PROJECT TOOLS
Project Charter
What is it?
- A useful tool to capture an overall understanding of the Project, who is involved and what outcome is expected.
Why use it?
- Visually easy-to-understand Project objectives and in a simple format for stakeholders to provide feedback.
Cause & Effect Fishbone
What is it?
- A method of identifying the potential causes (Xs) that create the effect output (Y) under investigation.
Why use it?
- Identifies changes in input and process variables that may cause change/variation in the output variable.
Stakeholder Acceptance Analysis & Influence Strategy
What is it?
- An excellent method of presenting an understanding of stakeholder position on the solution / problem.
Why use it?
- Linked with an Influence Strategy and a Communications Plan, it will assist in tracking stakeholder acceptance, and what is required in ongoing consultation.
- Considered as a confidential tool not to be shared widely. If experiencing push back on solution acceptance, a review of your Stakeholder Acceptance Analysis and Influence Strategy with team and Champion can assist in determining your plan to resolve.
- Often projects that fail to implement sound solutions are caused by the lack of stakeholder engagement. Understanding their resistance will help develop better solutions.
SIPOC
What is it?
- SIPOC stands for:
- Supplier
- Input
- Process
- Output
- Customer
- SIPOC is an effective way to present a high level understanding of your process and who influences each outcome.
Why use it?
- A picture is worth a thousand words.
- Useful in linking steps and activities.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
What is it?
- Failure Modes and Effects Analysis is a methodology to evaluate failure modes and their effects in designs and in processes.
How to use it?
- Identify potential failure modes for design functions or process requirements.
- Assign severity to the effect of the failure mode.
- Assign frequency of occurrence to the potential cause of failure and likelihood of detection.
- Calculate a risk priority number by multiplying severity times frequency of occurrence times likelihood of detection.
- Use ranking to focus process improvement efforts.
Measurement Plan
What is it?
- Most importantly a template that when populated provides information which is a baseline of the current process performance.
- Also provides an understanding of what measures are not currently produced.
- Good way of tracking data collection.
How to use it?
- Brainstorm a list of Performance Measures.
- Develop Operational Definitions then keep working from left to right populating information under each category.
- Use it as a living document, update and amend as required.