Month: February 2010

Linky

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools

Essential skills for stakeholder management

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools audio

Stakeholder management requires getting commitment from stakeholders as the cornerstone of success in projects.  The needs and concerns of stakeholders define the project plan. As a follow-up from the previous stakeholder management best practices article, I want to share with you a best practice communication tool as an essential skill for stakeholder management.

How to communicate Smart, measureable, attainable, realistic, time-bound

The tool that I have used successfully in projects before, is called “Conditions of Satisfaction” or COS. As soon as the project manager identifies who the key stakeholders are, he needs to have a discussion with the customer(s) to determine what their conditions for satisfaction are. It is necessary to make the COS statements specific, measureable, attainable, realistic/relevant, time bound (SMART).

These conditions are then communicated back to the project team, partners and vendors.  Once the conditions are determined, they must be agreed and summarised in writing for the customer(s).

Once documented, add any agreed-upon actions to meet them, as well as the planned completion dates. Post the COS to the project repository.

Examples of conditions of satisfaction (COS) are:

  • Sponsor expects external consultant to be on-site, during core hours
    • Action: consultant will be on-site between 9am and 4pm and log this on his time-sheet for the duration of the project
  • Sponsor expects skills transfer between specialist and team members who will do roll-out and support
    • Action: put skills transfer actions (workshop & presentations) as activities on project plan to track them before end of planning phase
  • Minimize extra cost
    • Action: Try to reduce travel costs, by developing estimates and travel schedule, by having more tele- and video-conferences during execution phase of the project

Communicate the Conditions (COS) to the entire project team and ensure that everyone on the team knows the COS and has plans for how they will help achieve / exceed the COS in the role they play on the project.

Conditions of Satisfaction

At all project meetings, both internal and with the customer, you need to address progress against the COS and identify plans to address any problems. During project closure, the COS will again be discussed to evaluate whether the customer’s conditions were met by the project.  This stakeholder management communications tool leads to a satisfied customer, a happy customer and ultimately a more successful project.

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder management and engagement is an essential skill that project managers need to develop. A successful project needs to satisfy the triple constraint of time, cost and quality/performance, but it must also meet requirements of functionality, reliability, maintainability, efficiency, integration and operability.

How to determine your success

To determine if the project was successful, you need to assess the following:

  • Did the project provide satisfactory benefit to the users?
  • Measure whether value has been added.
  • Did the project completely meet predefined objectives?

For success the project experience should have been positive and the project will have added value. The project would have satisfied the needs and concerns of the stakeholders, as well as the project team members and would have allowed the team to acquire new skills.

If you know of other stakeholder management skills or tools that you have used successfully in your projects, please share those with us in the comments section.

Please click HERE to listen to a recording of this article. If you wish to download a free copy of this audio file, please right click on the link and select “save link as” to save to your desired location.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a former Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 14 years IT industry experience and 11 years Project Management experience.

She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects.  She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Make Projects Work For You

Linky

Stakeholder Management Best Practices

Are you actively managing project stakeholders?

Stakeholder Management Best Practices audio

Stakeholder Management Best Practices

Stakeholder management is as key to a successful project outcome as communications management. Today I want to focus on best practices relating to managing stakeholders on projects.

For complete clarity about stakeholder management, let’s look at it from the angle of:

  • What a stakeholder is
  • Who stakeholders are
  • Why you must do stakeholder management
  • When to communicate

Stakeholder definition

What is a stakeholder? Stakeholders are people who are actively involved in projects, who exert influence on projects and whose interests may be positively/negatively affected by projects. Source: PMBOK

Who are stakeholders?

The key stakeholders on projects are the project manager, project team members, the project sponsor, the customer and the performing organization. Other stakeholders could include:

  • Internal and external owners and funders
  • Sellers and contractors
  • Team members & their families
  • Government agencies and media outlets
  • Society at large

Why do stakeholder management?

On any project a project manager needs to identify project stakeholders in order to determine their requirements and to manage and influence the requirements. Identify stakeholders during initiation phase of Project life cycle. Project Life Cycle

Throughout the project you need to actively manage the stakeholder’s requirements and expectations. Influencing the organisation involves the ability to ‘get things done’. This requires from a project manager an understanding of both formal and informal structure of the organisation involved, for example the customers, partners, contractors, office politics etc.

One golden rule to remember is when there is a difference between stakeholders, it should be resolved in favour of the customer. Finding appropriate resolutions to such differences can be a major challenge of project management.

The reason why you need to do stakeholder management is to drive stakeholder satisfaction. This requires reliable, dependable, repeatable effort from your side. You need to know the needs and expectations of stakeholders and invest in those needs. A frequent investment (weekly, ever daily) in the needs of the stakeholders helps projects to be successful.

When to communicate with stakeholders?

You need to communicate with your project stakeholders a number of times as documented in your communications plan:

  • Beginning of a project
  • Weekly at progress meetings
  • Regular Reviews and reporting
  • At the end of a project

In summary a project manager needs to manage and influence stakeholder requirements to ensure a successful project.

In the next blog post about stakeholder management, I am going to share some best practices tools that you can use to really ensure customer satisfaction.

To ensure that you don’t miss follow-up project management articles, please subscribe to the Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed.

If you liked this article, please subscribe to my blog (to the right) and receive more project management tips and articles.

Please click HERE to listen to a recording of this article. If you wish to download a free copy of this audio file, please right click on the link and select “save link as” to save to your desired location.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a former Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 14 years IT industry experience and 11 years Project Management experience.

She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

Make Projects Work for You

Linky

Benefit Your Business with Twitter Marketing

Are you using Twitter as an online marketing tool yet? Twitter as a business marketing tool

Are you a business owner who does online marketing?  Whether you sell a product, or offer professional services, internet marketing is a must in this digital age.  To find clients and generate a sale, you must first drive traffic to your website or blog.  One effective way to do so, and FREE, is to use the social networking tool, called Twitter.

Understand what Twitter is

Before highlighting the benefits of marketing your business with Twitter, understand what Twitter is.  It’s a social networking website that also acts as a micro-blog.  After signing up for a Twitter account, you develop a list of contacts.  These are individuals you want to follow or receive updates from.  Many will return the favor, becoming followers of your updates.  There are no limits on how many messages you can send; however, there is a 140 character limit.  Updates, otherwise known as Tweets, are sent through instant messaging, mobile web applications, RSS feeds, Twitter website and the many Twitter tools available today.

Twitter in a nut shell

When you use Twitter as a marketing tool for your business, you want to go to Search.Twitter.com and look for tweets that are applicable to your website, blog, product or service.  Occasionally send updates to your friends. Highlight your new blog post, by giving a short summary and provide a link.  Summarize a product/service you are selling, or provide a discount code.  You can also reply to members that you follow. This is Twitter in a nut shell.

6 Benefits of Marketing your Business with Twitter:

1.   Generate interest in your business

In addition to generating traffic to your website or blog, you can also generate interest.  First, create catchy Tweets.  For example, do you sell a new eco-friendly product?  If so, don’t just instruct people to buy your product, but ask for their feedback.  Ask how it can help the environment.  Then, ask your followers to forward information on your product to their contacts.  When you have a catchy message and product or service, it is easy to generate interest on Twitter.

2.   Make a sale

Regardless of whether you sell a product or a service, a sale will generate income.  By increasing visitors to your website, you increase your chances of making a sale.  Go a step farther by making contacts that are within your targeted market.  For example, do you sell children’s clothes?  If so, your target market is parents.  Perform a search on Search.Twitter.com to find posts that focus on parenting.  You can offer a response that leads to your website, increasing your chances of making a sale.

3.   Obtain feedback

A great way to subtly increase traffic to your website or blog is to ask for feedback.  By providing a link, you will not only get website traffic, but you will also get what you asked for, feedback.  For example, do you sell great products, but are your prices too high?  Twitter members will let you know.

4.   You can update customers

When connecting with customers, invite them to opt-in for your newsletters.  Or, give your customers the opt-in for Twitter updates.  You can share promotional codes, new product releases, and so forth. Twitter as a marketing tool

5.   Use Twitter to hire help

Whether you want to hire a full-time employee or outsource a project or two, you can use Twitter to find qualified individuals to do the work.

6.   Build relationships with future customers or business partners

Most importantly, use Twitter as a means of connecting with prospects, customers and possible business partners. Treat Twitter connections like you would network with other people at a social or professional networking event. Allow people to get to know you and offer help before offering your products and services.

For more practical help on using Twitter as a social networking tool to grow your business, try out our social media starter project kit!

Linky

WEB 2.0 Other Popular Technologies You Must Know About

Are you using these popular technologies?

Today you will become acquainted with other popular technologies that you must know about for you business.

What is Tagging?

A commonly used term with Web 2.0 is tagging. Tagging is a way users can classify or organize and categorize data, and is common on many sites including social bookmarking.  How it works is users attach tags to data items like web pages, their blog entries or even photographs they want classified and categorized.  When you tag a blog page, you may tag it with terms like, “internet marketing” or “small business marketing”.

Web 2.0 is a client-sided application, meaning end-users, people sitting at their computer, can categorize, tag and store data on the Web and share it with others. For example, let’s say you bookmark 3 of your favorite sites. Usually, when you visit another computer, your bookmarks will not show up when you log in. When you use Web 2.0 technologies however, you bookmark your favorite sites to public forums, so you can access them from anywhere. At the same time, anyone else can access your favorites from any computer anywhere in the world.  This is a powerful and intelligent way of sharing data. Really Simple Syndication

What is RSS?

This is another WEB 2.0 technology that rapidly gained popularity. RSS technology, or “Really Simple Syndication” is a tool anyone can use to tell the world at large about new blog entries or web entries. What you do, is set up your site content using RSS tools or content aggregators. What happens is any time you post new information to your page, that information is fed to people that are linked to your feed. For instance, you can subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed and choose to read it through Google Reader so that you can follow all your favorite blogs in one place.

Other Applications

Many applications allow readers to interact with the Web pages they browse. These applications are all part of Web 2.0 technology, and include SOAP, XML, and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript) which allows websites to communicate with the browser behind the scenes and without human interaction. These technologies allow you to interact with a web page that is live in much the same way you would interact with a page from your own computer, a page you created.

In conclusion, even though WEB 2.0 is not new anymore, people are finding new and innovative ways to use it.  Strategically, you can use Web 2.0 to market your products and services and promote your business or site to millions of people around the world. Everywhere, people are taking an active interest in becoming members of a global community. You need to do this in a politically correct and decent way.

Thus, Web 2.0 has become a lot more popular than it had been in the past. Sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube are all growing at a rapid pace and are being used by collaborative types interested in linking and information sharing on the Web.

And if you’re convinced by now that you should become part of this exciting WEB 2.0 world full of opportunities, please have a look at Virtual Project Consulting’s Social Media Starter Kit. It will help you become active on the top 4 social media tools in a way that will grow your business exponentially.

Please share with us some of your favorite WEB 2.0 technologies that you use that makes a difference in your business?!? LEAVE A COMMENT

Linky

WEB 2.0 – How to utilize Blogs for Business

WEB 2.0 and Blogs

Most Web 2.0 platforms will ask you to contribute to the content contained on the site. By having a business blog, you can encourage visitors to add their insights to a page, through ongoing commentary to blog posts. It is possible to interact with these visitors by replying to each comment made on your site. By allowing visitors to post feedback or comments to your blog entries, the blog can serve as a mini community or forum. This is also a way to find out how visitors (prospects) think and what they want.

Popular blogs receive thousands of visitors every month. There are search engines whose sole purpose involves tracking blogs and related sites, including Technorati.com for example.

Most bloggers now include photos and other graphic elements in their web pages, along with text. You can even use MP3 or videos to enhance the quality of content provided in your blog. Online entrepreneurs and marketers are using blogs in many ways, to announce their passions, beliefs, purpose or to pitch their products and services while providing visitors with valuable content and information.

One of the reasons blogs are popular for marketing is they allow users to provide content that is updated frequently. You can post daily, weekly or monthly. The more frequently you post information to your blog, the more likely you are to maintain your page ranking and attract visitors to your blog.  The most successful business blogs have 300 times more content than the average blog.

Blog Strategies

How to utilise blogs for businessFrom Denise Wakeman, ‘The Blog Squad’, you can learn many blog strategies. According to Denise, the key to a successful business blog is frequency (at least 2-3 times per week) and quality. Let me share her 4 E’s strategy with you:

  1. Educate: Write “How to” posts, explain concepts, Questions and Answers etc
  2. Entertain: Tell stories, use video etc
  3. Engage: Do polls, ask for comments and feedback etc
  4. Enrich: Make yourself/your business stand out, differentiate yourself.

In conclusion the WEB 2.0 sites are user-friendly sites that promote socialization, collaboration and community building. These sites are also frequently used as a platform for small businesses and entrepreneurs to introduce their products and services to the public without blatantly advertising them. It gives individuals, like entrepreneurs, the opportunity to communicate with a global community.

Please feel free to comment and let us know how you use blogging for your business!  Also, if you need help with creating a WEB 2.0 social networking strategy for your business, have a look at the social media strategy template that Virtual Project Consulting is giving away for free!

Linky

WEB 2.0 – Three Things You Must Know

What is Web 2.0 and why you need it? WEB 2.0 for Newbies

Have you noticed how the terms collaboration and communication crops up everywhere? They are the buzz words that are part of Web 2.0.  The purpose of this article is for you to become crystal clear on what Web 2.0 is, the key features of Web 2.0 and what the implication of Web 2.0 is for your business.

1. Definition of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a broad term describing many different kinds of websites, websites that provide a platform where end-users have control over the content of sites. Web 2.0 includes social networking sites, wikis, Blogs, RSS Feeds and other sites that emphasize collaboration and sharing among users. Some well-known examples of free Web 2.0 tools are:

  • Facebook and MySpace (social networking)
  • Twitter (micro blogging)
  • Squidoo (community website to create pages, called lenses, for subjects of interest)
  • LinkedIn (professional networking)
  • Craiglist (listing site for classified ads and forums)
  • Skype  (PC to PC calls)
  • del.icio.us (social bookmarking)
  • Technorati (blogging)
  • Flickr  (photo sharing)

2. Web 2.0 Key Features

Most sites, regardless of their platform, share key features if they are WEB 2.0 sites. Here are some of the key features and benefits associated with this new wave in technology:

  1. Web 2.0 encourages greater collaboration among webmasters and visitors, so that interactive communities are created on the Web.
  2. Web 2.0 approaches the Web as a platform for building conversation and communities.
  3. The “new” Web focuses more on social networking and sharing, through various means including through blogs, wikis and more.
  4. The philosophy behind Web 2.0 is one that promotes an “architecture of participation” where all visitors and users have the opportunity to contribute to a site’s development and progress.

The Web no longer serves as an entity in itself, but rather as a platform individuals can use to connect with others. WEB 2.0 is about people connecting with other people.

3. Business Implication of Web 2.0

Companies can now also share information and collaborate with one another in new and interesting ways. This will require business managers to start thinking more horizontally, moving away from a hierarchical model of communicating to one where knowledge is shared freely among employees, suppliers, vendors and even competitors.

Some companies are even encouraging their customers to take advantage of social networks to help them advertise. A company can also help businesses make working more practical and simpler. Rather than have individuals use stand-alone systems only, company’s can now encourage the joint use of software and computers among multiple users. Data can easily be shared from one person to next, meetings can be held online, and problem solving can take place from a much broader perspective.

Business entrepreneurs need to realize that this technology has existed for some time, but offers an interactive approach to marketing and everyday business operations. If companies haven’t done so already, they should examine how they can integrate Web 2.0 into daily operations while still hedging risks. If you decide to use social networking for marketing your business online, you should create a social networking strategy that integrates with your existing marketing efforts.

And to assist you with the creation of your own social networking strategy, I have developed a social media strategy template. It is easy to use and filled with recommended tactics for different social media platforms. It will also let you put measurement and maintenance in place in order to realize value over the longer term.

For more social media tips and articles, please subscribe to my blog, to the right…

Linky

Acquired Needs Theory of Motivation – Leaders that are good Change Agents

What Is Acquired Needs Theory of Motivation? Acquired needs theory of motivation - Leaders that are good change agents

By Stephen Warrilow

Today Stephen provides us with an interesting perspective on how aquired needs theory of motivation shows which leaders make good change agents in a change management initiative.

Acquired Needs Theory describes three types of motivational needs: Achievement, Authority and Affiliation.

These were first identified and described and by David McClelland in “The Achieving Society” [1961]. David McClelland was a pioneer in the field of workplace motivational thinking, and was a proponent of competency-based assessments in favour of IQ and personality based tests.

In summary, the acquired needs theory states that needs are formulated over time by our experiences. We will tend to have one of these needs that affects us more powerfully than others and thus affects our behaviours, and they fall into three general categories of needs:

(1) Achievement

Achievers seek to excel and appreciate frequent recognition of how well they are doing. They will avoid low risk activities that have no chance of gain. They also will avoid high risks where there is a significant chance of failure.

(2) Affiliation

Affiliation seekers look for harmonious relationships with other people. They will thus tend to conform and shy away from standing out. The seek approval rather than recognition.

(3) Power

Power seekers want power either to control other people (for their own goals) or to achieve higher goals (for the greater good). They seek neither recognition nor approval from others -only agreement and compliance.

Acquired needs theory focuses on those with an achievement motivation, and David Mclelland stated as a result of his experiments and research that:

(1) Most people do not possess a strong achievement-based motivation

(2) Those people who do, display a consistent behaviour in setting goals.

Acquired needs theory indicates the following characteristics and attitudes of achievement-motivated people:

  • Achievement of objectives matters more than material or financial reward
  • Greater personal satisfaction is felt by achieving the goal than from receiving praise or recognition
  • Money is regarded as a measure of success, but not the end in itself
  • Neither status nor security are prime motivations
  • Accurate quantitative feedback is essential, because it enables measurement of success
  • Achievement-motivated people constantly looking for ways of doing things better
  • Achievement-motivated people will gravitate towards jobs and responsibilities that challenge them and satisfy their needs – for example sales and business leadership and management
  • Achievement-motivated people have the capacity to set high personal goals that they believe to be attainable

Applying Acquired Needs Theory to Change Management

Acquired needs theory indicates that people with a strong need for achievement, make the best leaders – provided they develop the people skills necessary to get the best results from their people.

So find the people who are achievement oriented and who have the necessary people skills and encourage them into a small team to help lead and manage your change initiative.

Not to miss any of these Change Management and how it relates to Project Management articles, please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting’s RSS feed.

If you want to work with Stephen Warrilow, take advantage of his 7 FREE “How to Do It” downloads that will take you through all of the key stages of “How to manage change” – and show you how to manage change successfully.  Change Management Expert

About the author:

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, England, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

 
Linky

What Is Change Management And How To Approach It?

What does change management mean to project managers and why do they need it?  Leading change management

By Stephen Warrilow

Change management is often at the heart of project delivery in that many business projects bring about change in organisations which usually affects people or processes or both. For this reason it is of utmost importance that project managers should understand the business of change management. You will feel less like a “tree with a tie” if you understand change management and know how to lead a change initiative.

There are 2 quite different streams of thought that have shaped the practice of change management.

(1) The engineer’s approach to business improvement with the focus on business process.

(2) The psychologist’s approach to understanding human responses to change with the focus on people.

As Michael Hammer, co-author of “Re-engineering the Corporation”, has said about the people issues: “the human side is much harder than the technology side and harder than the process side. It’s the overwhelming issue.”

The single biggest reason for the astonishingly high 70% failure rate of ALL business change initiatives has been the over-emphasis on process rather than people – the failure to take full account of the impact of change on those people who are most impacted by it.

Closely allied to that reason is the lack of process to directly address the human aspects of change.

A program management based approach to change

The traditional project approach to change management – sees it as a set of tasks which if executed successfully get a result. In other words the typical process led approach which has failed so consistently and so spectacularly over the last 20 years.

In contrast, I advocate a program based approach to change management because, based on my experience, I have found that:

  • It is holistic and takes a wider perspective
  • It focuses you on addressing issues and aspects that otherwise get overlooked
  • It addresses the people impacts and issues arising as a direct and indirect result of your change initiative
  • It addresses the fundamental questions that people ask: “What is changing, when and why?” and “How is going to affect me?” and “How are you going to manage this?”

Universal change management principles

The broad principles of how you approach any business initiative or any activity that may require or instigate change are universal:

(1)  Clarity in all areas – especially of the business need for the change, of the specifics of the change, the benefits of the change, and the impacts of the change.

(2)  Communication – constant communication – two-way communication – communication that explains clearly what is change management and what is happening or not happening and why. Communication that listens actively and demonstrates to people that you have thought through the impacts of the change on them, and that you are prepared to work with them to achieve their buy-in and commitment to the change.

(3)  Consistency – in all aspects of the way in which you lead the change – manage the delivery – handle the communication – and ensure the realization of the benefits.

(4)  Capability – constant attention to the management of the tasks, activities, projects and initiatives that are delivering the capabilities into your organization that will deliver the benefits that you are seeking. Ensuring that your people have the full resources and capabilities they need to support them through the change.

Key success factors in change management

For change management to work, it requires careful focus on these key factors that will determine the success of your change initiative:

(1) Determining that you are embarking on a change that sits outside of business as usual and needs to be handled as a specific initiative

(2) The quality of leadership that you provide

(3) Using a program management based approach to your change initiative and how you define change management for your organization

(4) The thoroughness of your pre-program review and planning process

(5) The extent to which you identify and address the cultural change in your organization that is required to deliver the change and the desired business benefit.

So this is how I define change management:

“It’s all about people – and processes that work for people.”

Not to miss any of these Change Management and how it relates to Project Management articles, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

If you want to work with Stephen Warrilow, take advantage of his 7 FREE “How to Do It” downloads that will take you through all of the key stages of “How to manage change” – and show you how to manage change successfully.  Change Management Expert

About the author:

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, England, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.