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ZachEvans

Believer. Husband. Dad. Coach. Healthcare Thought-Leader. All-Around Good Guy.

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project management

Project Initiation & Closure

April 27, 2015 by Zach Evans

Project governance is neither a fun nor a simple concept to implement. Some organizations do this very well and have elaborate, multi-level, processes that ensure proper vetting, prioritization, oversight and funding. Other organizations have little-to-no governance and do everything by the seat of their pants with varying levels of success. Most IT professionals will tell you that some level of governance is necessary and those same professionals will be happy to share at least one (or perhaps many) examples of a time where the governance process ground their project to a halt for no viable reason.

I am one of those that believe some level of governance is needed for successful project implementation and have developed a short-form Project Initiation and Project Closure document that I have found useful when organizations do not have (or do not want) a full-scale governance process.

Project Initiation Document – A two-page template that lays out the very basics of the project: details, team members, objectives, success metrics, scope, and a signature block. The template does not include assumptions, risks and mitigation plans, project plans, or resource plans. It is assumed that those are being handled in other forms or may not be deemed necessary.

Project Closure Document – A two-page template that lays out the same basics as the Project Initiation Document but adds options to identify if objectives and success metrics have been met by the project.

No project documentation should be used as a club to beat a colleague or client over the head with (although some project managers do just that) but, rather, should signify a meeting of the minds and an agreement on how to define and measure the success or failure of a project. Neither should project governance be viewed as red tape that adds no value to the operations of an organization.

Related files: Project Initiation Document; Project Closure Document

Filed Under: Business, Miscellany Tagged With: Project Governance, project management, project prioritization

Project Scorecard

March 4, 2015 by Zach Evans

In my professional life, I serve as a consultant on several projects at any time. Part of my role in relation to the management of this project portfolio is to provide input on prioritization. All organizations have limited resources to spend on projects and analytical tools can help inform decisions leaders are faced with in regards where to allocate these resources.

One such tool that I developed and have used successfully is a project scorecard that analyzes several dimensions of a project, assigns a relative weight to each dimension, and provides a recommend project rank based on the overall score of a project. This particular scorecard looks at the following project dimensions:

  • Number of departments impacted
  • Revenue impact
  • Quality impact
  • Safety impact
  • Project sponsor
  • Projected cost
  • Urgency
  • Priority
  • Budgeted
  • Security
  • Interfaces
  • Existing installations (in other divisions of the company)

Based on your needs or organization, the dimensions analyzed would vary greatly, but the value behind the tool would not. Furthermore, I would not recommend making decisions based solely on a tool such as this, but would use its outputs as one data point (although, perhaps, one that carries a great deal of weight).

Are you in need of having a tool like this built for your organization or do you have other questions as to how a tool such as this could be implemented? Please contact me for more information.

Related files: Project Scorecard

Filed Under: Business, Miscellany Tagged With: excel, project management, project prioritization, Projects, Resources, spreadsheet

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