15
Providing Options and Recommendations for Key Decisions
ONE OF THE most important parts of developing a trusting relationship with your executive sponsor is providing her with options and/or recommendations for important decisions as the project progresses.
Decision Support Package
As an aid when you ask your sponsor to make decisions related to your project, I have developed a decision support package (DSP) to include all the information I believe an executive sponsor might need to arrive at a decision.
One of the key questions is where to position a recommendation in the process. Most of the time, I like to present the option being recommended by the team right at the beginning. Then I try to build the story as to how the team arrived at that recommendation. In other words, start at the end, the recommendation, and then back up the recommendation using the other materials in the decision support package.
However, I have known project managers who prefer to leave the recommendation at the end after they have presented all their information. My fear in using this approach is that the conversation becomes sidetracked along the way, and we never get the recommendation. That being said, if you have worked with an executive before and you know that starting with the recommendation will not be received well, by all means wait until the end of your DSP to propose the solution you prefer.
Here are the steps in building a decision support package (I will discuss each step in more detail later in the chapter):
1.Provide a purpose statement.
2.Identify any gatekeepers related to the decision.
3.Detail the end results the decision should achieve.
4.Review the options that were considered.
5.Provide an analysis of the benefits.
6.Identify any risks related to the options considered.
7.Arrive at the best balanced choice that is your recommendation.
Now let us look at each step, and I will explain how they help you work with your sponsor. To illustrate the steps, I am going to use an example from a project for a retail chain of auto parts stores that was looking to install an upgraded point-of-sale (POS) system for their stores. The stores dealt with both the walk-in customers off the street and the professional auto repair shops that had accounts with the store. For those not familiar with a POS system, your grocery store probably uses this type of system to scan the items you are buying. The item appears on the store associate’s screen so that you can see the cost, the number of each item you purchased, and the tally for the total amount you must pay at the end.
Purpose Statement
Because the sponsor is usually not involved in the day-to-day activities related to the project, it is important to give him context for the decision in a clear and concise way. The purpose of the decision and the definition of the problem or opportunity should also be described clearly.
If the decision is time sensitive, you must let your sponsor know when you present your decision support package. Often these decisions take longer than you or your sponsor may prefer, but you are now covered if a delayed decision pushes the timeline.
In my example, the first phase of the project was to recommend the vendor. I submitted a purpose statement that the team was to recommend a system to the management team based on four considerations:
1.Price
2.Reliability
3.Maintenance costs
4.Personnel costs
My sponsor agreed to the statement and reiterated that the management team wanted an assessment of the total cost of ownership, not just the initial costs.
Gatekeepers
I also wanted to know whether there were any gatekeepers for the decision. A gatekeeper is a critical requirement that must be met for the solution. In other words, there are no maybe’s here. We had gathered requirements for the system as any responsible project would do, but I wanted to test another requirement to determine whether it was a gatekeeper. There were rumors on the street that the company might purchase another auto parts chain that would increase the size of the company by roughly 40%. I needed to know whether the project team needed to consider that when choosing a vendor.
As is the case in most of these situations, my executive sponsor could not confirm the rumors, as I expected. However, he did say that the team should consider the ease of rapid expansion as one consideration in the assessment of vendors.
The other gatekeeper for the project was related to the fiscal year. The company started the fiscal year on October 1, and the management team wanted the system operational at the beginning of the next year.
End Results
When you are presenting options or recommendations to your sponsor, you must tie them to the end results that the project is meant to achieve. You will want to present an analysis of the choices based on these key end results. Please believe me when I tell you that project managers and executives do not always assess the results the same way.
Options
All the options that were considered should be reviewed at this point in the decision support package. Expressing the options in terms of the important attributes is critical. (See Figure 15.1. Use this matrix to help your team analyze the options.) It will also allow your sponsor to see how the team compared the attributes of the various options. This is the key to selling your recommendation. Seeing the process used by the team to arrive at the recommendation will help your sponsor get inside your head, (Remember when I suggested that the Case for Change was a way to get inside your sponsor’s head?)
Step 2: Determine important end results and add/remove columns, as appropriate
Step 3: Assign relative weights to each end result in row 9 (i.e. an 8 would be twice as important as a 4)
Step 4: Assign objective 0-100 scores for how option satisfies each end result (best to do this on an attribute-by-attribute basis)
Step 5: Options with the highest scores should be considered
NOTES: Of the options you’re considering, decide which attributes can be used to help make a decision. You can include as many attributes as necessary. For example, if you’re considering multiple vendors, you might use attributes like Cost, Reliability, Company Size, Expertise, Process Familiarity, etc. If you’re doing this as a group, make sure everyone agrees what the attribute means. It’s often helpful to include a few more words, like: “Process Familiarity—how well does the vendor understand the way we do things at our company?”
For each attribute, assign a relative weight that is greater than zero. In this decision matrix, the range of numbers doesn’t matter; it’s the relationship between those numbers that matters. For example, if Cost is assigned a weight of 8 and Expertise is assigned a 4, you’re saying that Cost is twice as important as Expertise in your decision. Naturally, lower weights are less important than higher weights, and it’s okay if multiple attributes share the same weight. In that case, you’re saying that those attributes will be treated equally. In group situations, the discussion about the relative importance of these attributes can be very enlightening, and it’s a fantastic way to build consensus.
List all of your options. In the example I’ve been using, this would be the vendor names. Then, for each attribute, assign a score from 0-100 to each option. I highly recommend scoring all options for an attribute before moving to the next attribute, because it’s much easier to imagine the attribute, then score each option relative to one another. Of course, if you don’t know all of your options yet, this can’t be done (for example, if you’re using this technique to interview candidates for employment, you may need to score each attribute for the candidate while on the phone). Scores don’t have to be perfect, and 0 can mean bad/low confidence/not applicable/failure/etc., while 100 can mean great/high confidence/guaranteed/etc.
Figure 15.1: A Sample Decision Matrix
One trick that I have used very successfully is that I put the winning option as either the first one or the last one. I place the recommended option first most of the time because I want it to stand out from the others. However, I have worked with sponsors for whom I wanted the recommended option to be the last one because the logic they used was impacted more completely.
If the decision must then be approved by the Steering Committee or executive committee, I would recommend that you work with your sponsor to presell the option to key stakeholders. When you talk with one of these people one-on-one, you will usually get honest feedback and/or suggestions related to risks and other factors. If a key stakeholder has a serious objection and raises it during one of these meetings, you and your sponsor have time to figure out what to do about it. If you wait until the presentation to the Steering Committee, that objection in front of all the others may be enough to derail your option.
Benefit Analysis
After seeing the decision matrix, the benefits assessment should be not only easier but also more obvious. In this section of the decision support package, I usually refer to the benefits of each option as one of the following:
Exceeds the requirements based on the end results or gives the company a significant advantage.
Meets the needs/requirements.
Falls below the needs/requirements or provides some disadvantage.
The analysis also should address the weighting that was used to assess the options. Not all of the attributes may be of equal weight, which also colors the recommendation.
Risks Analysis
No assessment related to project management would be complete without a risk assessment. Particularly for the recommended option, you will want to address:
What could go wrong?
What is the impact of each risk should that risk occur?
How likely is each risk to happen?
How can the project mitigate or avoid any risks that have major impact?
At this point I want to return to Chapter 13 on risks and remind you that, for many sponsors, the business or organizational risks are of greater consequence than technical risks. Therefore, in conducting your risk analysis, pay special attention to these risks even though technical risks are obvious. Also as in Chapter 13, you must build confidence in your sponsor that you can handle any of these risks that might arise.
Best Balanced Choice
In the end, there will be no perfect solution to recommend to your sponsor. Just be certain that you and the team have recommended the right option based on and supported by the data. Too often I have seen people start this process with a choice already in mind. When they start their investigation, they seem to slant the information and data to support their initial solution. Few recommendations will please everyone, so do not try. Choose the recommendation that you can defend based on the data and the assumptions you have made.
Presenting the Options
The other thing to consider when you offer options and recommendations is to choose the best way to communicate them to your sponsor. Everyone has different ways of processing information, so think about how they receive information best. Do they prefer to:
Read it, then write out everything they need?
Hear it, then arrange a face-to-face meeting to give them what they need verbally?
Use numbers, then have you quantify what you are suggesting and put it into spreadsheets?
I have had sponsors who represented all of these approaches. In one project, my sponsor needed to read information and let it soak in before he was ready to talk to me about the decision. I have had others who really did not read much at all, and if they did, the reading had better be short and sweet. These sponsors were the ones who much preferred to sit down with me and verbally go through the information so they could ask questions and seek clarification if they needed it. Finally, in a project I led that was the implementation of a new credit card system, my sponsor was from internal audit. At the risk of stereotyping, I have to say that, for her to understand my requests, I had to illustrate the information using spreadsheets, charts, and graphs.
The point is that you need to present a decision support package in a way that allows your sponsor to make an informed decision. Following the guidelines in this chapter will go a long way in helping you build a strong relationship with your sponsor to get the support you need when you need it.
Points to Remember
Create a decision support package.
Use a process to make the decision.
Present the options considered in making the decision.
