Knowledge Genes®

How to use a Stakeholder Requests List as Part of Scope Definition

I recently read an article by Laura Brandenburg, an experienced Business Analyst Consultant - which outlines a great idea she has on how to effectively use a structured stakeholder requests list for defining scope, fleshing out requirements - and ultimately to control scope creep.

In summary, the idea looks like this:

1. Put together all competing stakeholder requests

• list out all the requirements you've received
• capture these in a simple excel spreadsheet

2. Then, evaluate each request

• determine if it is a business need
• determine if it is a requirement
• determine if it is a detailed or a high-level requirement

3. Then, begin to look at the requests as a whole

• determine if any requests relate to one another
• group requests together

4. Help stakeholders decide which items are in scope for the project and which are not in scope

• first, list out the business benefits for each item - consider organizational fit, cost of implementation, which systems are impacted ...
• identify items which have multiple requestors and consider these as potentially high priority items
• then, articulate this list as a brief category or a perhaps a full benefits statement, depending on the circumstance

For more information and a roadmap on this, click the link below:

How to use a Stakeholder Requests List as Part of Scope Definition

How to Successfully Closeout a Project

Successful project closeout is critical, yet for one reason or another, it's an area that's often left loose at the ends - with the potential for disastrous consequences for sure.

Project Managers who 'tie the ends', properly closing-out projects create significant benefits for themselves, their organization and for others. These benefits include better success for future projects, better employee motivation, better customer relations, improved attractiveness to repeat and new business ... But, proper project closeout isn't a nice to have, it's a critical process step.

The process includes:

Verify Scope:

- Review all test data against the approved specification
- Identify & resolve any discrepancies
- Validate all supporting documents
- Verify all deliverables are available
- Assess customer satisfaction

Closeout Contracts

- Ensure that all open issues are resolved with the customer
- Return or destroy all customer's proprietary documents at the customer's direction
- Help the customer conduct an audit of completed scope
- When the customer is happy, receive final payments

Closeout Administration

- Return all personnel loaned to project
- Complete personnel performance evaluations

Conduct a Lessons Learned Review

- Conduct a survey
- Hold the lessons learned meeting

Build a Project History File

- Document planned & actual schedule duration and include data on past similar completed projects
- Document planned & actual labor costs and include past data
- Document all approved changes to PM plan
- Document all meetings minutes
- Document all problems
- Document subcontractor performance records
- Document customer satisfaction records
- Document project reviews

Create the Final Project report

- Describe the overall success of the project
- Describe organization on the project
- Describe recommended changes for other similar projects
- Describe techniques used to get results
- Describe project strengths & weaknesses
- Describe project team recommendations

Celebrate Success

- Involve everyone on the project
- Gather outside the working environment
- Recognize outstanding performers
- Express appreciation to all project participants

For more information and a quick-to-absorb roadmap on this, please click below:

How to Successfully Closeout a Project

How to Successfully Conduct Stakeholder Interviews

A simple, semi-structured stakeholder interview is a very rich & valuable source of insights. They are a highly effective way to understand areas of misalignment, understand stakeholder expectations & priorities, as well as strengthen relations and install confidence. However, particularly for newbie's and new organizations, these can be a daunting and nerve-wracking experience.

So, how should you optimally conduct stakeholder interviews?

Allow yourself plenty of time

• set aside at least 45 minutes for each interview
• leave at least 30 minutes between each interview to make additional notes and to clear your head before the next interview

Be prepared for your interviews

• have a pen that works!
• have a copy of the company's most recent annual report
• have any business research handy that the company has undertaken
• have a copy of the company's last major strategy / planning document
• have copies of print advertisements currently in circulation where applicable
• where they exist, have a copy of their mission statement
• have a copy of the company's organizational chart
• let interviewees know prior to the interview the discussion topics

Limit an interview to just 3 or 4 topics

• talk about culture, challenges and goals
• don't talk about features or solutions

Keep interviews informal, semi-structures and simple

Ask the most valuable questions - for example:

• What points of pain do we try to alleviate with this project?
• Who are the primary people / roles feeling this pain?
• Why does this problem exist?
• What need will this project fill?
• What would happen if we don't go through with this project?
• How would you define success for this project? ...

Effectively document outcomes

• combine information gleaned from information with responses to your questions
• use direct quotations to highlight important points
• highlight responses that do not support the documented strategy or brand value 

Why are stakeholder interviews important?

To understand areas of misalignment

To understand roles and responsibilities

To understand expectations and priorities

To strengthen relations and achieve support

For more information and a quick-to-absorb roadmap, click the link below:

How to Successfully Conduct Stakeholder Interviews - a Roadmap

How to Design & Deliver Effective BPM Governance

BPM governance is critically important, yet it's an area where more clarity and simplicity would be helpful.

The ultimate goal of a successful BPM program is the proactive, efficient management and continuous improvement of the set of process (and their sub-processes) by which an organization delivers value to its customers and other stakeholders - there it is.

5 key elements to Business Process Management (BPM) governance are:

1. Measurement
2. Ownership
3. Accountability
4. Control
5. Support

This Knowledge Genes (below link) captures the key points on how to effectively design & deliver BPM governance as well as some 'deadly sins' to watch out for, else problems abound:

Design & Deliver Effective BPM Governance

Effectively Manage Scrum Projects ~ Principles & Best Practices

This article is based on a artcicle I found in Agile Journal, which I though was a good round up of Scrum key principles and best practices. The Knowledge Gene on this (bottom link) captures these key points in a quick to absorb model - for busy folk.

Scrum is a popular agile software development methodology. It's iterative, highly collaborative and an effective way of quickly delivering useful software while keeping true to quality. Unlike 'traditional' methods with their protracted processes and lengthy documentation, Scrum focuses on responding to emerging requirements.

The Key Principles are:

1. Collaboration and communication - face to face meetings, co-located teams or for geographically dispersed teams, extensive utilization of communication tools
2. Product backlog - smallest, workable pieces of functionality that translate into tangible business benefits. These items must be deliverable live in short iterations of 1-4 weeks. This backlog is then maintained to deliver against incremental iterations
3. Get to market faster - in other words, working software that's delivered in weeks
4. Stakeholder engagement - agile teams view stakeholders as important & visible members of the  team and engage them right from the start and throughout the project
5. Capacity management - every aspect of capacity is assessed and agreed before delivering any live software
6. Release planning meetings - planning and scheduling of design iterations is done up-front. Designers pick user stories from design backlog and produce low level solution designs. Then, teams will pick up the designed user story
7. Coordinated sign-offs - agile teams ensure sign-off at every stage of the software development lifecycle from relevant stakeholders
8. Risk management - the product owner actively monitors the software delivered and ensures that stakeholders give early visibility to managing risks and issues
9. Effective change management - agile teams are welcoming and responsive to changes that stakeholders require. Working with the stakeholders helps ensure that these changes are aligned to the business goals. Agreed changes should be planned and scheduled in retrospective Sprints
10. Effective control of budget and resources

Best Practices Include:

1. Optimize daily stand-up meetings (Scrums) - try to keep meetings to 15 minutes as a maximum and ensure that the whole team attends too. If a member is unable to attend, ensure that they update another attending team member. Start the meeting with the person that joined the meeting last and ensure that each individual clearly articulates answers to 3 key questions: What did I achieve yesterday? What will I achieve today? What impediments are blocking my progress?
2. Effectively use collaboration tools - to create documentation, share user stories and so on
3. Where practicable, co-locate teams (or for geographically dispersed teams, extensively use audio visual communication tools)
4. Integrate feedback and decision making - be sure to actively involve the stakeholders through the lifecycle. This will dramatically improve decision accuracy
5. Maximize article re-use - this will save you oodles of time
6. Optimize review and sign off meetings - at the end of each iteration, as a minimum, have a quick meeting to discuss what worked and what didn't and sign off deliverables. You can then effectively incorporate lessons learn into future iterations - continuously improving the process as you go.

The Knowledge Gene (below link) captures the key points above in a quick to absorb model - for busy folk:

Effectively Managing Scrum Projects ~ Key Principles & Best Practices

5 Scrum Transition Anti-Patterns

We're big fans of agile methodologies around here because of the clear benefits it brings - reduced risk, satisfied stakeholders, faster to market and so on and so on. But, to keep things in balance, agile isn't all peaches and roses. Like most things, it has its pitfalls - although these anti-patterns are far outweighed by the benefits in most agilistas experience.

So, I wanted to explore some of these anti-patterns that people might experience when transitioning to agile from another methodology and crucially, how to avoid them. In this instance, I explore common anti-patterns that people have experienced when transitioning to Scrum (later I'll check out anti-patterns specific to other specific methodologies).

These anti-patterns are based on experiences from a wide range of projects in Europe and Australia, quoted in an article by Rowan Bunnings, an Agile coach based in Australia.

These anti-patterns include:

1. Premature process optimization
2. Exceeding transition speed limit
3. Misaligned 'sashimi slicing'
4. Accumulation of undone work
5. Individual heroics

Click below to see the Knowledge Gene on these, how to avoid them and why it's important to do so:

5 Scrum Transition Anti-Patterns

Are there any other anti-patterns that you've experienced (I'd be happy to add these)?

5 Common Phrases that will Ruin Your Resume

As a hiring manager, I have reviewed hundreds of resumes, and I can tell you there are some words / phrases that you really don't want to include in your resume - without backing them up.  

The problem is that these common words have been used to death, often with no real meaning or backup. They have lost all value, and will make hiring managers eyes glaze over. The key is to give your points meaning and substance, by backing them up with hard facts and figures.

See related articles:

7 Clever Ways to use LinkedIn to Find a Job

The Best Way to Close an Interview

Laid-off? How to Make a Graceful Exit 

Words / phrases to avoid:

1.  "Responsible for..."

It's obvious you're responsible for something. Use numbers to quantify your accomplishments.

Rather than - "I was responsible for achieving sales targets", try - "I achieved 120% of my sales target"

2.  "Experienced"

Experience is subjective and meaningless without quantification. Give the specifics:

Rather than - "Experience in Website Marketing", try - "Increased visitor traffic rank for a well known retail Website by 56%..."

3.  "Excellent written communication skills"

Your idea of 'excellent' might be very different from someone else's. Back it up.

Rather than - "I have excellent written communications skills", try - "Wrote clear user documentation, which reduced customer service calls by 50%"

4.  "Team Player"

This one is even making your eyes glaze over now, right?

Fine, if you're a team player, quantify it.

Rather than - "I am a team player who works well in any group", try - "Worked with the sales director, on-site with customers, Website designers to..."

5.  "Detail oriented"

Doesn't mean much on its own, does it?

Rather than - "I am a detail oriented purchasing professional", try - "Wrote new purchasing agreements with three major suppliers, which resulted in $110K savings..."

Related articles

7 Clever Ways to use LinkedIn to Find a Job

Laid-off? How to Make a Graceful Exit