Operational Planning

This has to be done each year and must be done ito the tactical and strategic plans.

The operational plan process involves:

• Goals

• Engagement Work schedules

• Staffing

• Financial Budgets; and

• Activity reports.

The goals laid down in the planning session should be achievable. Often senior managers make the mistake of laying down unrealistic goals so as to impress the audit committee but by not achieving them by the end of the year they show their ineptitude in management.

The goals laid down should be measurable. Here the Gantt  chart is an extremely good tool as it can be used to show the slippage of the audits throughout the years or the slippage on individual audit.

Budgets must be formulated for each activity. (For the life of me I have never been able to understand the justification of not having a department secretary to make the corrections required by management on second and third drafts of a report. Secretaries cost far less and are more efficient at typing than auditors.)

Finally the annual plan should indicate the frequency and type of reports that may be expected from each activity. For instance an SDLC will require a report at the completion of each phase of the project.

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