6 External Groups With Dependencies...and How to Manage Them
Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.
In The Clarity PM: 6 Areas to Improve, I talk about six attributes of a what I call a Clarity PM, as follows:
- Clarity of purpose
- Clarity of done
- Clarity of constraints
- Clarity of what/who/when
- Clarity of external dependencies
- Clarity of communication
I’ve certainly been burned by not doing each of the attributes well. Number 5, clarity of external dependencies, has brought unwanted surprises that created ugly fire drills. It has caused me to be more mindful of those dependencies and how I unearth and manage them, making me better at intentional external dependency management.
Given so, I’d like to share some lessons learned to help you avoid getting bit by an external dependency. Here are six external groups that can carry dependencies that can have a material impact on both your work and the external group’s work:
1. Sponsors – Sponsors could be undertaking other initiatives or can’t do something you might expect to have done because of a business-critical event. For example, expecting people from a sponsor’s team to participate in testing while other business-critical activities are occurring.
2. Stakeholders – Similar to sponsors, stakeholders from other organizations might have constraints preventing them from doing something you expect to be done. This could be a bit more intensive as it means not just…
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A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. - Sam Goldwyn |
