L3 Flashcards
How do you prioritise stakeholders?
Do a power / interest map.
Are the stakeholders on a power/interest map fixed?
No, they change from project to project, and may also over time.
What are the project trade offs stakeholders must make?
Time
Cost
Quality
What is the time, cost, quality triangle called?
The iron triangle.
How do you ask stakeholders to give you their priorities? (When they obvs want cheapest, high quality, short time)
Give them a project priority matrix and tick off what they will constrain, what they want to enhance, and what loss they will accept (e.g. big budget)
Are time, cost, and quality the only measures of project success?
No, it depends who you ask. A team member might want a nice working environment, a military project might want secrecy etc
How do we measure success beyond time, quality, cost?
Use a balanced scorecard.
-Financial requirements: short/med/long term return on investment
-customers/suppliers: direct/indirect requirements
-internal processes: improve business processes, impact on staff satisfaction
-innovation/learning: learning outcomes of the project
How do we quantify what stakeholders want?
Must be measurable:
TCQ: agreed timeframe with milestones, agreed budget, quality conforms to specs.
Others: do a pilot study, do benchmarking, do modelling e.g. model how many shop servers you need.
What is M&E?
Monitoring and evaluation.
Conventional is done by project managers etc.
Participatory is done by local people, staff etc.
How to decide which version of M&E to go for?
Go to power/interest map, see which stakeholders you have.
If it’s a first-timer project, you want to engage stakeholders (participatory). If it’s PBN, you can use conventional.
How to organise what/when to communicate with stakeholders?
Use a communication plan, especially in larger scale projects.
What are the elements of project outline planning?
- Concept development (develop basic project idea)
- Scope development (build a plan around the idea)
- Product overview (spec list)
- Process overview (risk, stakeholder priority, communication) more important for first-timers
- Detailed plan
How do we screen project ideas? (4)
Marketing studies
Return on investment
Strategy/mission
Feasibility
What goes into good concept development processes?
- allow employees time for exploration
- important to protect ownership
- encourage rapid prototyping
- involve senior management
What goes into bad concept development processes?
- being overly restrictive hinders creativity
- having no processes at all!