As the coordinator for the 2017 Rocky Mountain Regional Payroll Conference (RMRPC), I had a lot of information to keep track of and a lot of questions:
“Where do I begin? What all needs to be done? What are the deadlines for each project? Who is in charge of each task? Which vendors did we use last year? What is our budget?”
What started as an overwhelming feat became much easier with the development of a Project Plan. The RMRPC committee created a shared Excel workbook containing multiple worksheets to organize and track all conference-related information.
“The RMRPC Project Plan gave us a vision of where we were going. It kept us on task at every meeting,” said Tammy Hess, CPP, Denver Chapter Payroll Association Treasurer.
The Project Plan helped tremendously in organizing the event and succeeded in keeping all committee members informed and accountable. Everyone had access to view the entire workbook. During the event, all committee members knew what was happening so they could answer questions beyond their realm of responsibility.
Best of all, the Project Plan has been passed down to the coordinator of next year’s conference. The event planning responsibility is much less daunting with something in-hand to reference and no need to reinvent the wheel.
Chapters can build their own Project Plan to use for chapter events by organizing information into different worksheets. Possible worksheet sections include:
- Project List with Due Dates, Responsible Parties, and Notes (see Example A)
- Committee Member List with Title and Contact Information
- Record of Committee Member Attendance at Planning Meetings
- Event Budget
- Event Agenda
- Event Speaker List with Topics and Contact Information
- Meal Schedule and Menu
- Room Map (see Example B)
- Room Schedule (see Example C)
- Vendor Information
- Supplier Information
Example A
Example B
Example C
For more advice on planning a Chapter Event, read 6 Must-Do Things for Planning a Statewide Event and 5 Tips to Obtain Vendors for a Chapter Event or Statewide Meeting.
