The preplan includes decisions about who will be invited to participate and at whatstages in the process, a time frame for completing the plan, and a determination of the toolsto be used in collecting data for the plan. Spending this additional time at the beginningof the process could prevent costly errors or omissions from being made and can assist inmaking the resulting strategic plan more accurate and meaningful.The result of this stage should be an agreement about the process to be followed,a list of those who will be involved at various stages in the process and the type ofinformation they will be asked to provide, the timeline for completing the plan, and alist of the planning tools to be used in gathering information to be used in theplanning process.