Sandee MurraySr. Project Manager| SGFFrederick, Md, United States
Hey Guys,
Does anyone have a project submission workflow that they can share? I'm thinking from idea origination, to manager approval, to formal project request with PMO, etc.
That's heavily dependent on the organization and impact. In general however:
- Idea identified
- Feasibility analysis
- High level statement of work
- Estimate of cost and duration
- Management review process
On big projects, there may be very stringent gates to progress through the steps. At some companies, there are labs that any employee can use to develop their preliminary ideas. There may be executive sponsored initiatives to go come up with ideas with a fast track for approval. Various levels of management have different authority as to what they can approve.
In my work in the realm of change management, there may be quite different flows based on the type of change. Does it come from within the organization, the vendor, or the customer? Who is paying for the initial idea development? Is it a new or improved product, response to problems, or a time/cost savings? Does it impact one team, or across the enterprise? Those and other considerations can drive very different work flows.
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1 reply by Sandee Murray
Dec 11, 2020 9:20 AM
Sandee Murray
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Thanks for your insight. I guess what I am trying to figure out is, an idea of project, does it go through any vetting in the department that originates the idea before the project recommendation is submitted for review and approval? This would be a means of making sure the only ideas that make it to the 'What Project to do Next' conversation, are those that have been thought through and supported by the department supervisor/manager. The goal is to stop project requests 1. with out the department manager knowing about them before they are formally requested and 2. ensuring the Manager supports the request and finds value in the project.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
We have different life cycles for different solutions mainly based on Agile, Lean or others approaches. So, the first step is to understand the problem then define the solution taken into account life cycle is a component of the solution. For example, we are in the process to expand the user of SAFe to the whole company so if you go to SAFe website you will find there the steps you are asking for. On the other side, you have to consider two roles working on creating the solution: Business Analyst (everything before the project exists and everything after the project was close) and Project Manager (everything along the project). Obviously both interact along the solution creation process.
But basically what we have is:
-from Idea we create a Proposal, when Idea is approved.
-from Proposal we create a Project or Program, when proposal is approved.
-when Project or Program is closed we move to Solution Monitoring mode. Saving Changes...
Sandee MurraySr. Project Manager| SGFFrederick, Md, United States
Dec 09, 2020 7:05 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
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That's heavily dependent on the organization and impact. In general however:
- Idea identified
- Feasibility analysis
- High level statement of work
- Estimate of cost and duration
- Management review process
On big projects, there may be very stringent gates to progress through the steps. At some companies, there are labs that any employee can use to develop their preliminary ideas. There may be executive sponsored initiatives to go come up with ideas with a fast track for approval. Various levels of management have different authority as to what they can approve.
In my work in the realm of change management, there may be quite different flows based on the type of change. Does it come from within the organization, the vendor, or the customer? Who is paying for the initial idea development? Is it a new or improved product, response to problems, or a time/cost savings? Does it impact one team, or across the enterprise? Those and other considerations can drive very different work flows.
Thanks for your insight. I guess what I am trying to figure out is, an idea of project, does it go through any vetting in the department that originates the idea before the project recommendation is submitted for review and approval? This would be a means of making sure the only ideas that make it to the 'What Project to do Next' conversation, are those that have been thought through and supported by the department supervisor/manager. The goal is to stop project requests 1. with out the department manager knowing about them before they are formally requested and 2. ensuring the Manager supports the request and finds value in the project.
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1 reply by HUBER + SUHNER ELECTRONICS LTD.
Dec 13, 2020 4:44 AM
HUBER + SUHNER ELECTRONICS LTD.
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In this case, you could indeed even go for an business opportunity evaluation, that could include the risks, opportunities, Strengths , weaknesses, competition, ROI etc. This supported with the Business case helps in project approval with all the concerned stake holders and also is easily communicated in the concerned teams.
Sandee,
Good question, (although I'm biased because it has been a major focus of my career for 20+ years.)
One of the most frequent causes of projects that far exceed their initial estimates used to approve initiation is lack of up front integration. As you dig into the details, you find secondary or system level impacts that may even exceed the original statement of work (SOW) from the prime group driving the change.
In order to bring an integrated change in for approval, the review process generally works like this:
1) Prime group develops a change proposal with their own rough SOW and inputs from groups they believe are impacted. This requires the change requestor must first vet their change proposal with the groups they know have additional SOW.
2) Functional manager of prime group signs off on this. This ensures the manager is accountable for having tried to vet the change before requesting some half baked idea, and that they believe it makes business sense.
3) Integration/product level technical review to see what secondary impacts were missed. This can be significant because many teams performing one function on a large system don't know all the system level effects.
4) Other identified groups must provide a rough SOW for their own impacts which are approved by their own management. Usually approval is required at the level of the org chart which includes all the impacted groups. This could be one manager, several managers under one senior manager, or multiple senior managers. That all depends on scale and organization.
5) The complete rough SOW is assembled to about WBS level 3. That means you have a pretty thorough narrative SOW from all impacted parties allowing you to build a high level preliminary cost and schedule summary, with a good confidence level you didn't miss anything big.
6) The vetted high level plan goes to the approval board for review. Hopefully there are no AH HA! moments at this meeting or you usually get sent away to provide a new estimate with additional impacts. You may get sent back to answer additional questions, before you get a go/no-go decision but that is the life of a project in its infancy. Saving Changes...
Thanks for your insight. I guess what I am trying to figure out is, an idea of project, does it go through any vetting in the department that originates the idea before the project recommendation is submitted for review and approval? This would be a means of making sure the only ideas that make it to the 'What Project to do Next' conversation, are those that have been thought through and supported by the department supervisor/manager. The goal is to stop project requests 1. with out the department manager knowing about them before they are formally requested and 2. ensuring the Manager supports the request and finds value in the project.
In this case, you could indeed even go for an business opportunity evaluation, that could include the risks, opportunities, Strengths , weaknesses, competition, ROI etc. This supported with the Business case helps in project approval with all the concerned stake holders and also is easily communicated in the concerned teams. Saving Changes...
