Project Management discussion

Evaluation of select Project Management Templates 

 

For my evaluation, I chose BusinessCaseTemplate2.docx.  There was much I liked about this template, although there were some areas for improvement.  For this post, I will step through the document and discuss what I liked as well as note the areas where I think the template could be improved. 

Business Case Analysis Team:

I liked the inclusion of this section as it allows for quick references to people involved in writing the business case.  If there are any questions, I could quickly send an email to or call the appropriate individual or individuals. An area for improvement in the section, would be to provide contact information.

Document History:

Every document needs to have a change or revision block.  These documents progress through many iterations and changes to the document needs to be tracked.  This ensures that contributors are working on the most current document and tracks how the document changes over time.

Executive Summary:

With the time challenges faced by many executives, this section is necessary.  Many executives will be hard pressed to read much more than this, unless you really grab their attention.  This being said, I think this area could use some improvement to touch on every area that an executive could use to aid in making a decision about the project.  Areas that could be added are information about the alternatives and how the implementation of the project aligns with organizational goals.

This section could also be organized for a better flow.  I propose that the table be ordered in the following manner:  Issue, Proposed Solutions, Recommendation, Justification, and Anticipated Outcomes.  This created a narrative that is easy to follow, clearly stating the problem and then the proposed solutions.  This is followed by the recommended solution and the justification of the proposed solution.  Finally the anticipated outcomes explains what the result will be should the project meet its goals.

Problem Definition:

This section logically flows next.  However, this section has an Organizational Impact table, which does not belong here.  This section should solely be to describe the problem.  The impact of the proposed solution comes later as we have no described the project yet in this document.

Alternatives:

At this point in the document, there needs to be a discussion about alternatives to the proposed project.  We need to know why this project was selected over other ways to solve the problem.  There are many ways to solve problems and they need to be examined to ensure that a better way was not overlooked.  This shows that we examined other solutions to the problem and didn’t pick the first solution that came to the team.  This section should conclude with why the proposed solution was chosen.

Project Description:

This section is a nice overview of what will solve the problem and how it will be accomplished.  It should be a high level description and not go into too many details.

Project Goals: (and Strategic Alignment):

The Strategic Alignment appears later in the template and I believe that there’s no reason that these sections cannot be combined.  In this combined section, the project goals are stated, aligned with the strategic goals of the organization and a description of how the project goals meet the organizational goals.  I think that the latter section, Strategic Alignment, is redundant and could be eliminated.

Project Performance:

I like this section.  There should be metrics developed to measure project progress as well as the success or failure of the implementation of the project.  An example of how this could be measured would be taking the time it takes to accomplish a process from the current time to a new target time.  Like identity and access management currently processes terminated user access removals in seven days, with the new process the access removal time will be three days.

SWOT Analysis:

Depending on the organization, this will be different depending on the framework that the organization uses.  Another framework that may be used is SVOR, strengths, vulnerabilities, opportunities, and risks.  This section is a good introduction to the sections that follow.

Project Assumptions and Constraints:

More good sections to have.  I’m not sure that I agree that this section may be changed as stated in the item description in the template.  Maybe updates can be added to this section as it may be helpful to note if any assumptions were wrong or any were overlooked.   I like the breakout of the business constraints and the technical constraints along with the responsible party or team.  This may be useful for talking to individuals to overcome these constraints. 

Project Milestones:

Another good section to have.  I would just make sure that the dates are listed are estimates and note that this is not a firm schedule.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

This may change depending on the organization. This could be a financial model or a scoring method.  If the cost/benefit analysis is used, it would prove useful to extend the projections out for multiple years as the full benefits may not be realized in year one. In fact, the single year projection may look quite dismal.

Approvals:

I like this section.  It documents the approvals required for beginning the project.

Appendix:

There are two sections that I would modify or remove from the appendix.  The Alternatives Analysis section would be redundant as I added an Alternatives section in the body of the report.  Depending on the completeness of the Alternatives section or the desired level of detail desired, this section may be modified to provide the granular details of the alternative solutions examined.

The Implementation Approach does not belong in the business case and is better suited to the project plan.  I would remove this section.

 

Impressions:

I believe that this is a decent starting point for the business case document, however, there is one item that is missing.  The Risk Assessment was omitted from the template.  The SWOT analysis is included and may serve as a risk identification mechanism.  A risk assessment should be more than simply identifying risks, I would like to see risk mitigation strategies in this section.  This will give management the risks to the project as well as show that thought was given on how to mitigate the risks.