How To Assess Project Proposals
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Transcript of How To Assess Project Proposals
How to assess project proposals
Project Options papers will be my
death
3 Bloody Options
Not more, not less!
3
Why do we do them and why are they a
mistake?
As far as I can work it out, you present 3
options for two reasons
1.
To get stakeholder buy-in
2. To force yourself to
think through comparisons
We are recommended to
investigate at least 3 options because it
helps us stretch our imaginations
And these days we are often asked to
put up the “do nothing” option for
comparison purposes.
(So technically you’ll be getting 4 for the
price of 3.)
So, 3 bloody options.
After a while you’ll find a pattern.
Buy, build, partner
Tactical, Strategic, Hybrid
Team 1’s goals, Team 2’s goals, Everybody wins
Are these really options?
Here is another example
Tactical, partial functionality
Full blown integrated IT solution
Partly developed IT solution with
significant limits
Tactical, partial functionality
Full blown integrated IT solution
Partly developed IT solution with significant
limits
Obviously you’ll pass on this.
This is the under promising mode
The team’s jobs depend on this
one
Which one would you pick?
And lifecycle costing means the big up front investment
always wins.
As an executive what else can you do but go with the analysis & recommendation?
Well, there is one or two questions you
could ask.
1. What are the delivery risks?
How do we know we can pull this off?
They sound like the same question but
they aren’t
What are the delivery risks
• People capability
• Requirements stability
• Dependency on other projects
• Goal alignment
• The Stakeholders (your frontline management) are ‘on board’
• You are ready to spend the time on this project
How do we know we can do this?
• Have we done something like this before?
• How often to we succeed, partially succeed, or fail?
• Does our Project Management team have a track record of success?
You might also like to ask this:
What happens if we fail?
Projects cost a lot of money.
Just because you are in front of experts,
don’t let them drive you into a corner.
www.betterprojects.net
Questions and comments are welcomed.
(Title page photo by llawliet and CC via Flickr)