D.B. Crane and Associates, Inc.

Planning & Control
Education Microsoft® Project
Education Facilitated Project
Start-Ups Mentoring
 

Microsoft® Project
Tips

Facilitated Project Start-ups

The Benefits:

The Facilitated Project Startup Process is intended to enhance the education and knowledge transfer process, by facilitating the planning of one or more client projects. This process could then by followed by a period of mentoring and reinforcement.

The client planning team will not only act as the subject matter experts (SMEs) for their project but will also participate as facilitators in the session. This accelerates the knowledge transfer providing needed experience while retaining the security of the facilitators as coaches.

Each of the SMEs learns from the others. During the planning process it is common for potential project technical problems or differences in approach to arise. These can then be addressed well in advance of them becoming “show stoppers.”

The planning approach treats the plan as a feasibility study. It is not uncommon to discover that, because of Scope, Deadline and Resource Availability constraints, compromises and trade offs must be made. Having this information before the project is started allows organizations to negotiate tradeoffs and thus avoid wasting human and capital resources on objectives that cannot be attained. In some cases, it may even be discovered that it would be best to cancel a project because the goals cannot be achieved within the defined constraints.

The Prerequisites:

The client SME’s who would be part of the planning process, would normally have gone through traditional education courses, which would have covered at least the topics of Scope Definition, Work Breakdown Structure, Estimating, Dependency Scheduling and Control of Project Progress. These topics can all be explained as part of the facilitated planning process but will in all probability, extended the planning time period.

The Process:

Typically, two facilitators working together, conduct a focused planning session with a core team of client personnel who have cross functional expertise in the product or service being developed. Ideally this group would be no larger than seven or eight, with five being optimal. Due to the number of trade-offs and inconsistencies that must be discussed and negotiated, the total number of days required is usually five to ten. With the exception of the first two, they do not all have to be contiguous. On occasion, for small projects, the number of days may be less than five. All SMEs must be present for all sessions as each serves as a cross check on the input of others as well as gaining knowledge about the other’s part of the project.

A dedicated data entry person, not one of the participating SME’s or facilitators, will handle all data entry into a project management software product such as Microsoft® Project. This person can be a temporary hire from an agency.

The initial output of the process, is a plan that proves or disproves the viability of the project. For the project to be viable within the constraints imposed on it, negotiation may have to take place between various stakeholders. This negotiation is also part of the facilitation with an emphasis on knowledge transfer to the clients personnel. As an early part of the mentoring, some refinements may have to made to the project. The final output is a plan that it is considered achievable by all stakeholders and then becomes a Baseline for controlling the project and managing variance.