[1] In an Introduction to Management and Organizational Behavior, Barbara Carlin and Marina Sebastijanovic suggest that operational planning is one of the four basic types of planning involved in organizational management.
An operational plan is the basis for, and justification of, an annual operating budget needed to achieve an overall strategic plan.
While an operational plan may differ depending on the sector, the core components of an operational plan includes benchmarking and determining how progress is measured.
As the first step, the operations plan provides a plan for resource allocation; as the last step, the OP may be modified to reflect policy decisions or financial changes made during the budget development process.
[4] Operational plans are generally prepared by the people who will be involved in implementation.