Seven high level Business Requirement Drivers for Project Charters

Projects performed for most businesses have an expectation of providing a positive result known as a “Return on Investment” or ROI.  Businesses have customers, owners or stockholders whose interests are the driving purpose of the existence of the business.  It is very rare indeed that a project will be chartered and funded if the desired results are unknown.  The project could be funded, however, if the desired results are ambiguous and unclarified.  This could be likened to a stormy sea – it needs to be calmed by the steady hands of the project manager and the client sponsor, able to define the high-level business drivers.  These seven drivers are defined below.

Too often, the project is tasked to a team or people with a directive that does not clearly provide a vision for the intended outcome.  The project manager and the team become focused on the set of tasks, but the communication of the vision for project success is not adequately clarified.  The PM (Project manager) or team is told to “do” – to create a new feature, a new product, or a change to an existing product, without understanding the vision or purpose.  The project is expected to get done, when the “definition of done” or purpose, is poorly understood or defined by the people or person that is commissioning the work.

Project Managers (“PM’s”) are the point of contact for projects.  The project charter which should be created with input from the client stakeholder should expressly define the purpose and focus of the project in business terms, so that the completion outcomes are clear – that the “definition of done” is not ambiguous or uncertain.  The business requirements should then be crafted into technical requirements, which will become designs, and greater detail added as needed to drive the work of the project.  The question is:  what are the high-level drivers of business requirements?  How does a project manager focused on the “what” of actions and tasks – gain greater understanding of the “why?” – beyond the client simply saying, “do this.”

High level business drivers generally fall into seven broad categories.  These are the requirements categories into which the business requirements fall.  If a project manager is left with some question of uncertainty about the purpose (or “why”) of a project, these items will help to formulate questions to the client and obtain more and better understanding of purpose.  Below, I will provide a brief of the seven broad categories and examples for them.

Revenue:  Revenue is the gross income received in an exchange of value for a product or service.  In a financial sense, it is the term that is often defined by a period of time in days or by calendar increments.  It is also often associated to either of single product, a line of products, or a company’s overall income from sales or service provisioning within that duration.  Revenue is the life blood of nearly every organization without which they will eventually cease to exist; therefore, it is a major driver of business and a driving purpose for some projects.  It is also a factor in calculating the ROI of projects, because a project is an investment of resources, to gain a return.  Revenue has implications for profit and may be impacted or affected by the expense or cost of a project.  If a project is expected to increase revenue or “cash flow” it should define the change outcome: what the present revenue is and the projection or forecast of the increase in revenue from the current state – the delta or percentage between them and an understanding of how the values were derived.

Efficiency:  The reduction of waste or cost that may affect the operation of an organization.  This is an area where improvement is a focal point.  Companies can measure their existing (present) efficiency and from that can determine if a course can be charted to improve efficiency.  Efficiency improvement mitigates waste, uses fewer resources of money, time, people or raw material products.  Lean Six Sigma principles define tools and methods to assist with identifying possible sources of waste and inefficiency, which can then be targeted with projects to add action to a plan to achieve greater efficiency.  This high-level business purpose or requirement should be defined in a project charter so that the desired outcome is known.  What is the resource cost today in terms of money, people, raw materials, and time?  If the planned efficiency project is successful, what is the projected return for the estimated cost?  How is that efficiency improvement calculated – upon what baseline figures and who was responsible for assessment to approve the change project?

Productivity: The improvement of productivity is gained by process improvement and may be closely aligned with efficiency.  It is not merely the mitigation of waste or improvement of a process, but also focuses on systems and alignments to gain greater outputs, per the measure of inputs.  As an example, a productivity increase may be captured by new technology:  whereas an accountant must calculate business results for a businesses month end, this could be performed with a pencil.  Add a calculator and the accountant with be more productive.  Computerize the calculations with entered inputs and productivity rises even more.  Utilize better methods of capture on the financial data and even more productivity is gained.  All of this leads to how the time of the accountant may now be utilized for higher, more strategic goals and analytics instead of slogging through the calculations by hand, or with a calculator.

Image:  How is your company viewed by important non-company stakeholders?  Is it important that your customers, government regulators, stockholders, competitors, suppliers, etc. – view your company?  Image relates to customer service, product or service quality, reputation, and so on.  The perception of your company in terms of honesty and reliability all adds to – or detracts from – image.  Projects may be focused on “CX” or customer experience, so that the customer finds what the want from the company faster, purchases it easier, controls their account and relationship to the business more effectively, pays their bill sooner, and has more satisfaction with your company.  Clients sponsoring such a project should be able to quantify the present state and the expected future state of this project type, also.

Security:  Security could be physical or virtual, privacy concerns or confidentiality concerns, financial or intellectual property – and this list can continue.  Security may be the entire focus of the project, or it may be a part or portion of a larger project.  Having security or gaining security is an important part of a company reducing risk and mitigating loss.  Security influences nearly every other project aspect in relationship to IT projects as well as others project domains.  This business requirement driver must also be defined, quantified, and goals for results understood.

Stability:  Business drivers for stability include concepts like business continuity and availability of resources.  This may relate to inventory being ready when needed, or systems functioning at peak demand, or overcoming a disaster with a plan for service diversity and redundancy.  This requirement also may be a stand-alone project or a part of a larger program.  Company policy influences this type of requirement, but that reinforces the value of defining the expectation of outcomes.  Occasionally, this can become affected by budgetary constraints in negative ways which should also be defined and perhaps recognized for the risk factor.

Safety:  Projects to enhance safety are also often linked as a part of other initiatives.  This often implies physical safety, so would enhance the safety of workers, customers, traffic, inventory, property locations and so forth.   An example might be the acquisition and installation of an emergency phone system along the walking paths of a park or a campus.  It could be a guardrail.  In any event, an assessment of the current state and the expected state in terms of how safety is enhanced should be defined.  How many events or injuries have occurred to compromise safety in the past time period?  How would safety improvements reduce or mitigate the incidence of future events?

Summary

The high-level business drivers could possibly be remembered as a foundation for the storm which is project is to change.  The change that project engenders is to calm the storm, reduce the waste, the variable, the defects, the applicable business driver…  it is the pier, or PIERSSS that help anchor and support the high level business driver(s.)  Productivity, Image, Efficiency, Revenue, Safety, Stability, Security or PIERSSS is an acronym to assist in remembering for the project manager to ask the questions that can lead to better definition of the high-level business drivers, or to more effectively define the purposeful, expected outcomes of a project.

If this makes sense to you and you need a Project Manager or Program Manager to assist you with Planning responsibly, committing to a plan resolutely, and driving execution impeccably, please reach out to me at randall_tabor@msn.com, or 678-208-8828.