The Discipline of Project Justification - Part 4
By Tom DeVroy
VP of Sales
Fourth in a multi-part series
You have defined the rationale for your project. At some level you have defined or intuitively understand your requirements. You may have spent analysis time defining what needs to be changed in your business. Now you have to ask yourself: “what happens if things go bump in the night?”
Every project has some level of anticipated returns; likewise, every project has risks. Take a little time to think about the unexpected. What are your project assumptions and risks? These should get played back to your vendors during the selection and evaluation process.
Some possible examples of risk points include: resource availability, business climate change, management expectations, unrealistic timelines, new product announcements, training issues and personnel issues. Obviously these factors are magnified by the scope of the project - the smaller the project, generally the smaller the risk. Likewise, the larger the project, and the greater the complexity, the greater the risk of the project will be.
For these reasons, you should issue an RFP or tender an offer to vendors and make sure you articulate your constraints. It will help you evaluate who can work with you. This might include a proof of concept to reduce the uncertainties, or asking the vendor for more resources during implementation to get around resource shortages. Maybe you want to go slow in anticipation of growing your business while you are implementing.
The same applies with assumptions. An assumption could be simple, such as a place for a consultant to reside while on-site, or complicated, such as a move of location in the middle of the implementation. Perhaps there is no IT infrastructure and the vendor has to provide hosting services.
You can never predict the future and hindsight is 20/20, but try to identify your risk points and assumptions so you can manage around them. When you go for final budget approval, or project funding, it will help to sell your business case if you can call these out in some level of detail and account for their potential costs up front.
The goal here is to not have surprises and gotcha’s post sale. Next time we’ll talk about project timeline, milestones, and resource or skill sets in an implementation project.
View Part 1 Here
View Part 2 Here
View Part 3 Here
View Part 5 Here
VP of Sales
Fourth in a multi-part series
You have defined the rationale for your project. At some level you have defined or intuitively understand your requirements. You may have spent analysis time defining what needs to be changed in your business. Now you have to ask yourself: “what happens if things go bump in the night?”
Every project has some level of anticipated returns; likewise, every project has risks. Take a little time to think about the unexpected. What are your project assumptions and risks? These should get played back to your vendors during the selection and evaluation process.
Some possible examples of risk points include: resource availability, business climate change, management expectations, unrealistic timelines, new product announcements, training issues and personnel issues. Obviously these factors are magnified by the scope of the project - the smaller the project, generally the smaller the risk. Likewise, the larger the project, and the greater the complexity, the greater the risk of the project will be.
For these reasons, you should issue an RFP or tender an offer to vendors and make sure you articulate your constraints. It will help you evaluate who can work with you. This might include a proof of concept to reduce the uncertainties, or asking the vendor for more resources during implementation to get around resource shortages. Maybe you want to go slow in anticipation of growing your business while you are implementing.
The same applies with assumptions. An assumption could be simple, such as a place for a consultant to reside while on-site, or complicated, such as a move of location in the middle of the implementation. Perhaps there is no IT infrastructure and the vendor has to provide hosting services.
You can never predict the future and hindsight is 20/20, but try to identify your risk points and assumptions so you can manage around them. When you go for final budget approval, or project funding, it will help to sell your business case if you can call these out in some level of detail and account for their potential costs up front.
The goal here is to not have surprises and gotcha’s post sale. Next time we’ll talk about project timeline, milestones, and resource or skill sets in an implementation project.
View Part 1 Here
View Part 2 Here
View Part 3 Here
View Part 5 Here
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