Digital Leadership Livestream: How To Achieve Project Success

Course Summary

A Crucial Enabler for Project Success is Pre-project Problem Analysis

Statistics and studies have often cited that show that a worryingly high number of projects fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. I suspect we have all seen or worked on tricky projects that go ‘off the rails’, even though everyone did their best to keep them on track.

Some projects are almost ‘doomed to fail’ because they are initiated without a clear understanding of the problem they are trying to solve or the opportunity they are trying to leverage. Pre-project problem analysis helps to achieve this level of clarity and helps ensure that stakeholders have a common view of the problem that needs to be solved. This makes further detailed analysis much easier and contributes towards the success of the project.

This practical session, being delivered by Adrian Reed, focuses on how to carry out analysis before or during the early stages of a project so that it has the best possible chance of succeeding.

Following the live-streamed session, there will be a thirty-minute facilitated discussion by Sean Petralia, Programme Manager and GTA Project Management tutor, with the key points from the presentation explored in a local context.

Topics

During this session you’ll hear:

• Why is pre-project problem analysis important?
• How and where it fits into the project lifecycle
• Specific techniques that can be used to gain a quick understanding(a “thin slice”) of the “Why” and the “What” of projects
• How to create a 1-page “project concept” document that crystallises the need for a project and gains stakeholder consensus.

Tutor Profile

Adrian Reed is a true advocate of the analysis profession. In his day job, he acts as Principal Consultant and Director at Blackmetric Business Solutions where he provides business analysis consultancy and training solutions to a range of clients in varying industries. He is a Past President of the UK chapter of the IIBA® and he speaks internationally on topics relating to business analysis and business change. Adrian wrote the 2016 book ‘Be a Great Problem Solver… Now’ and the 2018 book ‘Business Analyst’.

You can read Adrian’s blog at http://www.adrianreed.co.uk and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UKAdrianReed

Sean Petralia is an experienced programme and project manager who specialises in business transformation programmes, with over 25 years’ experience working in the military defence, government, telecommunication and finance sectors. As well as being a professional practitioner and consultant he has also run change management departments along with managing company and group level project portfolios.