Tools: Good engineering = education & project management

Do detailed engineered requirements = satisfied stakeholders? 

No, not always :( 

Our culture tends to be “too busy” and generally people want to stick with what they know, avoid change and be open to new learnings only if their capacity allows for it and it involves a day off at some off-site location. 

People generally want education in a perfect world, but there is never a perfect time when all is calm, you are caught up and stress-free from changes.

Real world is that education must be integrated into the project and generally at the project/work site.

Stakeholders can be illogical based on their lack of understanding and the justifications they create. Thus best laid plans will not be applicable and this is part of project risk - especially when working with advanced technologies or innovations.

You may have a proven, best practice, optimized approach and technology, however, without buy-in, understanding and proper tracking of education provided, you will not have success.

This is why a good project management plan includes formal tasks that focus on buy-in through education.  

These tasks are identified early on based on risks and inserted into the project management plan.  Based on life cycle stages of a project, it must be reminded that education comes in a multitude of forms.

Examples tools to be inserted into the PM plan include:

1) Concept Stage - education includes: coffee, lunch, phone calls, emails, electronic presentations (generally in a slide based/ppt type of software), signage, bulletin boards, announcements, feedback tools, forums, social events (promote trust & engagement), checklists, questionnaires, minutes

2) Planning Stage – education includes: reports, presentations with multiple types of software (spreadsheets, graphs, mind-maps, diagrams, videos, etc), referenced independent documents, webinars, video conference calls, meetings with white board (open) themed agendas, workshops, conferences, trade shows, tours, alliance formation of alliances (with other businesses, academics, governments, associations), timeline/milestone charts, signature tracking (sign-offs to promote focus, priority, attendance and

 attention), minutes

3) Executing – education includes: formal class room training, online training, mentorship, coaching, customized professional development program (aligned with operations), revisiting of education that was provided in Planning stage (when possible, reuse and repeat based on complexity/uniqueness of the project and level of capability/capacity of the stakeholders), education packages (customized/structured levels of information, high level, medium level, details and ability to drill down or scale up rapidly), certifications, minutes

4) Closing – lessons learned (customized to the type of project and the plans of how the project learnings become integrated into future projects/operations), minutes

Couple good links on stakeholder buy-in (and the focus on communication) include:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/stakeholder-buy-project-51429.html

http://michcommunication.com/stakeholder-engagement-is-more-than-getting-buy-in/