# Development Cooperation Handbook/Guidelines/How to forecast Employee Activities in accordance to the Employee Performance Objectives

Agreed performance objectives will form the basis for planning the activities.
After having agreed on the performance objectives the employee should identify the activities and tasks required to achieve these objectives and schedule them. This process is similar to the processes of Activity Definition, Sequencing and Schedule Development that the project designer does in the detailed planning phase of project planning. With the difference that when you articulate the activities for the employee performance you are deciding what the individual employee (yourself or your colleague) is expected to do and produce; while when articulating the activities for project detailed planning you are deciding what the team implementing a project plan) is expected to do and produce. (compare this guideline with How to prepare a detailed project plan document). The two levels (the individual and the team) are different but correlated. The activities that the employee will carry out must produce outputs that will empower the project team to better interact with the project/programme beneficiaries and other stakeholders, so as to contribute to the achievement of project/programme objectives.
At the level of the individual employee also activities have to be articulated on the basis of the expected tasks deliverables and outcomes.
The concrete deliverable of this process is the Staff Activity Forecast (see the template Monthly Staff Activity Forecast).
Employee Activities describe the work needed to produce the deliverables that contribute to the achievement of the employee performance objectives. They only include the work done by the employee and should not include the work done by the rest of the team and other stakeholders, who are expected to avail of employee activity outputs in order to i.e. contribute to the achievement of project/programme objectives. While agreeing on the project objectives you have identifies the final outputs of the employee performance. Once the outputs are clear you should relate an activity (a task) to each one of them and should make a list of what task has to be completed before the next because it has produce as output the input for the following.
Then you should prioritize the tasks according to programme/project schedules and according to the requirements of your team colleagues.
After you prioritized prepare the monthly (or weekly, yearly, as the case may be) activity forecast.
See the template Monthly Staff Activity Forecast Scheduling is an inexact process in that it tries to predict the future. While it is not possible to know with certainty how long a project will take, there are techniques that can increase your likelihood of being close. One key ingredient in the scheduling process is experience in the project area; another is experience with scheduling in general. In every sector of activity area there will be a body of knowledge that associates the accomplishment of known work efforts with a time duration.
Agreed performance objectives and the previously prepared Staff Activity Forecast ) the basis for reviewing the employee performance.