In my previous discussion on creating a success plan, I shared the secret sauce:
Success Plan = Realistic Scope + right skilled resources + achievable timeline
In this discussion, I want to focus on the first ingredient of establishing a realistic scope. The scope of the project sets up the approach a project takes. I always keep in mind that the goal is to define the scope that is achievable within a 60 day cycle.
Have you ever been to a kid’s dance recital? You know the 3 hours of back to back dances of all genres including tap, ballet, modern, jazz, lyrical and hip hop. You sit for the entire show to watch one of your family members dance for 6 minutes. Have you ever thought about the process they go through to put that show on at the end of the year? Many people wonder how the kids remember all that choreography and perform all those dances. They do it in small phases throughout the year. They teach one number at a time by creating classes or small groups of people to focus on a genre for a certain age group. By having many various small groups working separate dance pieces, they can focus on the quality of their technique and performance abilities. At the end of the year, they put all these groups together to create an amazing showcase.
I like to use a similar concept when planning projects as well. There are always long term goals and objectives. Within each of these, I would define smaller goals and objectives that become the steps needed to get to the long term goal. Evaluate the areas of the organization that would have the largest impacts or benefits. It may be necessary to do this exercise within each functional group depending how the project goals impact across the functional lines or the work flows require various collaborations across groups. Look for the quick wins, functional areas and processes that are struggling the most or could have the highest gains. Evaluate the ability to define the scope to be able to achieve it within 60 days.
For example, I had a customer who intended to implement a PPM solution globally. They had over 500 projects managed throughout various groups. They started out with this as their scope. During our Discover and Design sessions, it became clear that the area with the most pain was their marketing group. They had some critical business needs to improve their management of various marketing projects that would have a direct impact on their customer satisfaction and increase revenue. It consisted of only 25 key projects. This became my target for them to define a detailed scope around as our Phase I goals and objectives. We could accomplish this within the 60 day timeframe and deliver value to the organization with high visibility to show the impact of their new PPM investment. This became the approach they took to define all their follow on phases, rolling out the solution in a logical priority delivering value on an on-going basis.
The key to success is to work the plan into organized smaller work streams with defined scopes that can be executed within 60 days. Prioritize them based on highest to smallest impact and value to the business. If the capacity is there, mulitple work streams can be executed in parallel to deliver multiple key objectives in the same 60 day timeframe. This will become the project plan roadmap to delivering the long term commitments.
