Project Performance Domains and Tailoring

Establishing Effective Measures

• Ensures the right things are measured and reported to stakeholders.

• Allows for tracking, evaluating, and reporting information.

• Communicates project status.

• Helps improve project performance.

• Reduces the likelihood of performance deterioration.

• Enables timely decisions and effective actions.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Quantifiable measures used to evaluate project success.

• Two types:

  • Leading indicators

  • Lagging indicators

• Focuses on measures for active projects.

• Portfolio leaders may include measures for project success after completion:

  • Whether the project delivered intended outcomes and benefits.

  • Increased customer satisfaction.

  • Decreased cost per unit.

• Business managers may assess project value to the organization:

  • Increase in market share.

  • Increase in profit.

  • Decrease in cost per unit.

• Measurement Performance Domain focuses on measures during the project.

Leading Indicators

• Predict changes or trends in the project.

• Project team evaluates the root cause and takes actions to reverse unfavorable trends.

• Reduce performance risk by identifying potential variances before they cross the tolerance threshold.

• May be quantifiable:

  • Size of the project.

  • Number of items in progress in the backlog.

• Other leading indicators are more difficult to quantify but provide early warning signs of potential problems:

  • Lack of a risk management process.

  • Stakeholders who are not available or engaged.

  • Poorly defined project success criteria.

Lagging Indicators

• Measure project deliverables or events.

• Provide information after the fact.

• Reflect past performance or conditions.

• Easier to measure than leading indicators.

• Examples:

  • Number of deliverables completed.

  • Schedule or cost variance.

  • Amount of resources consumed.

• Can be used to find correlations between outcomes and environmental variables:

  • Schedule variance may show a correlation with project team member dissatisfaction.

• KPIs are simply measures until they are used.

• Discussing leading and lagging indicators and identifying areas for improvement can positively impact performance.

Effective Metrics

• Project teams should only measure what is relevant and useful.

• Characteristics of effective metrics (SMART criteria):

  • Specific: Measurements are specific:

  • Number of defects.

  • Defects that have been fixed.

  • Average time to fix defects.

  • Meaningful: Tied to the business case, baselines, or requirements.

  • Achievable: The target is achievable.

  • Relevant: Provide value and allow for actionable information.

  • Timely: Information is fresh and forward-looking.

• Alternative terms for SMART:

  • Measurable instead of meaningful.

  • Agreed to instead of achievable.

  • Realistic or reasonable instead of relevant.

  • Time-bound instead of timely.

WHAT TO MEASURE

• Depends on project objectives, intended outcomes, and environment.

• Common categories of metrics:

  • Deliverable metrics

  • Delivery

  • Baseline performance

  • Resources

  • Business value

  • Stakeholders

  • Forecasts

• A balanced set of metrics provides a holistic picture of the project.

Deliverable Metrics

• Determined by the products, services, or results being delivered.

• Customary measures include:

  • Information on errors or defects:

  • Source of defects.

  • Number of defects identified.

  • Number of defects resolved.

  • Measures of performance:

  • Physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation.

  • Size, weight, capacity, accuracy, reliability, efficiency.

  • Technical performance measures:

  • Quantifiable measures of technical performance.

  • Ensure system components meet technical requirements.

  • Provide insights into progress in achieving the technical solution.

Delivery

• Measurements associated with work in progress.

• Frequently used in projects using adaptive approaches:

  • Work in progress:

  • Indicates the number of work items being worked on at any given time.

  • Helps the project team limit the number of items in progress to a manageable size.

  • Lead time:

  • Indicates the amount of elapsed time from a story entering the backlog to the end of the iteration or release.

  • Lower lead time indicates a more effective process and a more productive project team.

  • Cycle time:

  • Indicates the amount of time it takes the project team to complete a task.

  • Shorter times indicate a more productive project team.

  • A consistent time helps predict the possible rate of work in the future.

  • Queue size:

  • Tracks the number of items in a queue.

  • Metric can be compared to the work in progress limit.

  • Little’s Law states that queue size is proportional to both the rate of arrival in the queue and the rate of completion of items from the queue.

  • One can gain insights into completion times by measuring work in progress and developing a forecast for future work completion.

  • Batch size:

  • Measures the estimated amount of work expected to be completed in an iteration.

  • Process efficiency:

  • Ratio used in lean systems to optimize the flow of work.

  • Calculates the ratio between value-adding time and non-value-adding activities.

  • Tasks that are waiting increase the non-value-adding time.

  • Tasks that are in development or in verification represent value-adding time.

  • Higher ratios indicate a more efficient process.

Baseline Performance

• Most common baselines are cost and schedule.

• Projects that track a scope or technical baseline can use information in the deliverable measures.

• Most schedule measures track actual performance to planned performance related to:

  • Start and finish dates:

  • Comparing the actual start dates to the planned start dates and the actual finish dates to the planned finish dates can measure the extent to which work is accomplished as planned.

  • Late start and finish dates indicate that the project is not performing to plan.

  • Effort and duration:

  • Actual effort and duration compared to planned effort and duration indicates whether estimates for the amount of work and the time the work takes are valid.

  • Schedule variance (SV):

  • Determined by looking at performance on the critical path.

  • When used with earned value management: $SV = EV - PV$

  • Schedule performance index (SPI):

  • Earned value management measure that indicates how efficiently the scheduled work is being performed: $SPI = EV /PV$

  • Feature completion rates:

  • Examining the rate of feature acceptance during frequent reviews can help assess progress and estimate completion dates and costs.

• Common cost measures include:

  • Actual cost compared to planned cost:

  • Compares the actual cost for labor or resources to the estimated cost.

  • Referred to as the burn rate.

  • Cost variance (CV):

  • Determined by comparing the actual cost of a deliverable to the estimated cost.

  • When used with earned value management: $CV = EV – AC$

  • Cost performance index (CPI):

  • Earned value management measure that indicates how efficiently the work is being performed with regard to the budgeted cost of the work.

Resources

• Resource measurements may be a subset of cost measurements since resource variances frequently lead to cost variances.

• Evaluate price variance and usage variance.

• Measures include:

  • Planned resource utilization compared to actual resource utilization:

  • A usage variance is calculated by subtracting the planned usage from the actual usage.

  • Planned resource cost compared to actual resource cost:

  • Price variance is calculated by subtracting the estimated cost from the actual cost.

Business Value

• Measurements are used to ensure the project deliverable stays aligned to the business case and the benefits realization plans.

• Financial and nonfinancial aspects.

• Metrics that measure financial business value include:

  • Cost-benefit ratio:

  • $Cost-Benefit Ratio = Expected Present Value of Investment / Initial Cost$

  • If the costs are greater than the benefits, the result will be greater than 1.0.

  • Benefit-cost ratio:

  • $Benefit-Cost Ratio = Benefits / Costs$

  • If the ratio is greater than 1.0, the project should be considered.

  • Planned benefits delivery compared to actual benefits delivery:

  • Measuring the benefits delivered and the value of those benefits then comparing that information to the business case provides information that can justify the continuation of the project or the cancellation of the project.

  • Return on investment (ROI):

  • A measure of the amount of financial return compared to the cost, ROI is generally developed as an input to the decision to undertake a project.

  • Net present value (NPV):

  • The difference between the present value of inflows of capital and the present value of outflows of capital over a period of time, NPV is generally developed when deciding to undertake a project.

Stakeholders

• Stakeholder satisfaction can be measured with surveys or by inferring satisfaction and by looking at related metrics.

• Metrics:

  • Net Promoter Score® (NPS®):

  • Measures the degree to which a stakeholder is willing to recommend a product or service to others ranging from -100 to +100.

  • Mood chart:

  • Tracks the mood or reactions of a group of stakeholders or the project team.

  • Morale:

  • Measured by surveys or asking team members to rate their agreement on a scale of 1 to 5 to statements.

  • Turnover:

  • Track morale by looking at unplanned project team turnover.

Forecasts

• Project teams use forecasts to consider what might happen in the future so they can consider and discuss whether to adapt plans and project work accordingly.

• Forecasts can be:

  • Qualitative (expert judgment).

  • Causal (understanding the impact of a specific event).

  • Quantitative (using past information to estimate future events).

• Quantitative forecasts include:

  • Estimate to complete (ETC):

  • Forecasts the expected cost to finish all the remaining project work.

  • $ETC = (BAC - EV) / CPI$

  • Estimate at completion (EAC):

  • Forecasts the expected total cost of completing all work.

  • $EAC = BAC / CPI$

  • Variance at completion (VAC):

  • Forecasts the amount of budget deficit or surplus: $VAC = BAC - EAC$

  • To-complete performance index (TCPI):

  • Estimates the cost performance required to meet a specified management goal expressed as the ratio of the cost to finish the outstanding work to the remaining budget.

  • Regression analysis:

  • Examines input variables in relation to their output results to develop a mathematical or statistical relationship used to infer future performance.

  • Throughput analysis:

  • Assesses the number of items being completed in a fixed time frame.

PRESENTING INFORMATION

• Measures being collected are important, but what is done with the measures is just as important.

• Information should be timely, accessible, easy to absorb, and correctly convey uncertainty.

• Visual displays with graphics help stakeholders absorb and make sense of information.

Dashboards

• Show large quantities of information on metrics.

• Collect information electronically and generate charts depicting status.

• Offer high-level summaries of data and allow drill-down analysis into contributing data.

• Often include:

  • Stoplight charts (RAG charts).

  • Bar charts.

  • Pie charts.

  • Control charts.

• Text explanation can be used for measures outside the established thresholds.

Information Radiators

• Also known as big visible charts (BVCs).

• Visible, physical displays that provide information to the rest of the organization, enabling timely knowledge sharing.

• Posted where people can see the information easily rather than in a scheduling or reporting tool.

• Easy to update and updated frequently.

• Often “low tech and high touch” in that they are manually maintained rather than electronically generated.

Visual Controls

• Known as visual controls in lean environments.

• Illustrate processes to easily compare actual against expected performance using visual cues.

• Present for all levels of information from business value delivered to tasks that have started:

  • Task boards:

  • A visual representation of the planned work that allows everyone to see the status of the tasks.

  • Shows work that is ready to be started (to do), work in progress, and work that is completed.

  • Different color sticky notes can represent different types of work, and dots can be used to show how many days a task has been in its current position.

  • Used in flow-based projects, such as those that use kanban boards, to limit the amount of work in progress.

  • Burn charts:

  • Show project team velocity.

  • A burnup chart can track the amount of work done compared to the expected work that should be done.

  • A burndown chart can show the number of story points remaining or the amount of risk exposure that has been reduced.

  • Other types of charts:

  • Can also include information such as an impediment list that shows a description of the impediment to getting work done, the severity, and the actions being taken to resolve the impediment.

MEASUREMENT PITFALLS

• Project measures help the project team meet the project objectives.

• Awareness of these pitfalls can help minimize their negative effect:

  • Hawthorne effect:

  • Measuring something influences behavior.

  • Vanity metric:

  • A measure that shows data but does not provide useful information for making decisions.

  • Demoralization:

  • Unrealistic or unachievable goals can be counterproductive.

  • Misusing the metrics:

  • Focusing on less important metrics rather than the metrics that matter most, focusing on performing well for the short-term measures at the expense of long-term metrics, and working on out-of-sequence activities that are easy to accomplish in order to improve performance indicators.

  • Confirmation bias:

  • Looking for information that supports our preexisting point of view.

  • Correlation versus causation:

  • Confusing the correlation of two variables with the idea that one causes the other.

TROUBLESHOOTING PERFORMANCE

• Part of measurement is having agreed-to plans for measures that are outside the threshold ranges for schedule, budget, velocity, etc.

• The degree of variance will depend on stakeholder risk tolerances.

• Ideally, project teams should not wait until a threshold has been breached before taking action.

• An exception plan is an agreed-upon set of actions to be taken if a threshold is crossed or forecast.

• Then follow through to make sure the plan is implemented and determine if the plan is working.

GROWING AND IMPROVING

• Measure and report information to:

  • Allow the project team to learn.

  • Facilitate a decision.

  • Improve some aspect of the product or project performance.

  • Help avoid an issue.

  • Prevent performance deterioration.

INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER PERFORMANCE DOMAINS

• Interacts with the Planning, Project Work, and Delivery Performance Domains.

• Supports the activities that are part of the Planning Performance Domain by presenting up-to-date information.

• The Team and Stakeholder Performance Domains interact as project team members develop the plans and create the deliverables and deliveries that are measured.

• Unpredictable events impact measurements and metrics.

• Activities in the Uncertainty Performance Domain can be initiated based on performance measurements.

• Activities include:

  • Establishing the metrics.

  • Gathering the data.

  • Analyzing the data.

  • Making decisions.

  • Reporting on project status.

CHECKING RESULTS

• Outcomes:

  • A reliable understanding of the status of the project.

  • Actionable data to facilitate decision-making.

  • Timely and appropriate actions to keep project performance on track.

  • Achieving targets and generating business value by making informed and timely decisions based on reliable forecasts and evaluations.

• Check:

  • Audit measurements and reports demonstrate if data is reliable.

  • Measurements indicate whether the project is performing as expected or if there are variances.

  • Measurements provide leading indicators and/or current status leads to timely decisions and actions.

  • Reviewing past forecasts and current performance demonstrates if previous forecasts reflect the present accurately.

  • Comparing the actual performance to the planned performance and evaluating business documents will show the likelihood of achieving intended value from the project.

UNCERTAINTY PERFORMANCE DOMAIN

• Projects exist in environments with varying degrees of uncertainty.

• Uncertainty presents threats and opportunities that project teams explore, assess, and decide how to handle.

• Effective execution results in:

  • An awareness of the environment in which projects occur.

  • Proactively exploring and responding to uncertainty.

  • An awareness of the interdependence of multiple variables on the project.

  • The capacity to anticipate threats and opportunities and understand the consequences of issues.

  • Project delivery with little or no negative impact from unforeseen events or conditions.

  • Opportunities are realized to improve project performance and outcomes.

  • Cost and schedule reserves are utilized effectively to maintain alignment with project objectives.

• Addresses activities and functions associated with risk and uncertainty.

Definitions

• Uncertainty: A lack of understanding and awareness.

• Ambiguity: A state of being unclear.

• Complexity: Difficult to manage due to human behavior, system behavior, and ambiguity.

• Volatility: The possibility for rapid and unpredictable change.

• Risk: An uncertain event with a positive or negative effect on project objectives.

• Uncertainty in the broadest sense is a state of not knowing or unpredictability.

  • Risk.

  • Ambiguity.

  • Complexity.

Navigating Uncertainty

• Successfully navigating uncertainty begins with understanding the larger environment.

• Aspects of the environment include:

  • Economic factors.

  • Technical considerations.

  • Legal or legislative constraints or requirements.

  • Physical environment.

  • Ambiguity.

  • Social and market influences.

  • Political influences.

General Uncertainty

• Uncertainty is inherent in all projects.

• The effects of any activity cannot be predicted precisely, and a range of outcomes can occur.

• Opportunities: potential outcomes that benefit project objectives.

• Threats: potential outcomes that negatively affect objectives.

• Several options for responding to uncertainty:

  • Gather information: conducting research, engaging experts, or performing a market analysis.

  • Prepare for multiple outcomes: having a primary solution as well as backup or contingency plans.

  • Set-based design: Multiple designs or alternatives investigated early in the project to reduce uncertainty.

  • Build in resilience: the ability to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected changes.

Ambiguity

• Two categories:

  • Conceptual ambiguity: the lack of effective understanding.

  • Situational ambiguity: more than one outcome is possible.

• Solutions for exploration of ambiguity:

  • Progressive elaboration.

  • Experiments.

  • Prototypes.

Complexity

• A characteristic of a program, project, or its environment, which is difficult to manage due to human behavior, system behavior, or ambiguity.

• Exists when there are many interconnected influences that behave and interact in diverse ways.

• The effect of complexity is that there is no way of making accurate predictions about the likelihood of any potential outcome.

• Numerous ways to work with complexity:

  • Systems-based.

  • Reframing.

  • Process.

Systems-Based

• Decoupling: disconnecting parts of the system to simplify.

• Simulation: similar scenarios can be used to simulate components of a system.

Reframing

• Diversity: viewing the system from diverse perspectives.

• Balance: balancing the type of data used.

Process-Based

• Iterate: Build iteratively or incrementally.

• Engage: Build in opportunities to get stakeholder engagement.

• Fail-safe: Build in redundancy.

Volatility

• Exists in an environment subject to rapid and unpredictable change, impacting cost and schedule.

• Alternatives analysis and use of cost or schedule reserve address volatility.

• Alternatives analysis: Identifying and evaluating alternatives.

• Reserve: Cost reserve and/or schedule reserve.

Risk

• Risks are an aspect of uncertainty.

• A risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives.

• Negative risks are called threats, and positive risks are called opportunities.

• Project team members should proactively identify risks throughout the project.

• Threats and opportunities have a set of possible response strategies.

• The project team needs to know what level of risk exposure is acceptable which is stated using measurable risk thresholds.

Threats

• A threat is an event or condition that, if it occurs, has a negative impact on one or more objectives.

• Five alternative strategies may be considered for dealing with threats:

  • Avoid: act to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact.

  • Escalate: a threat is outside the scope of the project or the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.

  • Transfer: shifting ownership of a threat to a third party.

  • Mitigate: action is taken to reduce the probability of occurrence and/ or impact of a threat.

  • Accept: acknowledges the existence of a threat, but no proactive action is planned.

• Responses to overall project risk are the same as for individual threats and opportunities, though responses are applied to the overall project rather than to a specific event.

• The goal of implementing threat responses is to reduce the amount of negative risk.

Opportunities

• An opportunity is an event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive impact on one or more project objectives.

• Five alternative strategies may be considered for dealing with opportunities:

  • Exploit: act to ensure that an opportunity occurs.

  • Escalate: an opportunity is outside the scope of the project or the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.

  • Share: allocating ownership of an opportunity to a third party.

  • Enhance: act to increase the probability of occurrence or impact of an opportunity.

  • Accept: acknowledges its existence but no proactive action is planned.

Reserves

• Taking an economic view of work prioritization allows the team to prioritize threat avoidance and reduction activities.

Management and Contingency Reserve

• Reserve: an amount of time or budget set aside to account for handling risks.

• Contingency reserve: is set aside to address identified risks should they occur.

• Management reserve: is a budget category used for unknown events such as unplanned, in-scope work.

Risk Review

• Establishing a frequent rhythm or cadence of review and feedback sessions from a broad selection of stakeholders is helpful for navigating project risk and being proactive with risk responses.

• Daily Standup Meetings, Frequent Demonstrations, Weekly Status Meetings, Retrospectives and Lessons Learned Meetings

INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER PERFORMANCE DOMAINS

• Interacts with the Planning, Project Work, Delivery, and Measurement Performance Domains.

• Project team members and other stakeholders are the main sources of information regarding uncertainty.

• The choice of life cycle and development approach impacts how uncertainty will be addressed:

  • On a predictive project can use reserve in schedule and budget.

  • On adaptive project can adjust plans to reflect evolving understanding or use reserves to offset the impacts of realized risks.

CHECKING RESULTS

• Outcomes:

  • An awareness of the environment in which projects occur.

  • Proactively exploring and responding to uncertainty.

  • An awareness of the interdependence of multiple variables on the project.

  • The capacity to anticipate threats and opportunities and understand the consequences of issues.

  • Project delivery with little or no negative impact from unforeseen events or conditions.

  • Realized opportunities to improve project performance and outcomes.

  • Cost and schedule reserves used effectively to maintain alignment with project objectives.

• Checks:

  • The team incorporates environmental considerations when evaluating uncertainty, risks, and responses.

  • Risk responses are aligned with the prioritization of project constraints.

  • Actions to address complexity, ambiguity, and volatility are appropriate for the project.

  • Systems for identifying, capturing, and responding to risk are appropriately robust.

  • Scheduled delivery dates are met, and the budget performance is within the variance threshold.

  • Teams use established mechanisms to identify and leverage opportunities.

Tailoring

• Tailoring is the deliberate adaptation of the project management approach, governance, and processes to make them more suitable for the given environment and the work at hand.

• Considers: development approach, processes, project life cycle, deliverables, and choice of people with whom to engage.

• Process is driven by the guiding project management principles, organizational values, and organizational culture.

• Entails the mindful selection and adjustment of multiple project factors.

Understanding the Project Context, Goals, and Operating Environment

• Need to balance demands:

  • Delivering as quickly as possible.

  • Minimizing project costs.

  • Optimizing the value delivered.

  • Creating high-quality deliverables and outcomes.

  • Providing compliance with regulatory standards.

  • Satisfying diverse stakeholder expectations.

  • Adapting to change.

Why To Tailor?

• Performed to better suit the organization, operating environment, and project needs.

• Many variables factor into the tailoring process, including:

  • Criticality of the project.

  • The number of stakeholders involved.

• Facilitates appropriate management for the operating environment and the project needs.

• Should reflect size, duration, and complexity. Adapted to industry, organizational culture, and the level of project management maturity of the organization.

• Tailoring produces direct and indirect benefits to organizations:

  • More commitment from project team members who helped to tailor the approach.

  • Customer-oriented focus.

  • More efficient use of project resources.

What To Tailor?

• Project aspects that can be tailored include:

  • Life cycle and development approach selection.

  • Processes.

  • Engagement.

  • Tools.

  • Methods and artifacts.

Life Cycle and Development Approach Selection

• Deciding on a life cycle and the phases of the life cycle is an example of tailoring.

• Additional tailoring can be done when selecting the development and delivery approach for the project.

• Some large projects may use a combination of development and delivery approaches simultaneously.

  • Hybrid approach.

Processes

• Process tailoring for the selected life cycle and development approach includes determining which portions or elements should be:

  • Added.

  • Modified.

  • Removed.

  • Blended.

  • Aligned.

Engagement

• Tailoring engagement for the people involved in the project includes:

  • People.

  • Empowerment.

  • Integration.

Tools

• Selecting the tools the project team will use for the project is a form of tailoring.

Methods and Artifacts

• Tailoring the means that will be used to achieve the project outcomes is performed so that the methods are suited for the environment and the culture.

• Tailoring the documents, templates, and other artifacts that will be used on the project.

The Tailoring Process

• Prior to tailoring, the project environment needs to be analyzed and understood.

• Tailoring typically begins by:

  • Selecting a development and delivery approach.

  • Tailoring it for the organization.

  • Tailoring it for the project.

  • Implementing its ongoing improvement.

Select Initial Development Approach

• Determines the development approach that will be used for the project.

• A suitability filter tool helps project teams consider whether a project has characteristics that lend themselves toward a predictive, hybrid, or adaptive approach.

• Evaluate criteria based on culture, project team, and project factors, a suitability filter generates a diagnostic visual that can be helpful in discussing and deciding on the initial approach.

Tailor for the Organization

• Organizations often require some level of approval and oversight.

• Organizations that have established process governance need to ensure tailoring is aligned to policy.

• Additional constraints for tailoring for the organization include large, safety-critical projects and projects performed under contract.

• Large, safety-critical project tailoring suggestions may require additional oversight and approval to help prevent errors, loss, or subsequent issues.

• Projects that are performed under contract may have contract terms that specify the use of a particular life cycle, delivery approach, or methodology.

Tailor for the Project

• Many attributes influence tailoring for the project. These include:

  • Product/deliverable.

  • Project team.

  • Culture.

• The project team should ask questions about each attribute to help guide them in the tailoring process.

• A VDO may be found in organizations that use more adaptive delivery approaches.

Implement Ongoing Improvement

• Tailoring is not a single, one-time exercise.

• During progressive elaboration, issues with how the project team is working, how the product or deliverable is evolving, and other learnings will indicate where further tailoring could bring improvements.

• Review points, phase gates, and retrospectives all provide opportunities to inspect and adapt the process.

• Keeping the project team engaged with improving its process can foster pride of ownership and demonstrate a commitment to implement ongoing improvements and quality.

TAILORING THE PERFORMANCE DOMAINS

• The work associated with each performance domain can also be tailored, based on the uniqueness of the project.

• The principles for project management provide guidance for the behavior of project practitioners as they tailor the performance domains to meet the unique needs of the project context and the environment.

• Some tailoring considerations related to each of the performance domains include, but are not limited to:

Stakeholders

• Is there a collaborative environment for stakeholders and suppliers?

• Are the stakeholders internal or external to the organization, or both?

• What technologies are most appropriate and cost effective for communicating to stakeholders? What communication technology is available?

• Is one language used with stakeholders? Have allowances been made to adjust to stakeholders from diverse language groups?

• How many stakeholders are there? How diverse is the culture within the stakeholder community?

• What are the relationships within the stakeholder community?

Project Team

• What is the physical location of project team members?

• Does the project team reflect diverse viewpoints and cultural perspectives?

• How will project team members be identified for the project?

• Does the project team have an established culture?

• How is project team development managed for the project?

• Are there project team members who have special needs? Will the project team need special training to manage diversity?

Development Approach and Life Cycle

• Which development approach is appropriate for the product, service, or result? If adaptive, should the project be developed incrementally or iteratively? Is a hybrid approach best?

• What is an appropriate life cycle for this specific project? What phases should comprise the project life cycle?

• Does the organization have formal or informal audit and governance policies, procedures, and guidelines?

Planning

• How might internal and external environmental factors influence the project and its deliverable?

• What are the factors influencing durations?

• Does the organization have formal or informal policies, procedures, and guidelines related to cost estimating and budgeting?

• How does the organization estimate cost when using adaptive approaches?

• Is there one main procurement or are there multiple procurements at different times with different sellers that add to the complexity of the procurement processes?

• Are local laws and regulations regarding procurement activities integrated with the organization’s procurement policies? How does this affect contract auditing requirements?

Project Work

• What management processes are most effective based on the organizational culture, complexity, and other project factors?

• How will knowledge be managed in the project to foster a collaborative working environment?

• What information should be collected throughout and at the end of the project? How will the information be collected and managed? What technology is available to develop, record, transmit, retrieve, track, and store information and artifacts?

• Will historical information and lessons learned be made available to future projects?

• Does the organization have a formal knowledge management repository that a project team is required to use, and is it readily accessible?

Delivery

• Does the organization have formal or informal requirements management systems?

• Does the organization have existing formal or informal validation and control-related policies, procedures, and guidelines?

• What quality policies and procedures exist in the organization? What quality tools, techniques, and templates are used in the organization?

• Are there any specific quality standards in the industry that need to be applied? Are there any specific governmental, legal, or regulatory constraints that need to be taken into consideration?

• Are there areas of the project with unstable requirements? If so, what is the best approach for addressing the unstable requirements?

• How does sustainability factor into the elements of project management or product development?

Uncertainty

• What is the risk appetite and risk tolerance for this endeavor?

• How are threats and opportunities best identified and addressed within the selected development approach?

• How will the presence of project complexity, technological uncertainty, product novelty, cadence, or progress tracking impact the project?

• Does the project’s size in terms of budget, duration, scope, or project team size require a more detailed approach to risk management? Or is the project small enough to justify a simplified risk management process?

• Is a robust risk management approach demanded by high levels of innovation, new technology, commercial arrangements, interfaces, or other external dependencies? Or is the project simple enough that a reduced risk management process will suffice?

• How strategically important is the project? Is the level of risk increased for this project because it aims to produce breakthrough opportunities, addresses significant blocks to organizational performance, or involves major product innovation?

Measurement

• How is value measured?

• Are there measures for financial value and