Kickoff meetings in waterfall and agile methodologies

You have been assigned a new project after contract signed off.  What steps would you take to develop the initial project plan and prepare for the kick-off meeting?

I am assuming that high level requirements, business case, assumptions and constrains are already finalized during contract negotiation.

Project planning and kickoff meeting agenda is bit different for waterfall and agile frameworks, since framework is not provided in question, I will try answer for both.

Waterfall methodology

As Project Manager I will study contract document with other supporting documents like terms and conditions, high level requirements, assumptions and constrains.

This will give me clear idea about customer’s high level requirements and constrains, especially budget or time constrains (if any)

I will then develop complete project management plan with consultation of project team and will also develop all subsidiary project plans like Scope, schedule, cost, quality, HR, risk, communication, stakeholder plans along with project performance baselines (Scope baseline, Schedule baseline and Cost baselines) and will also setup configuration management plan and change control board.

I will submit complete project management plan to key stakeholders and receives the approval.

On receiving approval of PM plans and go ahead signal will schedule kickoff meeting with all stakeholders, during this meeting will discuss the project management plan, configuration management plan, change management plans to make sure all are on same page including customer.

In waterfall methodology kickoff meeting is a last step of planning phase, before starting project activities.

Agile Methodology

For Agile framework this answer would be bit different, so I will discuss my activities for initial project plan and kickoff meetings in bit of detail.

I will study contract documentations with all supporting documents to understand and take note of high level requirements of project, terms and conditions, project constrains and assumptions.

In Agile, kickoff meeting is a start of planning phase, since agile focus more on doing the work instead of documentations (working software over comprehensive documentations), kickoff meeting is considered start of planning and execution phase simultaneously.

So I will setup initial project plan and ground rules for the team, team will also decompose entire project into Epic, User Story or tasks and setup product backlog, since agile is meant “Value Driven Delivery”, customer will be involved in iteration planning and execution, since this topic is not main focus of question, I will go back to kickoff meeting,

Important agenda of kickoff meeting is mentioned below

1.    Project vision: we will try understanding from customer or their representative (SME) about project objectives and business case

2.    Success Criteria: How the project success will be measured and what would be the acceptance criteria.

3.    Scope: What will be done during project activities and what work is not included in project.

4.    Stakeholders: Stakeholder identification is ongoing process however in kick off meeting we will try to find as many stakeholders as possible.

5.    Risks: We will try to find any event that may be positively or negatively affect the project or project outcome, if we find any thread or opportunity, response planning will be done accordingly.

6.    Responsibility: When project kick off meeting finishes, everyone should know that they are doing and what are their tasks dependencies.

Kickoff meeting will provide enough information for planning which would be in multiple layers, like strategic planning, release planning, and iteration planning with appropriate details by using rolling wave technique to equalize the predictability of outcomes with ability to exploit to opportunities.

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Why identification of stakeholders is important in project management?

Stakeholder term referred to any individual, group of persons or company who are actively involved in project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected with result of the project or activity performed by a project.

Stakeholders mainly depend upon the nature of the project, main job of the project manager is not only identifying the potential stakeholders of the project but should also ménage the influence of stakeholders to ensure positive outcome.

Stakeholder may include project team, customer, sponsor, PMO, operations, customer care, Support team, sellers, legal department, functional managers, program and portfolio managers, interested entities internal or external to the project.

 

 Stakeholders may have varying levels of responsibility and authority over a project these responsibilities or authorities may have changed during life cycle of project and ends up in closing project.

Different stakeholders may have different level of influence or involvement during project life cycle ranges from occasional to frequent, stakeholders may have different expectation from project which may cause sometime conflict between stakeholders, these conflicts should resolved in fever of client or customers.

Stakeholder cab be classify in three different categories

Primary stakeholders

Primary stakeholders are individuals or groups of peoples who will directly affected, positively or negatively by the outcome of the project; for example project team, accounts or employees of the company are considered primary stakeholders for the project of redevelopment of payroll system, it is necessary to identify primary stakeholders during initiating and planning process and managed their requirements and expectations in stakeholder management plan.

 

Secondary stakeholders

Secondary stakeholders are individuals or groups of peoples who will indirectly affect, either positively or negatively with the outcome of the project.
For example, local community might be considered as Secondary stakeholders for building a railway track or bridge in their area.

Key stakeholders

Key stakeholders are those who might be positively or negatively affected by project or an effort of project or outcome of a project, key stakeholder may belongs to primary or secondary stakeholders and have strong influence over project, a Project sponsor, a CEO or director of HR would be key stakeholder of payroll project, another example of key stakeholders are operational staff that carryout the work of effort at product of the project, If they don’t believe in what they are doing or don’t do it properly might leads to destroy the outcome of the project. Account staffs that are going to enter records or use payroll system are also an example of key stakeholders.

Legislators, local bodies’ members, state federal agencies, Government officials and policy makers are also considered as key stakeholders in a project or outcome of a project where public interest may have directly or indirectly affected with project.

Now a day’s Media also become key stakeholder for any project initiated for public interest or where public interested might be effected positively or negatively affected with the outcome of a project.

Find stakeholder as early as possible

Ideally, it’s good to involve stakeholders during project selection process,   although this is not always possible and sometimes it becomes impossible to involved all project stakeholders during project selection process as if we ask same question to 10 different peoples may have 10 different answers as per their interest and requirements, for such cases PMBOK recommends to involve selected stakeholders based upon their expertise and experience.

Identification of stakeholder is a continuous process throughout the project life cycle; however project team is responsible to identify all possible key stakeholders at early stages of project and involved in project planning phase, project may encounter a big failure if project team will not buy-in key stakeholders at early stages. Let me explain with an example,

Few years back a construction of high rise tower was halted when it reached to 20th floor. Airport security forces visited site office and instructed to stop the project as the building would occupy the air track for air planes. 

It was really a big blunder of project team as they didn’t spend proper time to identify primary stakeholders for their project. This shows that finding key stakeholders and gain buy-in is inescapable for successful accomplishment of any project.

The most important reason to identify stakeholders in early stages of project is to allow them to become an effective part of effort, effective participation of stakeholders may help bring more ideas on table and will include different prospective from different stakeholders.

Stakeholders effective participating will also help project team to gain buy-in and support of stakeholders by making them an important part of planning and execution process, this also help project team to bring all stakeholders on a table where concerns can be addressed and resolved.

This practice will also help increase trust of project team and strengthen the position of project team which will definitely increase the chances of project success.

 

Determine stakeholder’s requirements and expectation

This is important to obtain as many requirements as possible before starting execution phase, this is not a simple or easy job, however it is essentials to determines as many requirements as possible, it is better for the situation where project manager visits PMO office during execution phase and ask the manager that “I didn’t knew that Mr. Simon was a stakeholder of this project, I need to extend project schedule or need extra funds to accommodate his requirements or may need to cut the requirements of Mr. Philip who submitted his requirement during planning process”.

Most of the time requirements are so ambiguous that even project stakeholders doesn’t exactly knows their requirement s about the project, however various requirement gathering techniques might be helpful in such situation like Delphi, questionnaires or prototyping.

Stakeholder’s expectations are more ambiguous then their requirements, these expectations may include “me or my department work will not effect after completion of project.” Or stakeholder may expect project results will dramatically impact entire process of company.

Stakeholder’s interest and influence on a project

This is again an important concept to understand, stakeholders may have different interest and influence on a project, influence may be defines as “their positively or negatively impacts on a project”, some stakeholders may have greater interest in project but may have less influence and vice versa, PMBOK classify this situation in influence and interest grid and recommend project managers to follow as mentioned in below image.

There could be so many interests of stakeholders and varied from each other, Economical, social, public health and safety, environment, physical health are some of example of stakeholders interests.

Stakeholders who have low interest and influence should monitor with minimum efforts while stakeholders with maximum interest and influence should be managed closely with maximum efforts.

Keep those stakeholders satisfied who have low interest and high influence in a project and stakeholders with low influence and higher interest should be informed about the project status on regular basis.

How to identify and address stakeholders’ interests

This is a critical concept to understand and required project team to think beyond, it might be easy to identify beneficiaries or key stakeholder of the project or an activity of the project however, it might be harder to see and address the concerns of secondary stakeholders.
There might be numbers of ways to identify stakeholders and can be use more than one to have best results

Brainstorm

Meet with the peoples in organization and other already involved in project, informed about the project and as per their output start categorizes them in primary and key stakeholders and collect their ideas and start writing with the reference of categorize.

 

Consult with PMO and obtain lesson learned

Consult with project management office and try obtaining historical records of similar projects, this will cut down entire effort to half.

 

Get ideas from identified stakeholders about potential stakeholders

Project team can ask from identified stakeholders about potential stakeholder from

 

Advertise, (if possible)

Combination of media can also use to determine list of potential stakeholders, participation in community meetings, organizational newsletters, and social media, announcement of project sponsor in a meeting, targeted emails and attending religious gathering might be a helpful activity to find peoples who consider themselves as project stakeholders.

Above activities might produce big list of stakeholders, now it’s time to shorten this list by asking below mentioned question for each identified stakeholder?

1. Does this stakeholder have a fundamental impact on a project?
2. Can we clearly identify stakeholder’s requirement and interest?
3. What will impact at project if this stakeholder will replace?
4. Will the project survive without this stakeholder?
5. Is this stakeholder already identified through another relationship?

As discuss above identification of stakeholder is continue process; however with above techniques it will be easy for project team to list down stakeholders in stakeholder register and categorized as per their influence and interest.

Identification of stakeholder is done, next step to ménage stakeholders, this topic will discuss in next article.

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Why Project charter is necessary for effective project management?

It is necessary to understand what project charter is to find the answer of above question.

Let’s say your manager comes to your office and says, “Hay, not sure what happened but our main plant producing paint for manufacturing department is not functioning, can you check and get this fixed on priority?”

Is this a project charter? No absolutely not, this is not a project charter infect this statement is not even a project.

Some people says project charter provides a authority to project manager to initiate project activities and produce expected results, this is correct however project charter is far more then authorizing project manager to initiate project activities.

Project charter is not a project management plan or part of the project, this is high level document provide necessary information to initiate project activities including assigning project manager.

Although project sponsor is primarily responsible to develop project charter and provide high level constrains, assign and authorize project manager to initiate project activities, however project manager can also develop project charter and gets sign off before initiating project activities.

Project charter may provide high level project objectives, risks, constrains, requirements, assumptions and list of primary stakeholders, since detail planning may require time and cost which cannot be expend without authorizing project.

Following are major elements of project charter,

Project title and description (what is project)

What is the project name and description of project?

Example
In last few months there is significant decrement in enquiries through our website as compare to market trend, the purpose of this project is to investigate the reasons of problem and purpose solution. Customer care department have detail reports that can be used during investigation process

Assigned Project manager and authority

Who is going to lead the project with level of authority to determine staff necessary for project, approve changes and what extend of budget etc.

Example
Mr. Thomas is assigned as project manager and authorizes to select team members from different departments by consulting functional managers. PM can approve up to $10K of budget, cost more than $10K should forward to CCB for approval.

Business case

What is the purpose and justification of the project? Why it is necessary to bring this project in existence? What criteria is needed to meet?

Example
This project is initiated to identify the reasons of low percentage of enquiries produced by website, previously around 30% of the company business was produced by the website, this is now decreased to 20%, business is directly effecting and company’s revenue is decreased. We expect that after investigation and finding the solution company’s revenue should increased to 35%. We hope that project will produce ideas to enhance company’s revenue.

Pre assignment of resources 

Who and what resources are pre allocated to the project

Example
Mr. Yaseen and Mr. Jawaid are pre assigned to this project because of their expertise in computer programming rest of the team will be determine by project manager.

Primary stakeholders

Individuals or department that will be directly affected by the project

Example
Mr. Kamran from Customer care, Mr. Jayson from Quality Assurance and Miss. Klarissa from marketing are major stakeholders, rest of the stakeholder should identify during planning phase by the project manager. It is expected that purposed system should not affect the existing process of marketing, customer care departments and support departments.

Deliverable

What deliverable are expected from project?

Example
A report should be submitted that will provide details of the reasons and solution for the fixing. Solution must recommend change details with approximate development time and cost. Work break down structure and other necessary details, etc

Project assumptions and constrains

What are assumptions for this project, what is functional and working fine in existing system, what features can be excluded for development. What are major constrains of the system, what factor could limit the ability of functioning and what factor could bring system of stake, what are the project boundaries that cannot cross by the project.

Project Objectives

What are objective sets for the project and how does it will fit into organization’s strategic goals. Project objective needs to be measurable and should clearly define here.

Project approval requirements

Sets the measures of project success, these measures must be accomplish by the project in order to terminate successfully, who will sign off the project and approve if project objectives met successfully.



Now compare project charter with the functional manager's request mentioned at the beginning of this article, do you understand the difference between statement and project charter? Infect functional manager’s request mentioned above required two project charters, one is to identify what is wrong and other is how to fix it, PM can not recommend the fixing till he/she identify what went wrong.

Here many of my readers wondering that writing so much information for a single project charter might be waste of time, yes agree coz it might take few days to develop detailed project charter but it will surely provide proper authority and justification of the project objectives otherwise project manager might misunderstood the requirements which will leads to project failure.

A friend of mine is a project manager for a reputed organization, he was given attractive mock ups by senior management and advised to redevelop corporate website as per approved mock ups and deliver revise version of website in three months.
He develop effective project plan and delivered the project as per schedule and cost. It was successful delivery of the project and he was happy that he planned another successful project.

Few months later one of functional manager belongs to sales function visited him and asked why new version is not producing business that was expected? Even new version is producing less business as compare to previous version. He replied that I was asked to developed website as per mock ups and deliver on required time, project was developed exactly as per mock ups beside he was not made aware that the purpose of the project is to increase business leads.

Above situation clearly mentioned that project objective was not communicated to project manager and it was also a mistake from project manager that he initiated project activities without understanding strategic objective of the project.

So the above project was successful project or a fail project?

It was a fail project no matter if this project was delivered on time or on agreed quality and cost, project was considered fail because it did not meet the objectives sets for the project, understanding project objectives and business case is as curtail as project delivery, project charter provides necessary details of project objective and business case. Project manager’s job is not to deliver what is asked to deliver but to understand and achieve the project objectives sets for the project and this is the reason project charter is necessary document in order to achieve strategic objectives sets for the project.

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How to establish a web team with authority?

Establishing web team with authority is a real challenge for companies. Besides having a capable web team with strong knowledge about web, they may lack the experience of senior management strategic role. It is really not surprising because historically web team has been considered as service division and kind of seniority has not been practiced and developed within the web team.
Web team should have authority to take decision like
• Set a strategic vision for the web
• Liaise with senior management (Business, Finance, Marketing)
• Managing the web team
• Establish the development roadmap
• Write policies and procedures for the digital assets

Too often the web team in an organization doesn't have all of the skills they need to control the website for which they are responsible. Typically they have to work in functional or matrix organization framework and work for several departments and help them to achieve their targets like marketing for copywriters or third parties for design jobs. As same web team is working for different departments creates all kind of challenges and inefficiencies in the process. This is not a sensible way to run a website. For ultimate success web team should have all required skills to efficiently support website. Moreover, constant communication and collaborative working is crucial for the success of any digital strategy.

Change control board

Change control board (CCB) may provide powerful mechanism and help web team to achieve their targets and objectives set for the website. CCB contain functional managers from business and marketing and CEO. A monthly meeting is held to review website performance, change requests and reported issues. This activity will dramatically enhance the web performance and business opportunities.
CCB will help cumulating the feedback from business and marketing and use it to re-align the website if it is deviated from strategic objectives decided for website.
In fact CCB should be the final authority to approve/disapprove change requests in a website to keep web align with business objectives.

What I recommend to improve web team efficiency and authority

1. Digital department should establish under separate functional manager who can initially offers 100% of his/her time for this department and guide web team about the expectations and strategic business objectives of senior management.
2. The department should establish communication channels with marketing and business and consider their feedback while establishing digital policies and procedures.
3. Digital department should establish the objective for website and other channels like social media and sets the success criteria and goals of social campaigns.
4. Digital department should develop the project charter and authorize project manager using resources to develop project deliverable as per project management plan and takes the help of business experts where it is necessary to accomplish project objective.
5. Digital department should establish policies and ground rules for website, SEO and social media, later the department could be upgrade to PMO (project management office)
6. PMO provides governess and strategic direction with purpose, expectations, goals, and actions necessary to guide operation and project management to align with business objectives.
7. Once digital department established and functional, all digital assets including website code, domain names , server access credentials and other IT assets transferred  to central repository and in direct control of digital department.

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Why a strong web team matters?

Web is a critical tool for many departments like marketing, HR, customer care, sales and support, in many organizations the role of web team is as crucial as marketing, sales and other departments, why then does it not have the same status? Why is not the web team ultimately in charge of the web?

The Finance function has a responsibility and authority over financial matters including policy and procedures, the sales function has a responsibility and authority over sales matters, same for marketing – so the digital team should have responsibility and authority over digital matters. 

(Chris Scott, co-founder of Headscape)

Practical considerations for a strong web team

It is not just a matter of principle, but there are some practical considerations that should be considered. Without strong leadership many websites have been the victim of constantly shifting priorities. With no ability to say no, web teams are forced to build functionality on the whims of colleagues who have little awareness of the web and best practice.

Finally, the blunt truth is that most organizations lack professionals at a senior management level who really understands the web. They need a senior person and an empowered web team/department to provide them guidance and show them the potential of the web on the business as a whole.
This may all looks good in principle, but no doubt there are many concerns about how to make it happen.

After discussing the primary role of web team and importance of strong web team to achieve business goals, the next question will discuss about how to establish a web team with authority along with recommendations to enhance authority and efficiency of web team.

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Web team - a service department or business critical tool

Web team is a subsidiary or service department to implement other ideas or it is a marketing tool or business critical tool?

 

In early days when websites were managed and control by IT department, website served as a subsidiary of IT department like computers, network or databases. Web was just a tool to use as a business card for various departments. To some extent it also helped to maintain company presence at internet world. 

Gradual progress in web technology enhanced web worth to manifolds and web became useful marketing tool which was capable to enhance business opportunities, web was considered as a tool for establishing organization reputation. That’s why most of the organizations shifted management of web team from IT department to marketing department. Web team was working as subsidiary of marketing department and followed ground rules established by functional managers, who probably didn’t have required knowledge and experience of web technology.

Web team and Website as business critical tool

Today, we are living in an era where websites are equally important to produce business opportunities like sales team. This enabled web to work as an integral tool not only to enhance business opportunities but also help sales function to produce business opportunities. In short website is not only a marketing tool rather it becomes a business critical tool. However, to take maximum benefits, web must be tightly integrated with business objectives not marketing objectives.

Marketing primarily focuses to build company reputation and works to enhance business opportunities after investing money whereas business focuses to produce more and more business opportunities and generate revenues. For a business critical website web subsidiary role as marketing tool is no longer effective. In order to fulfill its role as business critical tool to produce more business opportunities, web team should be considered as an independent body. Being a strategic tool, web takes input from business and marketing to develop effective digital policies to produce and enhance business opportunities.

Continue....

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