The most neglected part of a typical project plan is capturing the assumptions and risks. BIG MISTAKE!!
Assumptions are the things that you believe to be true – more specifically, the things that MUST be true in order for your project to be a success. If you don’t know what is necessary for success, how on Earth will you know you’re ready?!?
Risks are the outside factors – things out of your control – that, if they occur, will make your project unsuccessful. If you don’t know your risks you’re flying blind – maybe into bad weather.
Critically important: the assumptions and risks are not limited to technical development of a product. Does Sales know the target customer? Does Marketing know the competitive landscape? Can Manufacturing make the product reliably? Is there a robust supply chain for the raw materials? Is the e-commerce channel established? Is the regulatory environment well defined? Oh yeah, does R&D (or engineering) have a workable solution?
These are really just categories of risk and assumptions. A good, focused, project-specific brainstorming session will reveal dozens of underlying assumptions and undiscovered risks. Prioritize them. (We can discuss how to do that.)
This sounds like a fixed process – do it at the beginning and then run. Not so fast. Circumstances change much faster than the typical project timeline. Reviewing risks and assumptions routinely is straightforward. The hard part is identifying changing assumptions and uncovering new risks. Whether this is a step in your phase-gate process or part of your agile/spiral approach to development, make sure it happens.
The list of assumptions and risks, routinely reviewed and evolving, is the basis of your project! Create a work plan that validates each assumption and mitigates each risk. That’s it. Sounds easy? Don’t worry, it’s not. But it will maximize your chances of success.
