Getting sponsors to tell you what they want a project to accomplish is easy. They want to increase manufacturing capacity, perhaps, or launch a new product. Describing how life looks when the business does that thing it wants to do is straightforward, it’s fun to envision, and it energizes stakeholders as well as the project team. But with so much focus on that future picture, getting those same sponsors to define what the company is doing today can be more challenging. Working through the details of the current state might seem like a step you can skip, but it’s a vital element that informs the entire project development process.
Gain a shared understanding of what isn’t working today
Though most project sponsors can paint a vibrant picture of what the project should deliver, it’s just as important for them to articulate what isn’t working optimally today and why a change is needed. This crucial link between now and later helps avoid incorrect assumptions and misperceptions that could turn the project in the wrong direction because there isn’t clarity around exactly what needs fixing. Ensuring your sponsors express the ins and outs of the preferred future state as well as the current state enables everyone to understand what isn’t working for the business and what the project must accomplish to solve those issues.
Why current and preferred future state definitions are helpful for project stakeholders
Defining the current state requires a balance of simplicity and nuance. What’s the history behind how you got to where you are, and why are you trying to do something different? What’s the gap or problem you’re trying to solve? Rather than a problem, maybe it’s an opportunity the organization wants to capture. What does that opportunity look like? Using project sponsors’ own words to describe today’s state and the state they want to achieve gives everyone the starting point to define success and to understand what it will take to get there. It’s also the basis for setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound) objectives that will drive the project to completion.
Don’t move forward until you have a consensus
Project sponsors are often highly influential people within the organization, and it’s not uncommon for different sponsors to harbor different ambitions for a project. You may also discover they each bring a different perception of the current state to the project. If those potentially conflicting baselines aren’t hashed out and aligned before the project begins, you’ll face hurdles that could derail the project’s outcome.
A project management consultancy can help facilitate the conversations needed to reach a consensus on the current state, which is the foundation for charting a successful project path. Your outside partner can ask questions from a neutral perspective and flag any inconsistencies in existing project statements. They will have the right background to help sponsors clarify the ask, articulate why the business wants to make a change, and define what success looks like. Your stakeholders can then move forward with a better understanding of constraints and potential risks throughout the project’s planning and execution phases.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.