DoView

1. Download DoView outcomes and visual strategic planning software onto your computer. Get comfortable using DoView in front of your strategic planning group. In contrast to other software, DoView has been specifically designed to be used in real-time in front of your planning team or other groups (e.g. it has simple options for you to select, a clean interface etc.). It's easy to learn and it will not take you long to get good at using it in front of your colleagues, stakeholders or clients.

2. Build your basic visual model of what you're trying to do in your organization or project. This model should set out all of the steps you think are necessary to get to the high-level outcomes you want to achieve. For instance, look at an example of such a visual outcomes model for a school.  

3. Once the strategic planning team, and any other important stakeholders, are happy that the visual model represents what you're trying to do, put in your proposed activities as additional boxes on a new page in the model (if you want to, you can cal them whatever you like (e.g. projects). You can 'drill-down' beneath the activity or project boxes and provide as much detail on them as you wish (e.g. when they will be done, who will do them, details of how they will be done). 

4. Drag a link line between each of the boxes which represent your activities (or projects) and the steps in the visual model that you are wanting to influence with each activity. After you have done this linking, when you look at the visual strategic plan it will now show all of your intended steps and outcomes and all of your activities (projects) which 'map' onto each of them. Looking at this visual overview (which in a normal text-based strategic plan is often hidden away in a table of some sort), may suggest to you that you need a new activity (or project) aimed at influencing a particular step in the visual model because that step currently does not have an activity (or project) focused on it. Alternatively, you may find that there are steps in the visual model which have many activities (or projects) focused on them. Sometimes this may be appropriate, given the importance of the step. However, in other cases, this may visually reveal that some of the activities (projects) are unnecessary, or that they should be redirected so that they will influence different steps in the model - ones which currently don't have much activity focused on them. 

5. Produce your strategic plan in whatever format(s) which work for your particular audiences. For example: print it out on letter-sized pages; print it out as a single large poster; or produce it as a web page version of your strategic plan. If you wish (and this is recommended), you should also continue to use the electronic version of your DoView visual strategic plan for all aspects of your strategic planning discussions, to control the implementation of your plan, and also for other organizational functions such as: monitoring, evaluation and results-based contracting.

Practice using DoView in front of a group (initially family, friends or close colleagues so as to get used to using it in real-time meetings - it has been designed for this so it's not difficult). Look at the two part DoView Quick Start Video and try out the Tutorial Example File in DoView (Help > Tutorial Example File). If you have any problems, look at the DoView Online Help system (also available within DoView, Help > DoView Help).  

Step 2. Build your visual outcomes model. When building your visual outcomes model on which your visual strategic plan will be based, you should be trying to draw a model of what you think are all of the important steps which need to occur to achieve the high-level outcomes your institution, organization or project wants to influence. Such models are called visual 'outcomes models' and there is a set of rules for drawing them in a way which means that they will be suitable for all your strategic planning and other work. 

The main thing to remember is that you should put into your model every step you think is needed to achieve high-level outcomes. It does not matter whether or not you are able to measure these steps at this stage, or whether or not you will be able to actually prove that your institution, organization or project changed them. You can even include steps which need to happen (assumptions) (or which you don't want to happen (risks) for your project to be successful but which are determined by others.

What you should be trying to draw is a comprehensive visual model of all of the important steps needed to achieve high-level outcomes. A set of 13 Tips for drawing such visual outcomes models are available. Hand this one page tip sheet out to your strategic planning team. Many examples of such outcomes models are available at OutcomesModels.org. If you have DoView installed you can immediately download these examples of visual models from that site and start amending them to better represent the particular project you are wanting to do strategic planning on. Look at this short video on building an outcomes model in front of a group. It shows a bottom-to-top model being built, but you can just as easily build you DoView model from left-to-right (in DoView select View > Model Direction > Left-to-right). 

Step 3. Break your model up into a set of viewable DoView compact (1 x 1) pages. Usually, your visual model will be larger than can be seen on a single dataprojected screen. This is where DoView's specific design features come in. In the past, people have been able to draw large visual models if they want to, using standard drawing software. However, these are unmanageable for use in strategic planning because when dataprojected, the writing in the individual boxes usually ends up far too small for the members of the strategic planning team to read. This problem has effectively stymied the use of visual models for strategic planning in many situations in the past. 

In contrast, DoView encourages you to build your visual model as a series of 'compact' pages which you can then rapidly click between. These are called 1 x 1 pages in DoView and are the standard pages which you create in the software. When building your model, if you are building it in front of a strategic planning group, use compact  (1 x 1) pages. You can use as many of these as you like. 

When you run out of room on the page you are working on, click on a box which you want to elaborate on and do a Right-click  > Drill down to new page. This will create a new compact (1 x 1) page in DoView with the step you created it from on the new page. The step on the new page will be a 'clone' of the step which you created the page from. That means that if you edit the name of the step, it will change on both pages. Have a look at the example of a school visual outcomes model to see how the model can be broken up into a set of compact (1 x 1) pages which are optimized for you to work with in real-time in front of a strategic planning group. Look at this short video on breaking a outcomes large model up into sub-pages for more information.

Step 4. Map activities (projects) onto your visual model. Once you have built your visual model and you, and your strategic planning group are happy with it, then create a new page on which you will put all of your activities (you may prefer to call them projects - call them whatever works for you). Start the name of each of these activities with a bracket and the letter A and then another bracket (e.g. [A], or [P] - if you are thinking in terms of projects rather than activities). 

Once you have entered all of your activities, click on the box for the first specific activity and go immediately to the first page of your visual model. Hold down the Alt Key. If the activity you clicked on is still selected, a grayed-out 'ghost' version of it will appear on the page of the visual outcomes model you are now viewing. While continuing to hold Alt down, drag you mouse over any steps in the visual model which you believe that activity (project) will influence and do a Left-click. This will make a DoView link between the activity you selected on the activities (projects) page and the step within the visual model on the page you are now looking at. DoView will remember that these two are linked and you will be able to represent this link in various ways in the future (as a DoView link or as a line and arrow straight or bent line link).

Remember, at this stage that you don't have to worry whether or not you will be able to prove that the activity changed the step in the visual model. All that you are trying to show at the moment is that the activity is aimed at trying to influence that particular step in the visual model. Once you have made links to all of the steps on the first page of the visual model which you think the activity in question will influence, move onto another page within the visual model. On this next page make similar links from the activity to any steps on the other page which you believe the activity will influence. When doing this you may find that it makes you think of some steps which you have not yet included in your model. Amend the visual model to include these steps and continue with the process of 'mapping' activities onto the main visual model showing all the steps you believe are necessary to achieve high-level outcomes. 

At some point, as you move up your model towards the very highest-level outcomes, you are likely to find that it is unnecessary to map activities (projects) onto such high-level outcomes because you have already mapped them onto the lower-level steps which contribute to these outcomes. In other words, you would expect that every activity (project) would map onto the highest-level outcome in a model which had a single high-level outcome (e.g. an excellent school) and so it is redundant to map your activities (or projects) onto the very highest levels in your outcomes model because you have already mapped them to steps at lower levels. Look at this short video on linking multiple projects to a common outcomes model. 

Step 5. (Optional). List the number of activities (projects) mapped onto each step in the visual model. Once you have completed your process of 'mapping' activities (projects) onto your visual model, go through the model, click on each step in the model and then do a Right-click > This is the result of. This will give you a list of all of the activities (projects) which you believe are likely to influence that particular step or outcome. Count up the number of activities (projects) and put that number in the step's box. Remember to update this count if you add new activities in the future and map them onto that particular step box. (For a very simple model where it is obvious which steps and outcomes the activities (projects) map onto, you may not need to enter the number of activities (projects) mapped onto each step in the visual model).

Step 6. Hold all your strategic discussion against the model in your visual strategic plan. You are now in a position to hold all your strategic planning discussion against your DoView visual strategic plan.   As as stated above, DoView, in contrast to most other software, has been specifically designed for use in real-time in front of a group. If you have a relatively simple outcomes model which you are using to do your strategic planning against, the whole team can go through the whole model and look at each step one at a time. Doing this they will be able to identify those steps where there are either no (or very few) activities (projects) mapped onto the step, or where there are large numbers of activities (projects) mapped onto it. This then can spark a strategic discussion as to the priority of the various activities (projects) in terms of them influencing the key steps in the visual outcomes model needed to achieve high-level outcomes. 

If the group wants to know exactly which activities (or projects) are mapping onto a particular step in the model, do a Right-click > This is the result of. This will provide a list of all of the activities which it is believed will influence that particular step in the model. (As discussed in Step 8 below, you can also provide this information as a listing of activities (or projects) which map onto each step in a printed form when you produce a PDF of the model).

If the visual model is large and you are working with a larger strategic planning group. First go through the model yourself and identify those steps where there seems to be an issue (e.g. either not enough, or too many activities (projects) mapping onto a particular step or set of steps). Put something like *T* in each of the step boxes, showing that you want to talk with the strategic planning group about that particular box. Then in the course of the actual strategic planning meeting, you just need to focus on the boxes you had marked as needing to be discussed. 

Another way of drawing the attention of the strategic planning team to a particular issue is to insert a question onto the model for the strategic planning group (Right-click > Advanced > Question). These will be strategic questions that the strategic planning group needs to think about, for instance, such a question could be: 'Do we have enough activity focused on these steps here?' When you meet with the strategic planning group go through each of these strategic question with them.

Step 7. Representing your DoView model in different formats. Up until now we have presumed that you will work with your model in real-time in front of your strategic planning group as a set of smaller DoView compact (1 x 1) pages. However, you may also want to provide various printed overviews for your strategic planning or other stakeholder groups to complement working in real-time with the DoView electronic version of your model.  

A unique feature of DoView is that it specifies larger page sizes in units of 1 x 1 compact DoView pages so you can quickly see what page size will be needed to hold all of your model. E.g. if you have four compact 1 x 1 sub-pages you may want to create a 2 x 2 page (which will be large enough to hold the contents of all four compact 1 x 1 sub-pages). In such a case, first create a 2 x 2 page. The way you do this is to click on the small down arrow on the right of the New Page icon at the bottom of the Page List on the right-hand side of the DoView screen. Select the 2 x 2 page size and then click on New 2 x 2 Page to create the larger 2 x 2 page. Note that can tell that this is a larger than normal page because of the larger block on the left of the page name in the Page List. 

Now go to each of the compact 1 x 1 pages on which your model has been initially created within DoView (optimized for creation and use in real-time when the model is dataprojected) and click Edit > Select All then Edit > Copy (alternatively hold down CTRL-A and then CTRL-C). Then go to the larger 2 x 2 page you have just created and do a Right-click > Paste as Clone. This will paste the contents of your smaller compact page onto the larger page as 'clones'. Clones are steps which if you edit them in one place, will be edited wherever they appear in the model. Continue to do this until you have all of your model on the one 2 x 2 page. 

If you wish, you can also put all of your activities (projects) onto the larger page version of your model, for instance, along the bottom of the model. When you do this, again make sure that you copy your activities (or projects) from the compact page they are on and then Right-click > Paste as Clone them onto the larger page. This will mean that the links between them and the steps in the main model are preserved (because you have pasted them as clones and clones preserve the links they have with other steps in the model). If your main outcomes model consists of four compact 1 x 1 pages, you will have to create an even larger page (e.g. a 3 x 3 or 4 x 5 sized page) to hold both the main model and the list of your activities (projects) along the bottom.  

Now, if you wish, you can make all of the link lines between activities (projects) and steps in the visual model appear on 3 x 3 or larger page. First check that on the Menu Bar at the top of the DoView screen the Link Icon shows a straight line connection (a straight arrow). If it does not, then select the option Insert Link, and Draw Straight Line from the small down arrow next to the Link Icon. 

Now click on the clone of each activity (project) on your 3 x 3 or larger page and do a Right-click > Draw every link line. This will make any links that you have created earlier (in Step 4) be drawn as straight-line links between the activities (or projects) and the steps on your large page model. The model with all of the link lines draw may look somewhat complex, however it just represents the level of complexity you have to be able to manage in your strategic planning process. 

While you have captured this underlying complexity in your DoView model, you can present aspects of it in much simpler ways when discussing it with different audiences. One way to do this is discussed in Step 6 above, when working with the compact sized model while dataprojecting it to a group you can click on any step and do a Right-click > This is the Result of to show the list of activities (projects) which map onto that particular step. 

Another way to deal with the complexity is to print out a larger poster-sized paper version of your visual strategic plan. On one side of your larger page (e.g. a 3 x 3 page) print out the visual strategic plan WITHOUT the line and arrow links between activities (or projects) and steps in the model, and on the other side of the large page print the poster-sized version of the model WITH the line and arrow links drawn in. This means that when you are talking more generally about the model you can use the version without the line and arrow links, but you can also refer to the version with the line and arrow links to show that you have mapped all of the activities (or projects) onto the steps in your model. You can also complement this with Step 8 below - a PDF print out of all of the steps in the DoView visual strategic plan with a listing of all of the activities (projects) which it is believed influence each step.

Remember that you can make your model as simple or elaborate as you like. For instance, you could have a set of people, departments within one organization, or separate organizations and map which activities (projects) they will contribute to onto your visual outcomes model. You can then just clone these onto the large page version of your model and make the link lines appear in exactly the same way as you did for the link lines between activities (projects) and steps in your outcomes model. Because DoView does not insist on the use of particular names for boxes within your model, it is a very generic tool which can be used in a wide variety of strategic planning settings. For instance, some people even put in a page(s) of boxes for the skills which are needed for each activity (or project) and then map these onto activities (or projects). As a flexible 'outcomes process' DoView will let you model what you like, how you like. Once you understand the way it works, it provides a remarkably flexible tool for all aspects of your strategic planning and you can (as discussed in Step 9 below) also use the same visual outcomes model you have built for a range of other organizational purposes.

Step 8. (Optional).  Create a PDF print out of your model which lists all of the links between steps and activities from the Details Table

Because DoView is an outcomes processor (i.e. outcomes modeling software) it not only represents links between activities and steps as drawn link lines, it also records in its database that there is a link between an activity and a step (and, in fact, any links between any boxes in the model). We have already seen (in Step 7 above) how you can use the efficiency this creates when you create a large page printed model, do a Right-click on an activity (or project) > DoView to Draw in link lines. 

You also can create a comprehensive print-out with all of the links listed when you create a PDF of your model. To do this go to File > Print as PDF and select the model pages you want to print out. Typically these would include an introductory page which says what the model is about, the pages which contain the visual model and the pages which contain the activities (projects). When you create the PDF (File > print as PDF) select the option Include Details. The PDF you then produce will provide a comprehensive listing of all of the steps and outcomes in the model and all of the activities (projects) which it is believed will influence them. By cloning onto additional pages just those steps or activities for which you want the listing, and then printing to a PDF only those particular pages, you can control exactly which steps and outcomes will be listed in the listing at the end of the PDF. If you have put [A] or [P] at the start of all your activity or project names, these will be listed at the end of your PDF, which will make them easier to find. You can number your activities (or projects) [A01], [A02] etc. to make them easier to locate having them listed in numerical order.

Step 8. (Optional) Create a web page model of your visual strategic plan. If you wish, you can also create a webpage version of your DoView visual strategic plan. You do this by first making sure that you have in your model only those pages you want to publish as a web page model. Then click on File > Create Web Page Model. You will then be given various options (these include deciding if you want a PDF and a copy of the original DoView file to be available for download when people look at the webpage version of your model). You also have the option of including a logo (e.g. your organization's logo) with your model (this will appear at the top of the Page List in the webpage version of your model) and you can put a URL which people will go to if they click on the logo. 

When you click Save, DoView will create an HTML file (a webpage), plus two subdirectories. All you need to do now is to put the file and the two sub-directories up on the internet. Talk to someone in your IT department or someone who knows about the web to find out how to do this - it is very easy to do once you have permission to put these up at a particular place on the web. You just 'FTP them' up to the internet. If someone sets you up to do this it can be as easy as copying files between directories on your own computer. You can find how examples of webpage versions of DoView models look at OutcomesModels.org. 

Step 9. (Optional). Using your model for other purposes. One of the great advantages of using a DoView visual strategic plan is that if you also need to do a range of other common organization activities, you can use exactly the same DoView visual outcomes model you've developed for your strategic planning. There are a series of short videos on how to us your outcomes model for these other organizational functions. For instance, you can use it for identifying performance indicators; identifying evaluation questions; for evidence-based practice; for sharing best practice between projects where similar projects are being implemented in different settings; and for results-based (outcomes-focused) contracting. 

[DoView How-To Guide - Doing Strategic Planning Better: Using a DoView Visual Strategic Plan - http://www.doview.com/howtoguidess/doview-visual-strategic-plan.html   http://www.tinyurl.com/doview-2 [1-0]