project_management_made_easy

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Tool: Five Ways to Make a List of Problems and Opportunities

Five Ways to Make a List of Problems and Opportunities

For a full discussion of problems and opportunities, see Chapter 5. This tool will help you define the problems you can solve for your business.

There are many ways to make a list of problems and opportunities. Here are some of my favorites.

Write down your worries. Then organize them into a bulleted list.

Write down the things you’d like to do. Then organize them into a bulleted list.

Bring your team together for a brainstorming session. Keep it practical. Sometimes, it’s good to keep it specific, too. You can bring up a question such as “How can we sell more of Widget model 102?” or a more general question, such as “How can we improve the sales department?” The more experience your team has working together, the more general the question can be.

Listen to your customers.

Look at results. You can look at sales results, productivity reports, employee retention rates, or measures of productive work hours. Compare present results with past results. Are you where you want to be? If not, plan to get there. That’s a project.

So, if you’ve followed the steps above, then you have goal—a problem you want to solve or an opportunity you want to seize. If not, go back and do one of them now! Why wait?

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Tool: Prioritzing Your Projects

Priortizing Your Projects

There are many things we can do to make our business better, but we usually have time to do only one at a time. This tool will you apply Chapters 4 and 5 to your business most effectively. Read through this page, then use the form on the next page.

1.Make a list of problems and opportunities.

2.For each thing on your list, decide how important it is.

3.For each thing on your list, decide how urgent it is.

4.Organize the list using the Prioritized Projects form on the next page. (Instructions for using this tool are at the bottom of the form.)

5.Delegate anything you can to someone else.

6.Come up with a plan to take care of small things.

7.Pick one big thing that is important—and maybe urgent—and make that your next project.

8.Go through the planning steps in Chapters 4 and 5. If that project turns out to be too difficult to do now, go back to your list and pick a different problem or opportunity.

Make a list of problems and opportunities

Yes

Finish planning the project. Then get it done right!

220 Selecting, prioritzing, and planning flowchart

Form: Prioritized Projects

Instructions:

1.Write each important item on a separate 3-by-5 card or sticky note.

2.Pick a date and put all items due before that date in one stack, called Urgent Items.

3.Organize the Urgent Items stack in order of due dates, with the item due first at the top.

4.Put all the other cards or notes in a separate stack, called Important Items.

5.Organize the Important Items stack in order of importance, with the most important item at the top.

6.List the Urgent Items in the left column of this table, from most to least, with the due date next to each item.

7.List the Important Items in the right column, from most to least.

Now, you’re ready to turn each item—each problem or opportunity—into a project.

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Form: Problem Definition

Problem-Definition Form

This form will help you apply Chapter 5 to any problem.

Name of the problem:

My name:

Date:

Company name:

Problem Description

Is there a crisis? Yes ___ No ___

(If yes, take immediate action, then come back to complete this form.)

What are the symptoms?

(What tells me there is a problem? What do these symptoms tell me about the problem?)

What are the causes of the problem? (List one or more causes.)

What are the consequences of this problem?

(What will happen if you do nothing? List one or more consequences.)

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Form: Opportunity Definition (continued)

How It Is Now

How It Will Be After

The Question Opportunity Is

(before they change)

Realized

The Results of the Opportunity

This section describes our work process—how we do our work before and after the change.

Marketing

What will change in the ways we market?

Sales

What will change in the ways we sell?

Client Services and Customer Support

What will change in the ways we serve clients and respond to customer support requests?

Financial Operations

What will change in the ways we do accounting and financial work?

Research and Analysis

What will change in the ways we do research and analysis?

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Form: Simplest Project Plan

Simplest Project Plan

This tool is all you need to plan a small, simple, one-person project using Chapters 6 through 12. It can also be the first form you use to start planning a larger project.

Project name:

Company name:

Date:

Your name:

Why am I doing this project?

Where am I starting?

What is my goal?

Do I know my way around? (For the next three boxes, enter any questions you need to research or expertise you need to get.)

Business issues:

Project management issues:

Technical issues:

How will I do it? (Enter the major steps below.)

Instructions: Use this template for a quick, simple project that you can do alone or hand to someone who can do it in a few hours or a couple of days. Use one of the more complicated templates if you need to set deadlines, track cost, or assemble a team to do the work. If you like, you can start with this form and then shift to one of the bigger forms later.

1.Fill in the first four lines.

2.Answer “Why am I doing this project?” with business benefits and value, not technical features.

3.Answer “Where am I starting?” in terms of both the business situation and the technical situation.

4.Answer “What is my goal?” in terms of the business results, the new way of working, and the new technical solution.

5.Answer “Do I know my way around?” by considering whether you need some information (a map) or expert assistance (a guide) in relation to the business issues, the technical issues, or planning and managing the project.

6.After you do any research or get any expert assistance you need, write up the steps that take you from where you are now to your goal.

7.Review the whole project plan. Is everything in it clear? If someone else is going to work with you or do this work for you, is it clear to both of you? Could you put this in a drawer, take it out a week from now, and know exactly what to do? If not, revise it until it is completely clear.

8.Review the plan again. Is it complete? Does it solve every part of the problem? Does it cover every major step from the starting point to the goal? If not, add whatever is needed.

9.If you’ve reached this step, then your project is ready for evaluation so that you can decide whether or not this project will work and whether you want to do the project or not. This project is ready for two important questions: “Will This Really Work?” and “Is it Really Worth Doing?”

10.If you decide to do the project, follow the plan. If it is a simple, small project, you’ve done all the planning you need. If it is large or complicated, then you can build a more detailed project plan.

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Tool: Net Revenue and Your Project

Net Revenue Is What Matters

These ideas will help you apply the material in Chapter 2 to your projects.

Net revenue is total (or gross) revenue—all the money coming in—minus total expenses—all the money that goes out. Ultimately, what is good for the business is an increase in net revenue. This is important to remember in three ways.

Increased revenue is worthless if it costs too much. More money coming in doesn’t necessarily mean more profit. We must increase revenue more than we increase expenses.

Cost cutting works only if it doesn’t cut our revenue. If we can cut costs while delivering the same product or service, with the same quality, in the same quantity, that’s good. But if cutting costs means reducing quality and losing customers or not having enough product available and losing sales, then we lose revenue while reducing expenses and net revenue doesn’t go up.

Sooner or later, vague ideas have to become hard dollars. We must understand how and when good ideas will pay off. Here are some examples.

–Increased goodwill. You might hear that, as a small business, if you help out with a volunteer or social benefit project in your town, people will appreciate you. That goodwill is very important. But goodwill becomes dollars only if it keeps or attracts customers. For example, you might donate to a local charity and issue a press release about the donation, so that customers link your charity with your business.

–Reduced cycle time. The time it takes to bring a product to market, to close a sale, or to complete any other business activity is the cycle time of that process. In general, reduced cycle time is a good thing. It makes a company more flexible: if there’s a change, it can respond faster. For example, if we automate our inventory and cash register system, we shorten cycle time on price changes. This allows us to adjust for inventory overstocks, competitors’ price cuts, and changes in customer preferences and then lower prices for a sale more quickly. But, before installing the new system, we’ll need to estimate exactly how this faster cycle time will increase net revenue. If we can estimate the change in dollars, that’s a hard-dollar value. If we can only describe and estimate the benefit, that’s soft-dollar value.

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