AND you must take little as a given or a necessity, including the apparent constraints. One hallmark of a bureaucrat is to believe in organizational rules. Better to see them as a place to start or continue negotiations. So, here you have contingency plans, that you frequently manufacture on the run, as new information or perturbations interfere with your efforts to date. Indeed, to describe this process sequentially is to mislead you.
All parts operate simultaneously and cyclically - the past and the future are of a piece.
And so your actions are hardly disinterested, although the intensity of your engagement will vary with problem definitions and personal agendas. So, there is an active and persuasive and power-oriented aspect to this highly political function. As you write up a case, avoid the ease of unwarranted confidence in the outcome. Tolerate the fluid and ambiguous quality of problem solutions in schools. It is what we choose to do to kids and why we choose that which we must raise and confront over and over, not the most efficient and effective how's.