Project management consulting and training for social change organisations.
At DrupalCon DC in March I got to meet Kent Bye of Lullabot face-to-face for the first time, which was great (great to meet all the Lullabots I hadn't met in person before, actually, and to catch up with the rest of them).
Kent interviewed me for the Drupal Voices podcast — I got to talk about the Drupal projects I've worked on in the past, about Drupal for NGOs and about Scrum.
I think I'd had a bit too much coffee that morning but Kent did a good job of editing out the bits I was especially worried about — take a listen!
agile, drupal, drupalforngos, importantprojects, lullabot, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment
Concern FAST is an annual fundraising campaign run by Concern Worldwide involving thousands of people and hundreds of schools in Ireland. Participants register to fast for a day and their friends and families to sponsor them to do so — Concern then uses the money (more than €1,000,000.00 is raised every year) to help people living in extreme poverty in some of the poorest countries in the world.
The Concern FAST 2008 campaign is up and running now! Concern hopes to raise €1,300,000.00 between now and January 31st (the actual day of fasting is December 4th) and this year, they're running the online component of the campaign on open source software — I worked with Concern and Enable Interactive to build http://concernfast.org in Drupal and CiviCRM using Scrum!
If you live in Ireland and want to help Concern fight hunger and poverty in the developing world, take part!
blogactionday, blogactionday2008, concern, concernfast2008, civicrm, drupal, enableinteractive, importantprojects, hunger, malnutrition, nptech, opensource, poverty, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment, starvation
A couple of months ago I mentioned I'd started working with Concern Worldwide on a pretty massive Drupal/CiviCRM project and was excited about the work we'd done in defining our objectives. We're now just one week away from completing our first development sprint, and although I'm pretty much all about that at this point, I still want to write about the objectives we've set for the project (and especially today — long story but I had to bow out of my faculty position at Social Tech Training in Toronto this week where I was meant to lead a session on setting objectives... Christopher Roy has kindly agreed to deliver the session on my behalf and I guess writing this now is partly an attempt to be there in spirit).
Notwithstanding the fact that many project teams very often forget or intentionally skip setting objectives, taking the time to set them is important for a number of reasons:
Collective focus on project outcomes is pretty critical to project success, and setting objectives allows us to achieve collective focus, so we set them. That is, we should set them — a lot of teams don't set objectives because they find it hard, or because they don't know how, or because they'd rather just "get on with it" (and deal with the consequences later — bad).
To make setting objectives on your projects easier, I've done a bit of research and put together the following step-by-step instructions. Enjoy!
Step 1. Understand organisational/program goals
Back in 2006, I don't think I really understood the difference between objectives and goals. This is pretty (embarrassingly) clear if you go back and look at the "objectives" set for the Drupal migration project I worked on with Greenpeace UK that year. Those weren't objectives; those were goals. Goals and objectives are different1:
Objectives map onto goals. And once met, objectives contribute to the achievement of goals. So before you set project objectives, you should really understand the overarching goals of the organisation undertaking the project, or the goals of the program of which the project is a part. Right?
The project I'm working on right now with Concern is part of its "Next-Generation Web" (NGW) program (i.e. it is one of many projects to be undertaken by Concern as part of the NGW program), which has the following goals:
To contribute to the achievement of these goals by a certain date and for a certain amount of money, we've set some narrow, specific, short term and measurable objectives for our project :)
Step 2. Define SMART objectives
Narrow, specific, short term and measurable objectives are good, but SMART2 objectives are even better. SMART objectives are objectives that are:
With Concern we've used the following format for defining our SMART project objectives, which I think has worked well and which I recommend using:
By [INSERT DATE], [INSERT WHO] will have [INSERT WHAT] resulting in [INSERT RESULTS] by [INSERT DATE].
Without the actual values inserted the above doesn't seem to have a lot of, well, value, I realise — here are the three SMART objectives we set for our project (I've removed the measurements because they're for internal use only at this point, but you'll get the picture):
It took us a bit of time to figure these out, a bit of discipline, but we got through it, and once done, we were able to validate our work by testing for SMARTness :)
Once you've written your SMART project objectives, it's good to test them as a team, or even better, with stakeholders on the project but external to the core team (i.e. those who may influence outcomes but who are not part of the day-to-day). Get them in a room or on the phone with you and test each objective one by one. Like so3:
One of the huge benefits to going through a process like this is determining whether the objectives you've set for your project are relevant — in my experience when teams do set objectives they often set them for people other than themselves, objectives they don't actually have the ability to achieve (e.g. objectives having to do with organisational changes they'd like to see happen but can't really influence). That and measurability. You've got to set measurable objectives. Even though you could be long gone before the outcomes of your project become measurable. SMART objectives are measurable if nothing else :)
Download this post as a PDF: 
HOW TO Set SMART Objectives (108 KB)
Endnotes:
1Goal vs. Objective — Difference and Comparison (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2008, from http://www.diffen.com/difference/Goal_vs_Objective.
2SMART (project management) (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_(project_management).
3Setting SMART Objectives (n.d.). Retrieved June 24, 2008, from http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2006/03/11/setting-smart-objectives/.
concern, civicrm, drupal, importantprojects, nptech, objectives, projectmanagement, SMART, softwaredevelopment, STT
Last month when I was in New Orleans for 08NTC I got a call from Enable Interactive in Bristol asking if I wanted to co-pitch with them on a very large CMS/CRM project for Concern Worldwide. We talked about it more when I got back to London, then went for it, then won the contract — w00t!
We were in Dublin at Concern's head office on Monday for the kick-off meeting and I've just spent the last two days in Bristol getting to know the Enable team and working with the folks at Concern to define the objectives for the project (which I'll blog about in another post — I'm quite excited about the work we've done there).
We're still working out our high-level plan for the next several months, but basically we're moving all of Concern's sites to Drupal, very likely integrating with CiviCRM and then with a number of existing systems as well. And we'll being following Scrum to get it all done (and I'm currently looking for an outstanding Scrum trainer in Dublin or London to train the entire team on the framework/process — if you are one or know one please get in touch with me).
Should be fun :-)
concern, civicrm, drupal, enableinteractive, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, scrum, softwaredevelopment
I'm exhausted and can't really express what I'm feeling at the moment, but we're live — the International Secretariat of Amnesty International has re-launched its new, completely re-architected, W3C Web Content Accessibility-compliant, data protection law and privacy legislation-compliant, multi-lingual and totally open source Drupal, CiviCRM and Alfresco-based website. I'll blog in more detail later but in the meantime want to thank Fortune Cookie, CivicActions and the truly amazing group people I've had the pleasure to work with at Amnesty for getting this done :)
alfresco, amnestyinternational, civicactions, civicrm, crm, cms, drupal, fortunecookie, humanrights, impact, importantprojects, nptech, open source, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment
I think this is my what — fourth post on Project IMPACT since I started working on it back in January? It's been such an intense and challenging project I simply haven't had time to blog about it properly (or about much of anything else come to think of it — my apologies, Alex, for not responding to your Basecamp workflow or Web of Change session notes yet).
The update, then: we're now heading into our fifth of five development sprints with CivicActions (we've been using Scrum to manage the technical development stream of the project — lots of valuable lessons learned there to relay another time) and are finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel (for the last five months, we've been working to completely rebuild http://amnesty.org in Drupal, integrate the new site with CiviCRM, and to integrate Drupal with Alfresco, the open source document management system Amnesty has selected as a replacement to its existing repository of 100,000+ reports).
Next week, Jenn and Jacob of CivicActions come back to London, the week after that we'll be joined by Sam, and I'm hoping that when we're all in a room together instead of a bunch of different time zones, I'll actually have a chance to blog about the project in more detail. And until then I really should get back to work :)
alfresco, amnestyinternational, civicactions, civicrm, crm, cms, drupal, humanrights, impact, importantprojects, nptech, open source, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment
A couple of exciting updates since my last entry on Project IMPACT:
First, the International Secretariat of Amnesty has selected US-based CivicActions as its partner for the technical development stream of the project. Another very hard decision (CivicActions was short-listed for the contract along with Drupal internationalisation module sponsors Development Seed) but one the team at Amnesty is very happy with — we just spent 2 very productive days here in London with the CivicActions team kicking-off this stream of the project and everyone seems very excited about the months ahead :-)
And next, we've just about completed the re-architecture phase of the project. Fortune Cookie has delivered a draft of the user interface specification we plan to use to theme the new site and the folks at CivicActions are busy determining the ways in which it can be "Druplified" — very exciting stuff. There is NO stopping this train ;-)
More soon!
amnestyinternational, civicactions, civicrm, crm, cms, drupal, fortune cookie, humanrights, impact, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, technicaldevelopment
The new Greenpeace UK site is live!
We're still at the Duke of Cambridge celebrating — right after you check out the site and set up an online monthly direct debit donation, come join us :)
greenpeace, importantprojects, launch, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, website
It's been a while since I've blogged on Project IMPACT but I have big news today!
First off, the International Secretariat of Amnesty has officially chosen Drupal and CiviCRM as the Web CMS and eCRM platforms it will invest in and build its Web infrastructure on going forward — a very big thanks to the great people at Beaconfire for helping to make that happen :)
Next, we're now well underway with the re-architecture phase of the project, having contracted user-centred design, website accessibility and information architecture experts Fortune Cookie to take us through an intensive re-architecture process, the output of which (among other things) will be a (user-tested!) user interface specification to start with in the next phase of the project.
Which brings me to this:
IMPACT – Technical Development RFP (43 KB)
We're now looking for a dedicated team of 3-5 experienced Drupal/CiviCRM developers to work with us over the next 6 months on this challenging and extremely important project. The deadline for expressions of interest is Friday, April 20 at 09:00 GMT and the rest of the submission details are in the document.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all re the RFP and please pass it on to development vendors you think might be interested :)
Thanks!
amnestyinternational, civicrm, crm, cms, drupal, humanrights, impact, importantprojects, nptech, nptechjobs, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, technicaldevelopment
Just a quick note to let you know that the Greenpeace UK Drupal-powered website I've been working on will be launching sometime in the afternoon on Monday, April 16, and a bunch of us will be getting together afterwards (at approximately 6:30pm) at the Duke of Cambridge in Islington to celebrate — please join us!
If you do plan to come out, please list yourself as attending over at upcoming.org, or on the Drupal UK user group site (so we know how many tables to attempt to reserve). Hope to see you there!
greenpeace, importantprojects, launch, nptech, party, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, website
My friends at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) are looking for a brilliant individual or outstanding small team in Toronto to manage the user acceptance testing, training and roll-out of a grants management system I helped them define the requirements for a little while back.
This is a dream job — from the attached RFP (emphasis mine):
The RFP: CBCF Project Manager (45 KB)
The deadline for response is Friday, February 2 at 5:00pm EST and the rest of the submission details are in the document. This is a hugely exciting opportunity — I'll be very interested to follow the progress made :)
cbcf, consultation, grantsmanagement, importantprojects, nptech, nptechjobs, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, training, uat
As a follow-on to the work I did with Amnesty last year, I'm very excited to report that Important Projects has now been awarded a contract to manage "IMPACT," an information architecture, content management and e-communications project soon to be kicked-off by the International Secretariat's Internet and E-Communications Programme (IEP).
We're still in the process of coming to agreement on the particulars, but the high-level deliverables of the project will be a re-architected amnesty.org, the implementation of an open source CMS (very likely to be Drupal) and the implementation of an open source CRM (very likely to be CiviCRM).
I'll post more soon — I'm hoping to be as transparent with this work as I've been able to be on the Greenpeace UK CMS project :)
amnestyinternational, civicrm, crm, cms, drupal, humanrights, impact, importantprojects, informationarchitecture, nptech, open source, projectmanagement, redesign, softwaredevelopment
I'm extremely happy to report that we've now entered the final stages of the Greenpeace UK CMS project — Cristen, Michael and Tom of EchoDitto were here in London this week to take the GPUK web team through 2 days of Drupal training and to revisit the online strategy recommendations they'd presented to us back in August; we've got a bunch of acceptance testing and cosmetic tweaking still to do, but otherwise are looking good for a January launch :)
And in the meantime, here's a sneak peak at what the new site will look like (mock-up courtesy of BiroCreative in Vancouver, Canada):
Stay tuned!
birocreative, cms, drupal, echoditto, greenpeace, importantprojects, interfacedesign, NGO, nptech, open source
Photo © 2006 Dave Walsh
Amazing day yesterday at the I Count march and demonstration in Trafalgar Square — 25,000 people turned up to call for action against climate change (see the press release here). I worked as one of the Greenpeace UK stewards and I'm not kidding — the event really filled me with hope :)
Please head over to the I Count site, sign up, discover the power of OFF and start using energy-saving light bulbs already!
:)
action, campaign, climatechange, coalition, demonstration, icount, stopclimatechaos, trafalgarsquare
A lot of progress has been made since my last post on the Greenpeace UK CMS project — the Design & Implementation phases of the project have been planned and are well underway (37% complete), EchoDitto has contracted Birocreative to make improvements to the existing GPUK UI and we've seen the first round of mock-ups (which look great), we're getting ready to begin populating our new Drupal site with content, and in about a month or so should be ready to begin looking more closely at how we want certain bits of functionality to work (which will really be the fun part, the part where we get to revisit the outcomes of our online strategy session with EchoDitto in late August where we talked about tactics for building true online community and engaging existing supporters).
Stay tuned!
birocreative, cms, drupal, echoditto, greenpeace, importantprojects, interfacedesign, NGO, nptech, open source
The Stop Climate Chaos coalition has launched the I Count campaign! Check it out, sign up, get involved, take action and be sure to make it out to I Count in the Square on Saturday, November 4th!
See you there :)
action, campaign, climatechange, coalition, demonstration, icount, stopclimatechaos, trafalgarsquare
Great week for the Greenpeace UK CMS project this week — Cristen Perks, Michael Silberman and Tom Lee of EchoDitto were here in London to take us through 2 intense days of strategic planning meetings which IMHO went really, really well and got all of us excited about the phases of work we're about to begin.
For me, our most interesting discussions were around the idea of trusted networks; that people trust their friends first, experts second and celebrities third. With this in mind, and with Drupal as our platform, how should we redesign the site; what tools can we provide Greenpeace UK supporters that would allow them to leverage their trusted networks to help Greenpeace UK achieve its goals?
We came up with some interesting ideas — more later as things progress :)
drupal, echoditto, greenpeace, importantprojects, nptech, projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, strategy, tactics, technology
For the last 6 weeks I've been working with a team of 7 Greenpeace UK staff to refine the objectives and prioritise the requirements for a constituent relationship management system GPUK plans to implement (we'd originally planned to spend 5 weeks on this activity but made the decision to spend more time on the requirements definition piece).
This week, we're making the final revisions to our list of prioritised functional requirements and must-have non-functional requirements, at which point I'll post them here and solicit your feedback and recommendations — GPUK already has a centralised (but offline) supporter data warehouse they run reports from using Cognos; what they're looking to do now is implement a CRM system that integrates what they already have with their website, which they'll be migrating to Drupal in parallel.
More later :)
UPDATE: this project is on hold until some resourcing issues can be worked out (and until then, I'm not able to post the requirements list mentioned above).
UPDATE 2: I'm no longer working on this project, although it will be continuing (I believe my friend and colleague Sue Fidler will be working with GPUK to complete the next phase of work).
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, howto, prioritise, requirements, crm, drupal, civicrm, democracyinaction, salesforce.com
As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've been working with the Internet and E-Communications Programme (IEP) team at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International to organise and plan a 2 year work programme for the IEP — one that best meets the objectives they've set for themselves and that gives them better visibility into what is actually achievable given their staff and resource constraints.
Last week I met with the team for the day to do two things: to come up with ways the IEP can better manage its ongoing operations (i.e. those repetitive tasks that must be done but never end like keeping site content up-to-date) and to begin to prioritise its projects (those temporary endeavours undertaken to produce unique results like replacing the CMS used to keep site content up-to-date).
To accomplish the former, we used dotmocracy, an equal opportunity and participatory group decision-making process my colleague and friend Jason Diceman introduced me to a couple of years ago. I'd never facilitated a dotmocracy session before, so I read the most recent version of the handbook, got some last minute instruction and advice from Jason himself, and it ended up working out really well — the group came up with more than a dozen proposals (ideas) for improving the ongoing operations of the IEP, which, once dotted, we were able to sort in order of agreement and begin to develop action plans and next steps around. A highly recommended experience :)
Check out Jason's site/company, Co-op Tools, for more on the process or to get him into your organisation to facilitate a session.
projectmanagement, programme, planning, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, amnestyinternational, dotmocracy, facilitation, jasondiceman, cooptools
It's been a while since I've blogged on the Greenpeace UK CMS project (partly be due to delays experienced as we've worked through internal approvals and partly due to the heat). I'm happy to report that we have now finalised our vendor selection/decision — after much deliberation, the Greepeace UK web team has awarded its CMS design & implementation contract to EchoDitto.
Congratulations, Michael, Justin and team! We're all really looking forward to working with and getting to know you over the next few months :)
I'd also like to say thanks to the other 5 Drupal vendors we worked with leading up to this decision, and especially to the folks at CivicActions, who volunteered to take us through Drupal initially and were extremely helpful to us throughout the entire process.
Thanks so much, Dan, Susan and Owen :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, echoditto, vendorselection, drupal, open source, cms
Two weeks ago I started working with the Internet and E-Communications Programme (IEP) team at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International (and thank you, David Heath, for recommending me; I've wanted to work with Amnesty since starting Important Projects and am extremely excited to be doing so now) — prior to beginning a CMS replacement project very similar to the one I'm currently working on with Greenpeace UK, I'm working with the IEP to organise and plan a 2 year work programme designed to both meet their defined goals and objectives and give them better visibility into what is actually achievable given their staff and resource constraints.
I'll post more as things progress, but in the meantime, thanks, Dan and Helena, for the opportunity to work with you and your team. I'm really looking forward to the work ahead :)
projectmanagement, programme, planning, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, amnestyinternational
Today was the first meeting of the Greenpeace UK "E-Business" requirements prioritisation team (pictured above — and thanks for posing for the photo, people).
We met to kick-off a 5 week requirements definition and prioritisation project — really a sub-project of a larger project Greenpeace UK has undertaken to provide supporters with the ability to manage their relationships with Greenpeace online.
We'll be following a requirements definition and prioritisation process really similar to the one the web team and I followed on the Greenpeace UK CMS project (and when I say similar I mean identical but with improvements gleaned from our experience in engaging with the Plone and Drupal communities throughout that process).
Gideon, Joss, Katie and Tracy — thanks for your time today and I look forward to working with you on this very exciting and important project :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, greenpeace, importantprojects, howto, prioritise, requirements, open source, community
A few weeks ago I blogged that we'd completed the 3 product evaluations we'd scheduled as part of the requirements phase of the Greenpeace UK CMS project (where we scored Planet 2/OpenACS, Plone and Drupal against our top 35 requirements) and that our next steps were to review and interpret the results of the evaluations, consider our non-functional requirements, make our product/vendor decision and plan the next phases of the project. Although we don't have all the information we need to make our final business case to the Greenpeace UK senior management team quite yet, we have made a provisional decision — budget permitting, we're going with Drupal.
It's been an extremely tough decision to make because there are very real advantages (and disadvantages) to each of the products we've considered. And all the people we've interacted with throughout the process we've followed have been so friendly and helpful and passionate which makes even announcing this difficult, but in the end, given our specific requirements and situation, we've decided that Drupal makes the most sense.
For anyone who may be interested, here's the spreadsheet we used to perform our evaluations:
Greenpeace UK CMS Feature Evaluations (98 KB). (And if you're really interested, I'm happy to take a crack at answering any questions you may have as you take a look through our scores and wonder why one product did better than another here-but-not-there, etc.)
Our next steps are to define the scope of work for the next phases of the project as best we can, send out our RFP to the shortlist of Drupal vendors we've identified, make a vendor decision, and present our final business case to the budget approvers at Greenpeace UK.
Onwards!
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, productevaluation, drupal, open source, cms
A few months ago my friend Matt Cowan introduced me to Richard Gizbert, a fellow Canadian-in-London and former ABC war correspondent who was sacked by ABC in 2004 after 11 years of life-risking service for refusing to go into any more war zones (specifically Iraq). Since then, Richard has taken ABC to court for wrongful dismissal and won (w00t!), although the process has basically bankrupted him and his compensation has yet to be decided — I believe the next appeals hearing is in July.
In parallel with all of this, Richard has joined Moonbeam Films to develop "The Listening Post," a weekly television program examining global media bias for the soon-to-be-launched Al Jazeera International.
Matt put me in touch with Richard because he thought I could help the Listening Post producers explore ways to incorporate video bloggers into the show; essentially they're hoping that Listening Post viewers will provide feedback on and/or input into the program in the form of audio or video "letters to the editor" they can broadcast as part of a weekly segment of the show called "Global Village Voices."
Global Village Voice submissions will be made and managed through The Listening Post website; I've been retained to help refine their requirements and find a suitable vendor.
More later as things progress :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, thelisteningpost, open source, cms, communitybuilding, aljazeerainternational, AJI, iraq
Today we performed the last two of the three open source product/feature evaluations we're conducting as part the Greenpeace UK CMS project — Jean-Paul Ladage of Zest Software in the Netherlands took us through a presentation and demonstration of Plone this morning, and Dan Robinson of CivicActions in California did likewise with Drupal this afternoon. Thank you, Jean-Paul and Dan, for the time and effort you both put into your presentations — they were fantastic :)
Our next steps now are to review and interpret the results of all three evaluations, consider the "non-functional" requirements we've identified that will also impact our final decision (e.g. cost, time, strength of community, our product roadmap, etc.), and to plan the next phases of the project given all of the above. To do so, we need to work with a number of people from within Greenpeace and beyond...more later as things progress :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, productevaluation, plone, drupal, open source, cms
Today the Greenpeace UK web team performed the first of three open source CMS product evaluations we'll be conducting over the next couple of weeks — Greenpeace International took us through a 2 hour presentation/demonstration of Planet 2, the OpenACS-based CMS used by over 20 Greenpeace National Regional Offices. Thank you, Martin and Tom, for putting together your presentation and addressing all of our questions :)
In terms of the process we're following at this point, our top 35 requirements have been dropped into our feature evaluation spreadsheet (see Figure 1, below), where team members will assign numeric scores for each requirement during product presentations/demonstrations. As with our requirements scores, our feature scores will be averaged when they're all in, which will then be translated into an overall letter grade (e.g. B-, C+, A) for each product.
Figure 1 — scoring products by requirement.
Our Drupal/CivicSpace and Plone evaluations are still to come — stay tuned for more!
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, productevaluation, planet2, openacs, open source, cms, open source
About a month ago, I posted the list of six activities the Greenpeace UK web team and I plan to perform by the beginning of June. So far, we've completed the first three:
We've also chosen the 3 open source CMS products we plan to evaluate given our prioritised requirements, and they are (in alphabetical order):
So without further ado, our prioritised requirements: Prioritised CMS Requirements for Greenpeace UK (741 KB)
If you're an experienced Drupal or Plone shop (we'll work with Greenpeace International on the Planet 2/OpenACS front) and are interested in working with us on this, please comment here or send me an email — rob[at]importantprojects[dot]co[dot]uk.
And thanks!
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, prioritise, open source, cms, requirements
...continued from HOW TO Prioritise Requirements (Part I)
Once you've defined and weighted the organisational objectives your project is being undertaken to address, and you've identified and weighted the user types the project is meant to serve, define the requirements for the software you're planning to implement with your objectives and users in mind. On the Greenpeace UK CMS project, we started by looking at the PMBOK's definition for requirement:
Given this, and looking back on the notes from our away day in February, we developed a list of over 100 conditions and/or capabilities the new Greenpeace UK CMS must meet or possess in order to achieve our organisational objectives and to satisfy our user types.
Each requirement was given an ID, and documented using a technique Martin Lloyd of Greenpeace International suggested we try, which phrases requirements like so: "As a [select user type] I would like to [describe what you would like to do] so that [describe why you would like to do it]" (see Figure 3, below). This worked extremely well for us — it really helped us to define our requirements so that they were easy to understand (and/or to identify the ones that needed to be clarified).
Figure 3 — defining requirements.
Next comes the fun part. Once you have a set of requirements your team members have all had a hand in developing, ask each member of the team to score them based on how well they help achieve the organisational objectives you've defined and how well they help meet the needs of the user types you've identified (see Figure 4, below). We had a list of 90 requirements (pared down over time through discussion), and each member of the team scored each requirement using the following system:
Scoring
2 = Requirement helps meet objective/satisfy user
1 = Requirement partially helps meet objective/satisfy user
0 = Requirement does not help meet objective/satisfy user
Figure 4 — scoring requirements.
It pays to take your time through this exercise — the more precise you can be when using this scoring system (e.g. "1.8" vs. "2.0"), the more useful the end results will be. Once all scores have been given, average them for each requirement and sort the results from highest to lowest. The spreadsheet we used also assigns a priority category to bands of requirements (C for critical, H, M and L for high, medium and low), which is very useful as well — because we want to stay focused on the system features and capabilities that are most important to the web team, to our end users and to Greenpeace, we'll focus our product evaluation on how well each CMS meets our most critical, highest priority requirements.
Endnotes:
1Project Management Institute. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: PMBOK Guide - 3rd Edition. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, 2004. pp 371-372.
Download the spreadsheet discussed in this article: 
Requirements Prioritisation template (200 KB)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, howto prioritise, requirements
When you're planning to implement a new piece of software, prioritising your requirements is really important because a) it helps you focus on the things that matter most and b) it makes selecting the right product way less of a crap shoot. But unless you follow a logically sound prioritisation process — one that all project stakeholders understand and buy into — prioritising requirements can become an arbitrary and unnecessarily emotional exercise (i.e. the exact opposite of what you want).
On the Greenpeace UK CMS project, we're currently defining the requirements for a new content management system (the existing system was developed in ColdFusion over 4 years ago and simply no longer meets its users' needs). Our plan is to evaluate 3 open source products and make a selection based on how well each product meets our top priority requirements — to do so, we're following a step-by-step process designed to keep us focused on the system features and capabilities that are most important to the web team, to our end users and to Greenpeace.
Step 1. Define and weight organizational objectives
Like I've said before, projects are undertaken to achieve strategic objectives. Greenpeace has a number of strategic objectives, one very important one being to win campaigns. At our away day meeting in February, we brainstormed on how the web team could help Greenpeace achieve this objective, performed a SWOT analysis, came up with a number of project ideas and decided that replacing the existing Greenpeace UK CMS with something better was the most important project for the web team to undertake at this time.
Having made the decision to take on a project (i.e. a temporary endeavour involving risk), teams should write down and distribute the organisational/team objectives the project is being undertaken to address. This will help ensure project stakeholders are on the same page, can help determine whether the project really should be undertaken at all and will factor into both requirements definition and prioritisation later on.
We defined 3 organisational objectives for the Greenpeace UK CMS project, and assigned weightings to each, according to how well we thought they could help us help Greenpeace win campaigns (see Figure 1, below):
Figure 1 — defining and weighting organisational objectives.
Step 2. Identify and weight user types
Once organisational objectives have been defined and prioritised, identify and assign weightings to the types of users that will interact with the system you've decided to implement. Again, you want to do this because you want stakeholders to come to agreement on who the project is being undertaken to serve, and because you need to think about (and, where possible, directly involve) the users of the system in the requirements definition and prioritisation process.
Users are people/machines who/that interact with a given system — in the case of the Greenpeace UK CMS project, we identified 4 different user types, and weighted them according to their relative importance in achieving our overarching project objective of helping Greenpeace winning campaigns through the implementation of a better content management system (see Figure 2, below):
To be continued Continued in HOW TO Prioritise Requirements (Part II)!
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, greenpeace, howto prioritise, requirements
Since my last entry, I've been retained by the Greenpeace UK web team to continue working with them on the project we started planning at our away day three weeks ago (also since my last entry, I've learned that "away day" is the term used for "offsite" over here). The project involves replacing the http://greenpeace.org.uk CMS — so far we've scheduled the following activities to take place between now and the beginning of June:
To prioritise our CMS requirements we'll be using a technique I've used before — if time permits, I may publish it here in steps as part of another HOW TO :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, nptech, open source, cms, greenpeace, importantprojects, ecampaigning
I spent the day on Friday of last week co-facilitating an offsite meeting of the Greenpeace UK web team with team manager (and fellow Canadian), Tracy Frauzel. Great day, fantastic group of people, and in my books, a really good meeting — we met to define the objectives, high-level requirements, and critical success factors for a web project the team plans to undertake, but made sure to spend some time talking about (and mapping what we came up with onto) the strategic objectives of Greenpeace as an organization as well. This is an often skipped but important step in the project planning process given the fact that organizations always and only undertake projects in order to achieve strategic objectives (and that, in this sense, strategic planning is always done for project management — see Kerzner's Strategic Planning for Project Management for more on this).
Tracy — thanks again for the opportunity to work with you and your team, and Andrew, Bex, Jamie and Joss — it was great meeting you and I look forward to seeing you again soon :)
strategicplanning, projectmanagement, nptech, haroldkerzner, greenpeace, importantprojects, ecampaigning
Some time ago, I was commissioned by Katrin Verclas of Aspiration to write an article on collaborative software projects, using two (partially) failed projects as examples of what not to do. It's been a long time coming, and in the end, involved collaborating with Important Projects ally Phil Dwyer to complete, but here it is, what I hope will be the first in a series of HOW TO articles published on this site under a Creative Commons license:
HOW TO Manage Collaborative Software Projects (148 KB)
Recommendations made in the article for the successful management of collaborative software projects:
Enjoy! Very interested in any feedback you might have as well :)
projectmanagement, softwaredevelopment, collaboration, nptech, howto, importantprojects
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm currently working with Leda Dederich at ScoutSeven to develop the project plan for dotOrganize, a collaborative software development and strategic support project undertaken to get better organizing tools and strategies into the hands of grassroots organizers. While we work on documenting the plan, we're also working to gather requirements, and to that end, a request from Leda:
http://www.scoutseven.com/survey
So yes, please take a few minutes to help us help you. Much appreciated :)
UPDATE: the survey is now closed. Over 400 responses were received and the results are now being aggregated; stay tuned to http://www.scoutseven.com/dotorganize for the published findings!
I'm very happy to report that Important Projects has been selected by ScoutSeven to help develop the project plan for dotOrganize, a collaborative software development and strategic support project that plans to provide social change groups with a robust and affordable online organizing and database management platform. I'll be working with Leda Dederich on this one, another amazing person I met at Web of Change this year, along with a whole host of other people doing interesting work and who I'm excited to meet.
The project will be governed by four core principles, as follows:
Again, I'm very excited to be working with you on this, Leda! I'll post more on the project here as things progress :)
I spent the afternoon today with Kat Dodds, founder of Good Company Communications, talking about her involvement in the upcoming Habitat Jam, her plans for the redesign of Hello Cool World, the suite of products and services Good Company offers and/or has plans to offer, and the important role project management will play in making it all happen. Kat's great because even though she's had huge successes with projects like The Corporation, The Take, and, most recently, Scared Sacred, she still actively solicits input and advice from friends and colleagues.
You rock, Kat!
The winners of the 2005 Showcase Ontario Voluntary Sector Awards have been announced. Congratulations!
The 2005 Showcase Ontario Awards are coming up, and I've been invited to help identify the 4 finalists. These awards are great — not just because they recognize and celebrate innovation and project team effectiveness, but because they raise awareness of voluntary sector-led technology projects. The winner in the voluntary sector category last year was Shelternet — be sure to check out the awards celebration on September 20 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (south building) to find out who the winner is this year!
Millions of personal computers sit idly on desks and in homes worldwide. During this idle time, the mysteries of science and space continue to elude us. What if each of the world's estimated 650 million PCs could be linked to focus on humanity's most pressing issues?
To make this vision a reality, Important Projects has joined World Community Grid, and is encouraging its network of friends, colleagues and associates to contribute their idle PC time in support of the Human Proteome Folding Project.
World Community Grid establishes a permanent, flexible infrastructure that provides researchers with a readily available pool of computational power that can be used to solve problems plaguing humanity. And World Community Grid is safe and easy to use.
To join, go to www.worldcommunitygrid.org and simply download and install a free, small software program. When idle, your computers request data from World Community Grid's server. Your computers then perform computations using this data, send the results back to the server and prompt it for a new piece of work.
Important Projects is asking that people who join World Community Grid become members of Team Important Projects. As part of the team, members will earn points for Team Important Projects as well as for themselves. Important Projects will then publicize the points it earns as an association back out to its network.
World Community Grid will address global humanitarian issues, such as:
What is grid technology?
Grid technology joins together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that exceeds the power of a few supercomputers. This capability can be applied, on a global scale, to very large and complex problems for the benefit of humanity.
And the benefits are proven. In 2003, IBM was one of the sponsors of a smallpox study that took advantage of grid computing. This study, using today's largest available super computers, would have taken years to complete. With grid computing, this study was completed in less than six months and identified 45 potential smallpox-treatment candidates.
Join World Community Grid as part of Team Important Projects today!
Important Projects has been awarded a contract by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) to define the objectives and develop a set of options for a grants management software development and implementation project CBCF plans to undertake.
Established in 1986, CBCF is the leading national volunteer-based organization in Canada dedicated to the fight against breast cancer. CBCF works collaboratively to fund, support and advocate for relevant and innovative research, meaningful education and awareness programs, early diagnosis and effective treatment, and a positive quality of life for those living with breast cancer.
The outcomes of this project will help CBCF select and implement a grants management system for use with its national cancer research grants program, which, in turn, will support CBCF in its mission to fund, support and advocate for relevant and innovative cancer research.
I've been a member of the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op (TREC) and a shareholder in the Exhibition Place turbine since 2002, and am very excited to have been elected to serve on the WindShare Board of Directors for 2005 and 2006. WindShare is a truly important project, developed by TREC to provide an opportunity for citizens to generate emissions-free electricity, and intended to profile wind power as a solution to smog and global climate change in a highly visible setting in Canada's largest city (the Ex Place turbine is the first utility-scale turbine in an urban environment in North America).
WindShare is also intended to profile community-based initiatives for the development of renewable energy, which it's doing a fantastic job of to date — WindShare was named Organization of the Year in 2004 by the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) in recognition of the co-op's efforts in "furthering the wind energy industry and the development of wind energy technology in Canada."
Again, I'm very excited to have been elected to the Board and look forward to volunteering my services to the co-op over the next 2 years.
To help provide medicine, clothing, food and shelter for victims of the East Africa and South Asia earthquake and tsunami disaster, donate to the Canadian Red Cross Asia Earthquake & Tsunami Relief Fund. All donations made through the site before January 11, 2005 will be matched by the Canadian government.
Also see this comprehensive list of NGOs involved in tsunami relief work. Descriptions of the relief projects undertaken by each organization are provided, along with links to online donation forms.
Whichever organization(s) you choose to donate to, please give generously.
I volunteered at the Ex this weekend, answering questions and handing out green energy pamphlets at the WindShare booth with a couple of amazing TREC employees, Carolyn Webb and Sheryl Murray.
I had a fantastic time talking with everyone who stopped by to find out more about the Exhibition Place turbine project, the next WindShare turbine project (to be built on the grounds of the Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant in the east end of the city), and saving money by switching from incandescent to CFL (compact fluorescent) light bulbs.
I also got to talk with the reps from Hydrogenics at the booth two doors down about the future of hydrogen and fuel cell power, which was interesting - here's a picture of the hydrogen-powered car they had on display (and that's Sheryl in the passenger seat).
A number of the people I spoke with seemed to share the commonly-expressed wind power concerns — reliability, noise, cost, aesthetics, impact on bird populations — but in the general case people were very supportive, and in many cases were interested in getting involved in wind power generation personally — either by becoming shareholders in the Ashbridges Bay turbine, or by looking into building their own.
