Time –

What is due next week?
Who is going on vacation?
Does anyone look ill? Sound ill?

Scope –

What does you sponsor really need the most?
Can it be completed early?
Who has disappointed them lately?

Cost –

Who is on accrual?
Who is down to 5% left?

While everyone is thinking that the end is far and the pressure is low. Remember that ‘shared resources’ can be strained resources and the team may already be closer to their personal targets than you realize.

  

How long before you see
your trees are in concrete?

You finally have your charter in place. 

The team is set, the deadlines are in marked, and the budget is in the hopper.

How much detail do you really know?  Are you in a Six Sigma organization with a highly defined process? Do you have a list of names and 3 sentence description of work. In both cases this is a great time to start looking deeper.

Today is the day to start thinking about ‘features’:

Are there teams that can work on discreet sections in parallel?

Are there new or improved functions that can help sell you process or product?

Do these enhancements open up your market in a new and different way?

Take some time as you start to dive into the details to consider how things are grouped, will be used by groups, and be developed by groups:

Can you package parts of process change and technical change in a different way?
Can you spots points to compress the schedule before it is written?
Do you know your dependency risks and who can fill the voids?

Even if you do not have multiple workstreams over several countries and many business units each project has several perspectives.

Take this early time to know your resources better to be able to sell your success in new and different ways.

Here are some resources to help you start to uncover the next layer and see the connections:

 Project Charter and Templates - Great explanation of the Six Sigma method.  If your organization is light on process this can give you some great ideas of areas of questions to ask and things to consider.

Facilitate a meeting to define what success looks like for your project - Great overview of how to move from charter to action

Introduction to Requirements: Critical Details That Make or Break a Project - overview of gathering the details behind the ask

(Photo is the work of Jami Dwyer and is used under Creative Commons License)

What sticks will you choose to be compared with?

While you are setting the stage for success this week always keep your eyes on the ruler.  You will be measured by the success of the change as much (if not more) than the health of your triangle.

Are there functions of time and task that could communicate your project in a better light? Be more meaningful to your business partners? Your technology partners?

Will your features report user success? Administrative success? Operation challenges?

Will your release be self reporting? Will it cry for change in a lean format?

Take a half hour to measure how your change will be measured 1 month, 1 release, and 1 year, after release and you will be able to build your metrics before others come asking.

Here are some resources to start you on the path to measuring improvement:

Software Metrics Programs - Great overview of how large scale software coding metrics are set up.

TenStep Measurement / Metrics - Collection of sites covering all sides of determining, gathering, and improving metrics throughout the life of a program.

Microsoft Dynamics – Supply Chain Performance Metrics - Describes the steps from business process alignment through data integration.  Links to good background resources applicable to any business process / software change intersection.

The 7 Step Process to Determining ROI Metrics for Your Email Campaigns - A walkthrough of how to set up a comprehensive plan when some portions can be directly measured while other positions must be educated guesses.

     

Are you ready to start down the path?

The message has come down from the mountain —- thee shall have funding!

What does this mean in your organization?  You may have a team of dedicated resources with a long standing governance board with a process for everything or you may have a noun, a verb, and a prayer.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you move toward defining the rest of your triangle:

Do minor stakeholders have any say? Do they only attend UAT and road shows?

What is the escalation process of your dependent systems?  Departments?

Do you need work streams? Can you run several concurrent efforts?

Do your business stakeholders have the staff to support document and prototype and training reviews?  All at once?

What major holidays will happen for your extended team? Need Europe in August?

Take some time today to look past the glee of approval and think about how you are selling your team structure and how it fits your approvers’ needs going forward:

Does the Development team think in terms of feature but your upstream systems think only in terms of transaction timing.

Does your “Train the Trainer” work stream include people who have never had access to this system? This domain? This business process?

While this may be a manic Monday take some time to think about how you can ask the right questions before the plan is a glimmer in management’s eye!

Here is a great resource for helping to think forward and build the right process even in the most agile environment by getting the right people to the table early:

Agile Exception Process

(Photo is the work of mathias-erhart and is used under Creative Commons License)

Do your status reports shed enough light?

You have a template (or maybe even a bunch) that ‘force’ you to communicate with management, stakeholders, and maybe even customers.  Does this information put your efforts in the best possible light?

Is it written in the words your reader would use?

When does the reader need to act on the information?

Do you technology and business partners have access or time for these updates?

Take some time today to look at how you will status your project this week:

Does everyone know your triumphs from last week? Last month?

Do your partners have enough information to know that their needs have changed?

Have you clearly communicated the week’s goals?

Have you set the next tasks in motion so that you can message the success of other groups?

Is there another group or organization that could benefit from knowing how your project is going? That your project exists?

The new week is about to start so this is a great time to think about how you will show how valuable your project will be!

Think that your stakeholder will have your back should it all go wrong and you have no trail of accomplishments (wich change approvals of course) – The Price of Right

(Photo is the work of strikeael and is used under Creative Commons License)

When does a project begin? For many ideas the first place that it becomes a written record is a change request.  It may be lost in a help desk ticket that is closed as “by design” leaving the user a brick wall of confusion.  It may be lost in a former colleague’s inbox as a question from a crucial business partners wishing that your departments could work together better.

Did you requests come in a pile or a stack?

Where did your project start?

How did it find its way into the budget process?

Tomorrow we’ll take some time to think about how the budget was set, but for today look back at the start and consider:

Who should have been there?

What risks were missing? 

What other groups could use your new process?  Program?  Building?

What happened to the postponed change requests from the previous release? Year? 

Those who were overlooked in the past could be the key to your future success.

Here are some resources to help you look at  your budget process in a new light:

Sample Change Request Forms

Controling Change – change request basics

Budgets are a Guess - what happens when there is no intake process just ideas and stuff being done lots of great comments

Take Control, Change Control – change control and budget controls translated to new car buying process 

(Photo is the work of booleansplit and is used under Creative Commons License)

Sun – Change to Budget
Mon – Budget to Charter
Tues - Charter to Feature
Wed – Feature to Business Rule
Thurs – Business to Metric
Fri – Business Use Case – How Much Do You Know?

Take a moment to think about how your current project began:

What critical information was missing from the request?

What critical features were mandated as out of scope?

What stakeholders were not at the table?

What resources do you wish you found sooner?

How can you share these learning with your colleagues?  Please share them with our group and offer up your lessons as we all learn together.

Please visit our group home for more information while this blog is in process:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Project1Mentors

Come back in November and join the conversation!