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Planning for engagement helps you to step out how you will implement your activities
- It helps define your engagement objectives, techniques and how you will provide feedback.
- Allows you to create a step-by-step roadmap of responsibilities, tasks and supporting communication tactics and tools.
- Helps you revisit your purpose if the project ‘loses its way’.
- Can help demonstrate how it will add value to the project.
- Can help to motivate teams and gain commitment to the engagement process.
- Can help you get management commitment to the project (with a signed document).
Key steps in the planning stage are:
- know your purpose (a clear statement about the decision to be made)
- define your engagement objectives
- identify what is negotiable and non-negotiable (what can and can't be influenced)
- undertake a community and stakeholder analysis
- determine appropriate engagement tools and techniques
- consider the parameters and limitations of your project and engagement
- identify potential risks and mitigation strategies
- plan how you will report back and close the feedback loop
- decide how you will know if your engagement was successful (evaluation)
Use the Better Together Engagement Plan template (DOC, 185KB) to get you started.