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PROJECT INITIATION: STARTING A SUCCESSFUL PROJECT

Конспект второго курса сертификации. Посвящен старту проекта.

WEEK 1

Initiation begins after a problem or opportunity has been identified within an organization.

Key components of initiation:

  • goals – what you’ve been asked to do and what you’re trying to achieve.
  • scope – the work that needs to happen to complete the project.
  • deliverables – the tangible and intangible outcomes of a project.
  • success criteria – are the standards by which you measure how successful a project was in reaching its goals.
  • stakeholders – the people who both have an interest in and are affected by the completion and success of a project.
  • resources – budget, people, materials, and other items that you’ll have at your disposal.

Cost benefit analysis is the process of adding up the expected value of a project (the benefits) and comparing them to the dollar costs. It helps determine that the benefits of the project outcomes will outweigh the costs of the project.

To determine the benefits of a project, the questions to stakeholders might include:

  • What value will this project create? How much money could this project save our organization? How much money will it bring in from existing customers? How much time will be saved? How will the user experience be improved?

And to determine the costs of the project:

  • How much time will people have to spend on this project? What will be the one-time costs? Are there any ongoing costs? What about long-term costs?

Intangible benefits are gains that are not quantifiable, such as:

  • Customer satisfaction. Will the project increase customer retention, causing them to spend more on the company’s products or services? 
  • Employee satisfaction. Is the project likely to improve employee morale, reducing turnover? 
  • Employee productivity. Will the project reduce employee’s overtime hours, saving the company money?
  • Brand perception. Is the project likely to improve the company’s brand perception and recognition, attracting more customers or providing a competitive advantage?

Intangible costs are costs that are not quantifiable. For example, might the project put customer retention, employee satisfaction, or brand perception at risk?

Return on investment (ROI) – the process of calculating costs and benefits.
One common formula is: (G-C) / C = ROI
G represents the financial gains you expect from the project, and C represents the upfront and ongoing costs of your investment in the project.
For example, your project costs $6,000 up front plus $25 per month for 12 months. This equals $300 per year, but you estimate that the project will bring in $10,000 in revenue over the course of that year. Using the formula, you calculate the ROI as: ($10,000 - $6,300) ÷ $6,300 = 0.58 = 58%

WEEK 2

A project goal is the desired outcome of the project. Well-defined goals are both specific and measurable.

Project deliverables refer to the tangible outcomes of the project. Its what gets produced or presented at the end of a task, event, or process. It help us quantify and realize the impacts of the project.

SMART goals are:

  • Specific – What do I want to accomplish? Why is this a goal? Does it have a specific reason, purpose, or benefit? Who is involved, and who is the recipient? Where should the goal be delivered? To what degree? In other words, what are the requirements and constraints?
  • Measurable – how much, how many, and how will I know when it’s accomplished?
  • Attainable – Can it be reasonably reached? How can it be accomplished? Breakdown the goal into smaller parts, and see if it makes sense
  • Relevant – Does the goal makes sense? Is the goal worthwhile? Is it the right time? Does the effort involved balance out the benefits? Does it match your organization’s other needs and priorities?
  • Time-bound – Has a deadline or clears time frame

Metrics are what you use to measure something like figures or numbers. For example, if your goal was to run a 5K (five-kilometer race), then “distance in kilometers” is your metric.

Benchmarks or points of reference to make sure you’re choosing accurate metrics. For instance, if your overall goal is to increase revenue, you can look at last year’s data as a benchmark for deciding how much to increase revenue this year.

Objectives and key results (OKRs) – combine a goal and a metric to determine a measurable outcome.

Project objectives should be aspirational, aligned with organizational goals, action-oriented, concrete, and significant. Strong key results meet the following criteria: Results-oriented—not a task, measurable and verifiable, specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic.

  • Think of your objectives as being motivational and inspiring and your key results as being tactical and specific. The objective describes what you want to do and the key results describe how you’ll know you did it. 
  • As a general rule, try to develop around 2-3 key results for each objective.
  • Be sure to document your OKRs and link to them in your project plan.
  • Share them with your team, assign owners to each key result to ensure accountability
  • Measure your OKRs’ progress by scoring them, and track your OKRs’ progress by scheduling regular check-ins with your team.

Scope — An agreed upon understanding as to what is included or excluded from a project. It means knowing exactly who the project will be delivered to and who will be using the end result of the project. It also includes the project timeline, budget, and resources.

Questions to stakeholders to define scope:

  • Where did the project come from? Why is it needed? What is the project expected to achieve? What does the project sponsor have in mind? Who approves the final results?

Make sure you understand the who, what, when, where, why, and how as it applies to the scope

In-scope – tasks that are included in the project and contribute to the project’s overall goal.
out-of-scope – tasks that aren’t included.

Scope creep is when a project’s work starts to grow beyond what was originally agreed upon during the initiation phase.
Best practices for scope management and controlling scope creep:

  • Define your project’s requirements and document it
  • Set a clear project schedule
  • Determine what is out of scope
  • Provide alternatives
  • Determine the process for how each change will be defined, reviewed, and approved (or rejected) before you add it to your project plan. Make sure your project team is aware of this process.
  • Learn how to say no. If you are asked to take on additional tasks, explain how they will interfere with the budget, timeline, and/or resources defined in your initial project requirements. 
  • Collect costs for out-of-scope work.

The triple constraint model is the combination of the three most significant restrictions of any project: scope, time, and cost.
It would help to decide if a scope change is acceptable and what impact it will have.
All three of these are linked; you can’t change one without having an impact on the others.
If you’re going to ask for something to be delivered faster (time), you have to pay more (cost). If you’re trying to save some money (cost), sometimes you can do this by choosing a simpler version (scope).

Best strategies for triple constraints:
I) Fixed budget: more flexibly on time and scope. With cost as the biggest priority, it’s likely that only the most business-critical change requests will be approved. Measures:

  • adjust the project deadlines
  • scale back the scope of the project
  • agree upon reduced quality of certain deliverables To help you communicate the costs and cost estimates of the project to your clients, use a resource management software, where you can draw up reports on your team’s capacity, resource utilization, and performance for projects, clients, and individuals. You’ll also want to use a Gantt chart to create a detailed work breakdown structure.

II) Deadline: flexibility on cost and/or scope. Expediting the project to satisfy the time constraint might mean:

  • putting more resources on the line, increasing cost
  • cutting back the scope and/or quality of the end product Especially when precise time estimates and deadlines are a priority, you should take a moment to set yourself up with the right time-tracking tools: use past project reports to make accurate time estimates and track team hours to make sure you’re staying on schedule.

III) Scope: It might be important for the client to be able to add features throughout the project as they discover more about their customers. If what matters most is having exactly the features that they put in scope, then they have to remain open to:

  • flexible timing as the team accommodates scope changes
  • increased cost for deliverables added to the scope No matter your project, you need a detailed, specific Statement of Work document that defines overarching project information as well as details on deliverables, standards, criteria and requirements for each phase.

Project launch – delivering the final result of your project to the client or user.
Landing is when you actually measure the success of your project using the success criteria established at the outset of the project.

The success criteria:

  • Will tell you whether or not the project as a whole was successful.
  • Specific details of your goals and deliverables that tell you whether you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.
  • The standards by which the project will be judged once it’s been delivered to stakeholders and customers.

Determining project success:

  1. Identify the measurable aspects of your project – any of the metrics used in the goals and deliverables, along with your budget and schedule details.
  2. Get clarity from stakeholders on the project requirements and expectations.

It’s smart to measure success with your team as a project or product is in progress. For example, you can hold a project review once a month, have team members complete task checklists by certain deadlines, or hold live feedback sessions with your users or customers.

With each success criteria on your list, also include the methods for how success will be measured, how often it’s measured, and who’s responsible for measuring it.

Have the appropriate stakeholders sign off on the success criteria.

Adoption refers to how the customer uses and adopts a product or service without any issues.
Engagement refers to how often or meaningful customer interaction and participation is over time.
You can use customer adoption and engagement metrics, along with more business-oriented metrics that track things like sales and growth.

Three-step approach to dealing with «same Project, different Perspectives» problem:

  1. Understand – What is the position each stakeholder has? That isn’t just what they think, but also why they think it.
  2. Assess – How does that position compare with the organizational view of the project? You have to determine which stakeholders carry the most weight and which ones must be viewed as more peripheral
  3. Adapt – Adjust elements of the project to manage any variance between views and perspectives.

WEEK 3

How to choose a team:

  1. Make a list of roles that you need on your team to complete each task.
  2. Decide, how many people you need on their team.
  3. Think carefully about necessary skills teammates must have.
  4. Also know each person’s availability and whether they’ll feel motivated to complete their assigned tasks.

Always ask these questions:

  • How many people do I need on my team each step of the way? Which team members do I need and when? Are those experts already busy on other projects? Who makes the final decisions on project resources?

In every project there always be:

  1. A project sponsor. Accountable for the project and who ensures the project delivers the agreed upon value to the business. They play a vital leadership role throughout the process. Sometimes they fund the project.
  2. Team members. Doin work & make shit happens.
  3. Customers. People who will get some sort of value from a successfully landed project.
  4. Users. People that ultimately use the product that your project will produce.
  5. Stakeholders. Anyone involved in the project; those who have a vested interest in the project’s success. Primary stakeholders are people who expect to benefit directly from the project’s completion, while secondary stakeholders play an intermediary role and are indirectly impacted by the project.
  6. Project manager. The person who plans, organizes and oversees the whole project.

Stakeholder analysis - is a visual representation of all the stakeholders. It helps you avoid surprises, build necessary partnerships, and ensure you’re involving the right people at the right time.

Three key steps to a stakeholder analysis:

  1. Make a list of all the stakeholders that the project impacts.
  2. Determine the level of interest (How much are the needs of the stakeholder affected by the project operations and outcomes) and influence(how much power a stakeholder has and how much the stakeholder’s actions affect the project outcome) for each stakeholder.
  3. Assess their ability to participate, and find ways to involve them.

Four techniques for managing stakeholders with analysis:

  1. Key players, or key stakeholders. You’ll find these people in the top right corner of the grid. You’ll want to closely partner with them to reach the desired outcomes
  2. Stakeholders with higher influence but lower interest in the top left corner of the grid. You’ll want to consult with them and meet their needs.
  3. Stakeholders with lower influence but high interest are in the right bottom corner of the grid. You’ll want to show consideration for them by keeping them up-to-date on the project.
  4. low influence and low interest are in the bottom left corner. You mainly want to monitor them, keeping them in the know.

A RACI chart – helps to define roles and responsibilities for individuals or teams to ensure work gets done efficiently. It creates clear roles and gives direction for each team member:

  • Responsible: who gets the work done
  • Accountable: who makes sure the work is done
  • Consulted: who gives input or feedback on work
  • Informed: who needs to know the outcome

It’s possible there are several roles that fall into the “informed” and “consulted” categories.
One thing that will always remain constant is there will never be more than one person designated as “accountable.” It clearly defines ownership. However, the same person that is “accountable” may also be “responsible.”

Project proposal is a form of documentation that comes at the very beginning of the project. This document’s purpose is to persuade stakeholders that a project should begin.

Project charter: a formal document that clearly defines the project and outlines the necessary details to reach its goals. A project charter helps you get organized, set up a framework for what needs to be done, and communicate those details to others. The project charter makes clear that the benefits of the project outweigh the costs.

Project charters will vary but usually include some combination of the following key information:

  • introduction/project summary
  • goals/objectives 
  • business case/benefits and costs
  • project team
  • scope
  • success criteria
  • major requirements or key deliverables
  • budget
  • schedule/timeline or milestones
  • constraints and assumptions
  • risks
  • OKRs
  • approvals

Before you introduce a new tool to your team, you should be sure that this change is actually going to benefit the project, and ensure that those involved in your project understand the benefits of this change