Do you know how many projects are underway in your organization? Make sure you include those that are still in gestation. If you make a list, you'll likely be surprised at how many there are.
You'll be even more surprised at how many of the early-stage projects — those in gestation — are "off the books" and therefore out of control. Many of these are simply impractical. They aren't bad ideas, necessarily, but they're out of reach of the organization or its customers.
Every project began when someone — or maybe a few people — thought of an idea, talked about it with others for a while, and convinced the organization to back it. While technical organizations, such as IT or Product Development, can usually generate a vast array of ideas for projects, those ideas have a predominantly technical slant. Some ideas are beyond the organization's capacity to exploit. At the same time, other simpler ideas that could truly transform the organization and its markets are overlooked.
A Project Nursery fosters collaborations of professionals from across the organization — technologists, marketers, customer service experts, account executives, senior managers, infrastructure specialists, and administrators. When all organizational elements help decide which projects to investigate, the menu they develop better suits organizational needs and capabilities.
The Project Nursery works, in part, because it provides ready access to three bodies of knowledge.
Every project beganwhen someone thought of
an idea and convinced
the organization
to back it
- Market trends
- What customer need will the project satisfy? Will customers care? Will customers understand the offering, or will they need educating? Example: if we eliminate paper forms internally, and move to electronic signatures for internal requisitions, how can we ensure that people will stop printing copies for their files?
- Infrastructure trends
- What elements of the delivery, usage, or production context are needed for project success? Will they be present? At what cost? Does the customer have all the skills and facilities needed to make use of the output of the project? If not, what do they require? Example: We can put streaming video on our Web site, but do our customers have fast Internet connections?
- Organizational trends and capabilities
- Is the project in alignment with organizational intentions? If other ideas are competing for organizational resources, can we forge alliances somehow? Are the needed organizational capabilities available? If not, can we acquire them somehow? Example: Before we consider enhancing the Marigold product line with Internet options, are we certain that Customer Support has enough Internet capacity to support the enhancements?
Since all affected constituencies participate in the activities of the Project Nursery, the projects proposed are more likely to take into account the needs of those constituencies. And a project that has received good care in a well-staffed Project Nursery is less likely to later end up in the Project Emergency Room. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Project Management:
Resuming Projects: Team Morale
- Sometimes we cancel a project because of budgetary constraints. We reallocate its resources and scatter
its people, and we tell ourselves that the project is on hold. But resuming is often riskier, more difficult
and more expensive than we hoped. Here are some reasons why.
Managing Risk Revision
- Prudent risk management begins by accepting the possibility that unpleasant events might actually happen.
But when organizations try to achieve goals that are a bit out of reach, they're often tempted to stretch
resources by revising or denying risks. Here's a tactic for managing risk revision.
Publish an Internal Newsletter
- If you're responsible for an organizational effort with many stakeholders, communicating with them is
important to success. Publishing an internal newsletter is a great way to keep them informed.
Avoid Having to Reframe Failure
- Yet again, we missed our goal — we were late, we were over budget, or we lost to the competition.
But how can we get something good out of it?
Missing the Obvious: I
- At times, when the unexpected occurs, we recognize with hindsight that the unexpected could have been
expected. How do we miss the obvious? What's happening when we do?
See also Project Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming May 25: On Reporting Noncompliance
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And on June 1: Mental Accounting and Technical Debt
- In many organizations, technical debt has resisted efforts to control it. We've made important technical advances, but full control might require applying some results of the behavioral economics community, including a concept they call mental accounting. Available here and by RSS on June 1.
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