Project Pre-Check FastPath

Project Pre-Check FastPath is the project manager’s guide to stakeholder management. Why is stakeholder management important? Because the top requirements for project success include executive management support, user involvement, effective sponsorship and clear vision and objectives. That’s stakeholder management! Implementing major business and technology change successfully is a formidable undertaking. Examples of ventures cancelled outright, of projects that failed to deliver to expectations, of blown budgets, of questionable quality, of missed deadlines are trumpeted in the press daily. • According to the Standish Group, over two thirds of projects fail or are seriously challenged. • The U.S. Government’s Office of Management and Budget, the federal government agency that evaluates the effectiveness of federal programs, policies, and procedures, found in a March 2003 study, that “771 projects included in the fiscal 2004 budget—with a total cost of $20.9 billion—are currently at risk.” • Morgan Stanley reported that between 2000 and 2002, U.S. companies spent $130 Billion on software and hardware that they ultimately didn’t need to support their businesses. According to figures by Gartner, this number jumps to $540 billion on a global scale. Unfortunately, there are thousands of past and current project failures costing the organizations involved unconscionable amounts in wasted time, money and opportunity. And, unfortunately, there will continue to be thousands of major business and technology change initiatives that will fail in the future. Projects will still fail because it is difficult and time consuming to try and apply general rules and principles to specific changes. Projects still fail because the stakeholders involved in a change don’t actually know why their projects failed or will fail. Projects still fail because the stakeholders involved don’t specifically know what should be done to prevent their particular project from failing. And, projects still fail because most stakeholders don’t really understand the role they need to play to ensure success! All of the lists of conditions that pundits tell us must be met to deliver major change successfully tend to omit or gloss over one critical factor: the need for stakeholders to make lots of tough, informed choices throughout the course of the change. Project Pre-Check FastPath ensures that the conditions necessary for success are in place. It achieves that though the following mechanisms, or building blocks: • Stakeholders — to ensure the key decision makers are actively involved and in agreement throughout the change. • Process — to ensure that the roadmap to success is followed consistently on each change. • Decision Framework — to ensure that a broad perspective is brought to bear on the factors that can contribute to project success and the factors that may be affected by the planned change. That enables stakeholders to make specific decisions on the changes required to achieve the desired results. The Project Pre-Check FastPath process is the recipe. The Decision Areas are the ingredients! The stakeholders are the chefs! Project Pre-Check is based on this premise: if the stakeholders for a given change are actively involved in and agree with each decision, and all the vital decisions are addressed, the project will be successful. FastPath covers stakeholder involvement from the inception of the change process through to the realization of planned benefits. It addresses controls and practices that stakeholders can leverage to form and guide the change to the intended conclusion, or to change direction, or even cancel the initiative if conditions warrant in time to avoid undue damage. Project Pre-Check FastPath provides project managers with the framework to build an effective stakeholder group, the prerequisite for delivering projects successfully. • It enables conscious, overt decisions about key factors that will influence how long the project will take, how much it will cost, what kind of quality will be delivered and what benefits will be delivered, when and to whom. • It allows stakeholders to control the size and shape of a planned change based on identified risks and rewards, driven by anticipated business value. • It integrates simply and effectively with other commercial and home grown project and change management and solution development methodologies. • It can be applied effectively in the pre-launch stages, as part of or immediately after project initiation, up until solution delivery and on a release basis. FastPath is also designed to change over time. The process allows each organization to adapt the best practices to their unique circumstances, industry, culture and philosophies, up front and on an ongoing basis. Project Pre-Check FastPath. The project manager’s indispensable guide to stakeholder management.