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# Answer the PNI planning questions

When planning a project, it's a good idea to think through several important aspects of the project: its goals, topic, people, perspectives, scale, and process. relationships, focus, range, scope, and emphasis. Thinking about these things will make it easier to make practical decisions later, like how and from whom you will collect stories.

## What to do here

Brainstorm answers to each of these questions. Write down whatever occurs to you. Don't censor yourself. This is only your first draft. You will have a chance to refine your answers later, after you've done some more planning activities.

## Connections to other pages

The answers on this page can be copied to the Revise your answers to the PNI planning questions page. Both sets of answers will appear in the project report.

## Frequently-asked questions

### Can you explain more about the planning questions and why they are useful?

Here is an excerpt from the fourth edition of Working with Stories that explains the six questions.

Goals: Why are you doing your project?

A project's goals seem like its most straightforward part, the part least in need of discussion. People who start a project know why they are doing it, right? Not always. I've seen a lot of projects fail because of misunderstandings about project goals. Sometimes the people in a project group think they all understand their collective goals, when in fact each person sees a different project. At other times, people go into projects without thinking through their own reasons for wanting to carry them out. Work to align your goals until everyone is applying their energy to the same purpose.

Topic: What is your project about?

A project's topic has a lot to do with its goals; but it is the “what” rather than the “why” of the project. A topic can arise from any of several sources:

- A question (What is the range of our views about the planned bridge?)
- An outcome (We would like to improve our services to patients)
- A decision (Should we build a shopping center or a park?)
- A problem (What can we do about science illiteracy?)
- A group of people (What we can learn from people who juggle two jobs?)
- A perspective (How new residents see our town)
- A person (Stories about our founder)

If you have done any previous work on your topic, this is a good time to consider it. Maybe you already carried out a project on the same topic using a different approach. Maybe you have discussed this topic in the past. Compare your current project plan to your previous explorations of the topic. How is your topic this time like and unlike your topic in the past? What do you want to do now that is different, and what is the same?

People: Who matters to your project?

Who will provide the participatory energy for your project? Who will tell the stories? Who will work with the stories? Who will hear or see them? Who will provide project support? Who will provide funding? How will all of these people be connected?

If the project will call upon existing relationships, what are they like? What synergies, assets, and tensions do they contain? If the project will build new relationships, how will it do so, and what sorts of opportunities and dangers will be involved in doing so? What do all of these things mean for the project?

How will you find your participants? Are there any significant subgroups among them? What are they like? How are they likely to respond to questions about your topic?

Perspectives: What experiences matter to your project?

What are the varieties of experience and perspective that your project will bring together or juxtapose? You might plan, for example, to cover a range of ages; living or family arrange- ments; educational, socioeconomic, or religious backgrounds; neighborhoods; occupations; and political affiliations. You should already have a sense of this from working through your participant groups. But this is a good time to go back over the groups and make sure you haven't left anyone out. Is there a perspective you have not yet considered? How would including it change the project?

Scope: How big will the project be?

Your project's scale will include the number of participants you will invite, the number of stories you will collect, and the depth of exploration you will facilitate. PNI projects come in a wide range of scales:

- An exploratory small-scale project might invite 10 people to share 30 stories and work with them in a single 3-hour session, exploring a simple topic with no recording of stories.
- An ambitious large-scale project might invite 2000 people to share 4000 stories, then invite 200 people to work with the stories in a series of day-long workshops, exploring a complex topic in great detail and from many perspectives, generating a comprehensive 200-page report that is returned, along with the stories, to the entire community or organization.

By this time you should have an idea of how large or small a project you want to do from exploring your project's goals, context, people, and perspectives. This is a good time to evaluate (and maybe even challenge) your choice of scale. Why do you want your project to be as large as it will be, and not smaller or larger?

Process: How will you carry out your project?

Which of the essential phases of PNI will matter the most to your project? Will you want to focus more of your energy on collection, sensemaking, or return? What would happen if each of these phases were more or less prominent, in terms of time spent or people involved? Which of the three essential phases are you the most excited about? Which seems the most promising?

Do you plan to use any of the optional phases of PNI? Why? What would happen if you put more or less time into them?

And finally, what are the nuts and bolts of your project plan? How will you find and reach out to your participants? How will you involve them in the project? What will you say to them? How will you work with them and listen to them? What will you do with the stories you collect? What sorts of workshops will you hold? How will the project end?