On our third and fourth week of classes, I found learning about the precedence diagram, business strategy, and forecasting extremely interesting and helpful. In one of my school organizations, I work with a team to plan several cultural events per semester; and a problem we had last year was that we had to cram many tasks a week before the big event. Also, we planned for 400 people when only about 250 actually attended. I believe learning about these operational components will help me better plan for events this year.
As the precedence diagram, business strategy, and forecasting relate to the general idea of having a business plan, I found an article on ‘Forbes.com’ that seems to disagree with having a business plan at all. The article, “Bob Dorf: Throw Out The Business Plan”, talks about a “serial entrepreneur” who gives a speech about business plans being all fiction. He believes that time and money should not be spent on forecasting the number of customers a new start-up business will have because these forecasts are never right. Instead, businesses should spend their time and money on gathering “aggressive feedback” to truly understand whether a product would or would not sell. A start-up team should have members falling into one of the three categories: the hackers, hustlers, and artists. The hackers are for coding, hustlers for gathering feedback, and artists for designing graphics.
In my opinion, I do agree that sometimes forecasts can be extremely off; however, I also believe that there is no harm to having predictions. Forecasting allows you to set prices, deadlines, and goals to reach. With this, I do not disagree with his advice. Aggressive feedback should be taken and I like the three categories he’s created. In another post that I have commented on, I learned the importance of product design and how it suades the decision of a consumer.
Should a company have a business plan? Should a business look at past data to forecast or possible future data through feedback?
Images: http://www.bestlegalmarketing.com/internet-marketing/evaluating-current-state-of-practice/