, over crowded and thriving city, it just looks a bit like a desolate city on a random island. The scale of the building is a bit small, the building is meant to be much higher and tower over everything else.


Team: Orange

Pros: The building is very well modelled and detailed, there has been lots of work put into the modelling of the building, this makes it look very resolved and like it could easily be a real building. The surrounding environment is very highly detailed with alot of work put in. It has lots of cars driving round, people and everything. This gives a good sense of the context and environment of the project.

Cons: The textures on the building itself where a little lacking. There could have been more texturing making the building a little more life like. The same goes for the interior spaces, they could have had some more textures, and maybe a little more interactive to make the environment more immersive.


Team: Evolve

Pros: Evolve had some very good videos for the presentation, they where quite entertaining and used some humour which is good for a presentation. This meant people payed more attention because they didn't get bored too easily. The way they presented the videos also gave a better idea of what they are aiming for in their concept. They also had some very good internal spaces in the environment. These internal spaces where very well resolved.

Cons: Evolve had limited interactivity in there level, there was not much that the person could interact with, and not much that helped the person feel immersed or involved with the level.


Team: Urbans

Pros: The good thing about Urbans environment is that they where going for a grand scale building and they have managed to achieve that. The building itself both inside and out looks extremely grand and large, which is what they where looking for. This definitely adds to the overall effect of the environment. They had a good presentation which showed off exactly what they where trying to achieve and how they did it. The presentation of the building itself was quite good as well.

Cons: The surrounding environment could be improved. There was a lot of effort put into getting the landscape from Google Earth and the like, so its a shame things like the lake in the middle was out of scale and the surrounding environment was not quite resolved.


Team: Atlar

Pros: Atlar had some good presentation renders, that showed off there building in a very good way to make it as realistic as possible. They had a good concept that suited Crysis very well. Crysis is good at things like water and environments so the concept involving water was a good choice. This means that presentation renders could be at good high quality. There was a lot of good thought out interactivity in Atlar's level, so the environment felt very immersive and resolved.

Cons: The building itself and some of the interior spaces could have used some more textures, this would make the whole concept and design look much stronger and more resolved. I think this would greatly add to the environment.

Progress

Final Environment

So finally we have created our final design environment, after many late nights and computer issues it is done. I am quite happy with how it turned out, we all put alot of work into it and it came together nicely. I think it really shows off the design well, in terms of the design itself and the context. As you walk around the environment you can really get a feel for the design and how it would be if it was built. This is a strong point of Crysis which makes it a really good Realtime Architectural tool. The environments are very submersive so it feels like it could be real. The ability to walk though the design and look around itin realtime is a great plus, specially with our building which has many different internal and external areas, which could not be completely shown if we just had renders or architectural visulizations.

We all put alot of work into the project and helped each other out, and helped other groups out. So there was not only group collaboration but entire class collaboration as well which is good.

The main areas i worked on where:
- AI -
The AI in crysis is a good tool to visulise circulation in the design and see how it feels and looks with people walking around. Circulation and people is a very important aspect in our design because it is a cultural centre. So the AI was a very big itegral part of our design. As well as people i added birds and animals in to emphasize the harbour and the context.

- Sound -
The sound in Crysis adds to the whole feel of the environment and makes it more submersive. It means as well as being able to walk around and see the building you can also hear surrounding sounds to give you a better feel for the design and its context. Since our design is on the harbour this is another very important step.

- Surrounding Buildings -
We modelled a fair few surrounding buildings. This was to help give better context for the site and design which is an important part of our design, as it is designed to fit into the environment and be part of the environment and culture of Bodo. In the end we ended up importing a context study from the original architect so alot of the surrounding buildings i made did not get used.

- Lighting -
I did a fair few tech tests and experiments on how the lighting works and different types of lighting to enhance the experience. This includes normal lighting for the building and the wharf as well as Time of Day lighting and environmental lighting.

- Interactivity -
We added a fair few itneractive things such as cars, boats, birds and people that once again make the environment more submersive. These things add to the overall environment and its impression on the viewer.

As well as these main parts i also helped with a lot of other things, such as the roads and the furniture in andaround the building such as on the wharf and in the city. I also conducted alot of experiments so that when it came to doing the Crysis environment we had things sorted so we could streamline the process and there wasn't too much stuffing around and redoing things that wouldn't work.

Final Design Pics

Here are some pics from the final design, these and more can be found on our team blog.

AI Issues

So as we continue to develop our design we are running into many issues. One such issue is that the AI can be quite messy and not very streamlined. The problem arose when i was trying to clean up the AI. Where the AI follows paths and walks around the level it is very messy and many repeated commands, so i was looking for a way to combine them all into one.

After many hours stuffing around trying to find a command to containt them all, such as an "All" command that would tell all the AI to do the same thing, i got no where. So i went and had a look on forums, and after another few hours i finally found what i was looking for, the command Logic-All. Problem was in Crysis i couldnt find it, after making sure everything possible was turned on i finally found it under the WIP (work in progress) set. After all this time i them found out that it doesn't acutally work, which is probably why its in the WIP set, so it was many watsed hours and it means that the AI will just have to stay messy.

AI and Sound

These pictures show some testing and work with AI and sound for our design, this was mostly done on test levels for efficiency.

Sounds are fairly easy to set up, you just need to draw a shape that will contain your sound. In otherwords a shape that when you are inside it you will hear your sound and when you leave the area the sound will fade away. After you have drawn your shape you just need to link the AmbientVolume object to the shape and chose your sound and volume levels, that is basically it.

With the AI i was trying to clea up and stream line the AI flowGraphs, this wasn't very succesful due to the command i wanted to use not working properly.







Did some more stuffing round with the AI and seem to have it in an organised flowgraph. Also have worked out how to add good area ambient sounds, so that we can have a harbour sound as you walk around our level.

Biggest problem with the sound is that for some reaosn crysis will not import external sounds, even though they are in the right format they just wont play in crysis, this means that we can not have the sound fo birds and the like we wanted on the wharf.

I have added a few WIP pictures of working on the AI and Sound.

Team Meeting

We met up today so we could all work on the model. Due to other commitments a Saturday was the only day we could all come in and work on it. After a slow start we managed to get stuck into things such as the surrounding environment, AI, Sounds and the main building model. I did alot of experiments and stuffing round to try and get people to randomly walk around and to have random AI but it didn't seem to work.

One experiment was to use the chicken system where chickens randomly walk around the level but the problem with this was that once you changed the model to people the animations didn't work so people just floated around instead of working.

We got a fair bit done during the day and had some good discussions to do with what needed to be completed and how we would do it.

Progress Blog

Since the draft proposal we have done alot of work on our Crysis environment. We have added many new things and fixed problems, and generally made it a better real time environment that shows off our design.

The main building has been continually added to and edited in ArchiCad. Interior spaces have been added and the exterior has been improved. For the final presentation we hope to have it completely modelled up and resolved. As well as this, the surrounding buildings have been worked on. Immediate surrounding buildings have had more details added and have been refined to give a better site context. As well as this, roads and vegetation has been added so that it feels more like an environment people can relate to and see in context.

The harbour and the wharf which is a big part of our design has been greatly improved on. With many things add and refined. We have many boats in to show how the harbour is a very integral part of the site and is fairly busy. The wharf itself has been edited and built apon, with better walk ways, benches and lighting, once again to lift the whole environment to a higher level. The harbour plays a big role and these changes help to emphasize that.

These additions have not been with out drama, the level and editor itself has many issues abnd constantly crashes, at times loosing lots of our work. We also learnt the hardway with the uni computers, because they delete everything off the main drives when you log off. At one stage the computer where we had most of our work crashed and needed restarting and hence we lost several hours work.

There have been some team conflicts as well, not in the terms of arguments or fights, but the fact that everyone has other commitments such as work, family or other classes and assignments, this means that we ahven't been able to get things done as quickly as possible.

Our environment is coming along quite nicely and i am confident that it will be finished to a high level for our presentation.

Week 7 Lecture

For our week 7 lecture Dr John Barton from City Futures Research Centre UNSW came into to talk to us about Urban development. Firstly he ttalked to us about a project that he had a lot to do with which is called UrbanIT Project 2030. It is a large scale design project for the re-design of Sydney, almost like a city of Sydney Masterplan. He showed us an interesting video that they created showing off how different buildings and transport systems had been removed or relocated, new parks and walk ways had been added as well as new buildings. It was an interesting look at what Sydney could look like in 20 years.

He then showed us a set of images based on research that was undertaken near the city in a housing development. His research showed what different people relate with different things, such as happyness, lonelyness, danger and death. This gave an interesting insight into how different people related different things, and a good 3D representation of these themes.

Week 6 Lecture

For our week 6 lecture we had UNSW School of Psychology. Tom Denson talk to us about Psychology. Mainly relating to group and peer dynamics. So how people react to others in a group, and if how they follow along with what other people say even if they know it is wrong.

Tom Denson showed us some of the previous experiments that have been conducted in groups, where all except one of the people in the group knows about the experiment. In one of the experiments they where asked a simple question and then told to call out the answer. It showed that when all the people who know about the experiment call out the wrong answer, the subject is around 80% more likely to knowingly say the wrong answer to fit in. If asked to write down the answer privately then the subject is almost always correct.

I thought this was a very good lecture, i learnt alot of things and it is ashame that the lecture was cut short due to time constraints. It would have been great to hear more about what tom ahd to say. I felt he related his lecture to our class very well and we all had some very good discussions.

Conflict

In broad terms, conflict can be defined as the "the process resulting from the tension between team members because of real or perceived differences"

With regard to conceptualizations of conflict, differentiated between two distinct components: task conflict and emotional conflict.

Task conflict occurs when group members disagree about task-related issues, including procedures, goals, and decisions.

Relational or emotional conflict is characterized by disagreements or tension with regard to personal taste or interpersonal style.

An additional conceptualization of conflict that has regained attention is the idea of "constructive conflict," which involves searching out a variety of opinions, openly confronting differences, and critiquing alternative options . A group that manifests constructive conflict could be characterized by high task conflict and low relational conflict. Importantly, it may be this type of interaction that ultimately facilitates effective team performance through constructive divergence.

"Much of the work in the area of conflict has contrasted task (i.e., productive, cognitive conflict) and relational manifestations (i.e., emotional, interpersonal conflict; Pelled, 1996b). On the one hand, dissimilarity has been linked with productive forms of conflict (demographic diversity, Chatman et al., 1998; educational and functional diversity, Jehn et al., 1999; functional diversity, Pelled et al., 1999; functional, education, tenure diversity, Simons et al., 1999). On the other hand, dissimilarity also has been linked with destructive forms of conflict (social category diversity, Jehn et al., 1999; gender diversity and time urgency diversity, Mohammed & Angell, 2004; ethnic and tenure diversity, Pelled et al., 1999). Thus, despite a few examples that diversity and conflict may be inversely or not at all related, the research evidence reviewed here suggests that heterogeneous teams are more likely to experience conflict (whether productive or destructive in nature) than homogenous teams (see also Grossman, 1997)."

Reference - Conflict and Cooperation in Diverse Workgroups. The Journal of social issues [0022-4537] King yr:2009 vol:65 iss:2

Wikipedia Page Analysis

Collaboration - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration

The Wikipedia page for Collaboration is a well set out and contributed to page. It talks about many different aspects of collaboration. from Trade to Military to Education. This broad range of information and topics is essential in a wiki so that it gives the reader a broader education on the topic or topics.

This wiki also breaks down the topic into 2 main headings, "History" and "Contemporary Examples". The first of these talks about how collaboration was introduced in different areas and how it came about. The second talks about how collaboration is used in the present day in different areas. This gives the viewer a broader udnerstanding of what collaboration is and the history of it, as well as how it is used today.

There is a lot of contributions and edits to this page which is, in-itself a good example of collaboration, where many people are all working together to create somthing. Although what this page is missing, is alot of referencing and citations, which is important for a reader to do any further research or simply to prove the validity of an article or what is written.

Social Networks

A social network is a group of people or organisations or similar that all have a common interest. This may be common visions, or friendship or even a common sexuality. Social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace are internet based tools to help people in these social networks collaborate. If you take Facebook for example, which is fast becoming one of the most popular social networking sites, you can browse people all around the world based on different social status. Such as where they went to school, what their religion is or simply what they enjoy doing.

Social networking is a very important tool for collaboration, specially on a project like ours, because as well as allowing our team to communicate with each other, it means we can find a social network that is interested in similar things or has undertaken a similar task and collaborate with them to find out more information or tips and tricks. This can be very valuable in projects similar to ours, since you can easily find other people with the same interest, it also means that other people can follow our projects and learn from us as well as us learning from them and the project itself. It helps broaden the whole concept of collaboration.

Here are some examples of similar sites.

- Facebook
- MySpace
- Twitter
- Flickr
- Bebo
- DeviantArt
- Flixster

Planning

Types of planning:

* Envisioned Future: 10 to 30 years. Here, a vivid description is gathered from the data and molded into several BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals).

* Critical Factors: 5 to 10 years. What are and will be the mega issues? What are some basic assumptions (based on best-available data) about the future (what will we be doing, what will we look like, etc.)? What will be our guiding strategic principles?

* Strategic Planning: 3 to 5 years. Strategic planning efforts define the short- and long-term goals, objectives and strategies needed to turn plans into action.

* Action Planning: 1 to 2 years. The organization sets priorities, plans programs and incorporates actions into the overall operational/day-to-day planning. It's at this point, just when all seems in sync, that the horizon turns from a flat line into a circle, and the process begins again.

A few points about Planning

1. Having a plan puts you back in control.
2. Planning is the only way things can get better.
3. Planning allows you to set priorities and to allocate resources effectively.
4. A plan shows you (and others) how to spend your time.
5. Planning is the key to staying ahead of the curve and the competition.
6. A good plan motivates and inspires.
7. People follow the person with a plan.
8. Planning permits you to spend less energy on putting out other people's fires and start building some of your own.

There's nothing mysterious about planning. It's just looking beyond the moment and visualizing how things might work out. It's playing out possible scenarios in your mind. Planning is weighing possibilities and choosing alternatives. It's putting a name on your dream. Planning is deciding what's desirable and figuring out how to make it happen.

Most of all, planning is simply asking the right questions and plugging in the right answers answers that are right for you and your organization.


Make Plans, Not Excuses, Supervision [0039-5854] Ramsey yr:2003 vol:64 iss:2 pg:14 -16. Plan or Die!, Professional Safety [0099-0027] Kendrick yr:2004 vol:49 iss:3 pg:8
GESCHICHTE UND GESELLSCHAFT 34 (3): 305-326 JUL-SEP 2008 Year: 2008 Abstract: During the era of modernity