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INTEGRATING PROJECT

PLANNING WITH
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
A case study for the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner course .
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Challenges ..................................................................................................................................................... 2
Solution ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Approach ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Final Outcome ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Critical Success Factor ................................................................................................................................... 5
Benefits of using PRINCE2 ............................................................................................................................. 5

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Introduction

A new Chief Executive had been appointed to lead a service business involved in
handling a large volume of case work. The business employed about 800 staff,
and over many years had evolved to meet changing requirements. The result was
an organization with many silos and a slow turnaround of cases. There was a
significant backlog of unresolved cases, and the businesss reputation had
plummeted.

The Chief Executive recognized the out of date organization as being the major
stumbling block to improvement and established a project, using PRINCE2, to
completely restructure the business.

Challenges

Although the restructuring itself would be fairly straightforward, the major


challenge would be staff attitudes and reaction. Most of the staff had worked for
the business for several years, some of them for decades. They had become
acknowledged experts in their fields, had established both formal and informal
ways of working that suited them. They saw the restructuring as eroding their
expertise and ways of working, and most had little wish to change. Additionally,
despite reassurance from senior management, many staff felt that the
restructuring would be used as a vehicle to make staff cuts, and therefore felt
that their job security was threatened.

At the start of the project it was known that around 90% of staff were actively
opposed to the change.

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Solution

A specialist in change management was recruited to be one of the team


managers, heading up a team that would focus specifically on staff needs and
attitudes. Communications and change management therefore became part of
the specialist work of the project.

It was agreed that to be successful, the change management activity needed to be


completely integrated with other aspects of the project for example, creation of
new business processes, development of the new organizational structure,
creation of new job descriptions and redesign of office space and layout.

Approach

The project management team adopted a very open approach throughout, with a
regularly updated blog on the intranet, regular newsletters about progress and a
dedicated member of project support to answer any questions raised by staff.

The project plan was developed to have a direct alignment between project
activity and staff engagement, with the delivery of major products being used as
the stimulus for specific communications activity. The planning of stage
boundaries took staff considerations (such as annual leave periods, timing of the
annual appraisal cycle, etc.) into account.

Using the product based planning technique meant clarity about what was to be
produced and how each product related to others. The planning of each stage
was done to ensure alignment between products being created by the change
management and products being created by other teams, with care being taken
to ensure that there wasnt hidden project activity that could have been seen as
a threat by staff. The product breakdown structure and product descriptions
were made readily available and open to all staff, again to ensure there was no
sense of hidden activity.

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Figure 1 making the PBS and Product Descriptions freely available

Because of the strategic nature of the work, it was decided early on that the
Project Board should be the complete Senior Management Team of the business.
Although an unusual tailoring of the PRINCE2 approach, in these circumstances it
was fully justified, and worked well.

A particular feature of the SMT as project board was that it encouraged them to
be open with staff and fully engaged with project progress for example, for a
period of several weeks, every lunchtime either the Chief Executive or one of her
SMT would be on a sofa in the office breakout area.

This was well publicised and staff were encouraged to drop in for a chat. Some
days there might be no staff, but on other days there could be a lively debate of a
dozen or more staff with the member of senior management. This helped break
down barriers and build up trust that the project was not a Trojan horse
disguise for a redundancy programme.

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Final Outcome

The project lasted 10 months. When the new arrangement live, less than 1% of
staff were actively opposed to the changes, compared with the original 90%.
Many staff had indeed become enthusiastic supporters of the change.

The change went largely smoothly, with the new arrangements quickly falling in
to place and settling down, with almost no teething problems. A key objective of
the project being able to reduce the case work backlog began to be achieved
almost immediately.

Staff felt that they had been fully informed and consulted throughout, that their
concerns had been recognised and addressed, and that the new arrangements
offered a platform for future success for the business.

Critical Success Factor

The critical success factors for this project were the close attention to aligning
work within the change management team with work in other teams, the
involvement of the whole SMT as the project board, the open sharing of project
and stage planning information, and the alignment of key project achievements
with specific communications actions.

Benefits of using PRINCE2

The use of PRINCE2 was important for this project, but just as important was the
ability to tailor to suit the particular project context.

Use of the product based planning technique ensured clear plans at each level
and meant details of what was going to happen could be shared in a non-

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threatening way. Staff felt fully informed about the project, what it was doing,
and when things would happen.

The close engagement of senior management through the project board meant
there was a close alignment of the project with wider activity, and visible
leadership of the project in a corporate sense.

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