From the course: Project Management Simplified

Key project drivers

From the course: Project Management Simplified

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Key project drivers

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- There's a theory that nobody can prove, but which seems to be true. Which is that of the three circles, there will always be a top one. And this is known as the key driver of your project. For example, with the Olympics, the key driver is time. They must start on the agreed date, whatever the cost. With a nuclear power station, the key driver is quality. Whatever it costs and however long we have to wait, it's got to be right. And for a school or a hospital, the key driver might be money, much as I'd like it to be quality. There's often a limited budget, and it's a case of what can we get for 50 million? But these are easy examples. What about my daughter's wedding? What about extending your factory? Is it all about the money or the time, or the quality? If you're not sure, the only thing you can do is ask the customer, but they won't tell you. They'll say I want all three. And of course they do, who would not want a great project that's cheap and quick? The question is which one would you drop if you had to? And we need to know that so we can make sure that we don't fail on the key one. That we allow a safety margin on the key driver. And also it tells us what to trade off when your project inevitably goes a bit off track later? If your power station's running a bit late, would you throw more money at it or let it run late? Or cut corners on the quality? Not the third one I hope, but we need to know. I found that customers struggle with answering this, not because they're hiding it from me, but just that they haven't thought about it, they don't want to think about it. So to help them find the key driver, I used three cunning questions. First is, why have you set that budget or that time limit? Sometimes there's a compelling reason, but often there isn't. Often they just say because that's what I think it will cost, which tells me that money isn't the key driver. We can spend a bit more if we have to in order to get the quality. The second question is, what if? What if the Olympic games opened just a couple of days late? That would be bad. What if the power station was slightly late or overspent by a bit? Probably not too much of a problem. But what if my daughter's wedding cake was just a day late, total disaster. And my third question is to offer to trade. Ask them, if you spent just a little bit more, we could put in some really nice extra features. And if they say, like what, you know that they have more money. But if they say nope, there's no point in even showing me anything else because I can't afford any more, then you know that money is more important than quality to them. Money is the limiting factor or the key driver. So that's the final part of defining the project. Make sure that you and the customer are both clear on the key driver of the project.

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