Project Delivery; What good looks like

Matthew Rees 5 April 16

I will look at project delivery from four perspectives

○ Purpose – why are we doing this?

○Scope – what are we doing?

○ Plan – how and when will we do it?

○Stakeholders – who is involved?

The purpose of the project directs everything within it

○ Projects are done to provide business benefits to the client

○ The content of the project may change, e.g. additional deliverables, but the purpose is constant

○ It is important to keep focused on the purpose and not to get side-tracked on irrelevant details

The scope defines what is to be produced and the extent of this

○ The scope is what the project must deliver, i.e. the supplier’s responsibility

○ The scope of work covers the outputs required, e.g. materials catalogue, and what they are to be applied to, e.g. the source datasets to be included

○ The first formal definition of the scope is in the contract

Good scope management requires:

○ Precise specifications to define each aspect of the project, e.g. file formats

○Change control to manage changes to the specifications

○Effective governance to approve specifications and changes

○Without these the supplier risks doing extra work at the same cost

The Governance Model defines the project roles and responsibilities

The plan specifies what will be done when and by whom

○ The Work Breakdown Structure shows all the activities that need to be performed and who will perform each of them

○ The schedule shows when they will be performed taking into account the dependencies between them and the availability of resources

An effective plan requires:

○Knowledge of the work so that the effort can be estimated accurately

○Understanding of the dependencies so that a valid schedule can be produced

○Commitment to make the resources available when required

○Understanding of the risks that may deflect the plan

Keeping on plan requires:

○Clear statements of the work to be done in each activity

○Regular review of progress with all people working on the project

○Anticipating and managing risks, e.g. availability of resources

○Regular communication on the project status to the Steering Group etc.

The stakeholders are anybody with an interest in the project

○Stakeholders are groups of people who are impacted by the project and/or have an influence over it

○Stakeholders who are impacted by the project include the users of the systems and of the data within them

○Stakeholders who can influence the project include senior management in the client and sparesFinder

Effective stakeholder management requires:

○ Identification of all of the groups of stakeholders and an understanding of the level of commitment required

○A range of communications activities, e.g. emails and meetings, that are suited to each group and to the messages that need to be delivered

The Stakeholder Plan identifies and categorises stakeholders

Stakeholder Plan

Stakeholders Status Communications

Group Key People Involvement Influence on Impacted by Commitment Forum Updates PSR Ad hoc

medium medium Advocate mandatory yes no yes

medium medium Advocate mandatory yes no yes

low high Engage optional yes no yes

medium high Engage optional yes no yes

medium medium Engage mandatory yes no yes

low low Engage occasional yes no no

low low Engage mandatory yes no yes

low low Engage occasional yes no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

low low Comply occasional no no yes

high low Advocate optional yes yes yes

high low Advocate occasional no yes no

high low Engage occasional no yes no

The commitment scale shows where each group needs to be

Advocate

Engage

Understand

Comply

Resist

Commitment scale

1

2 4

3 5

Different methods are used to get to different levels of commitment

Telling

Selling

Consulting

Co-creating

Advocate

Engage

Understand

Comply

Resist

1

2 4

3 5

The PID pulls everything together

PID

SCOPE

Outputs Boundaries

PLAN

Tasks Schedule

STAKEHOLDERS

Impacted Influencing

Responsibilities

Dependencies

Work List