In my last post, The Never Ending Project, I reviewed a project whose estimated costs continued to grow with no end in sight. I also looked at how effective use of stakeholder power could have leveraged the Project Pre-Check fundamentals of stakeholders, defined processes and a best practice based decision framework to achieve great results.
You don’t need to use Project Pre-Check. You can use or build your own practice, just as long as you address the three core building blocks; the stakeholders, the process they’ll use to guide a project through to a successful completion and the decision framework, a collection of best practices (I call them decision areas) that the stakeholders need to consider and agree on over the course of a change.
Project Pre-Check Decision Framework
The Project Pre-Check decision framework addresses four domains: the nature and characteristics of the change itself, the impact on the environment within which the change will be implemented, the assets that will be needed to support the project or impacted by the change and the specific requirements for how the project will be conducted.
These four domains contain 18 factors and 125 decision areas that can be considered for each and every change. It’s a great starting point for building and monitoring stakeholder cohesion.
So, let’s look at how the use of the decision framework can help the stakeholder group ask the right questions, consider available options and make informed decisions on their way to a successful implementation
The Situation
This organization provided insurance and savings products to individual clients through over 100 Canadian offices coast to coast. There were 600 plus administrative staff in these regional offices.
The office personnel responsible for administering clients’ needs were faced with a motley array of mainframe, server and PC applications with widely different interfaces and formatting requirements, each application supported by its own 3-ring binder of procedures, entry protocols, codes and rules. The environment was a huge drain on productivity and quality and negatively impacted client service.
The Goal
The sponsor wanted to improve client service and quality and the productivity of the office staff by standardizing the look and feel of the interface and formatting requirements, providing online access to all support documentation, and ensuring that all new applications and future changes complied with the interface standards.
In addition, because of the number of staff affected and their location all across the country, the new environment was to be sufficiently intuitive that it could be implemented effectively without formal training.
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