Planning a PDSA cycle, creating tasks and linking measures
Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycles are coordinated on a single page divided into five sections. You can plan your PDSA cycle under the second section titled 'Plan'. As well as writing a descriptive plan, you can add time-bound, specific tasks.
Creating individual tasks
Once you've written a general outline of what you plan to do in the 'Plan Overview/Notes' box, break it down into individual activities by clicking the 'Add a task' button in the 'Plan' section of the page.
- Specify the team member responsible for carrying out the task by clicking in the 'User' field. A drop-down list of all individuals added to the 'Team Members' section of your project's 'General Information' page will appear. If you can't find the team member's name, you haven't invited them to the project. To find out more about adding team members to a project, see our article 'Inviting your team to a project'.
- State clearly and specifically what the task is in the 'Title' field.
- To keep team members motivated and on time, create a deadline in the 'Due'field.
- State where the task needs to be carried out in the 'Location' field.
Linking to a measure
To ensure that you can quantifiably measure the success of your PDSA cycle, you need to link it to one or more Measures. This is done in the 'Measures to determine if prediction succeeds' fields. How to link a PDSA cycle to a measure.
Making a prediction
Once you have considered how you are going to evaluate the impact of the change and linked to the relevant measure, you can make a hypothesis of what you can expect to happen. This is important for when you finish your PDSA cycle, and are evaluating its results. This is done in the 'Predict what will happen when the test is carried out' field.