Most of us out there today are up against tight deadlines. I usually sit in my office on Friday singing the line from a Beatles song…”8 days a week.” I wish I had 8 days some weeks. Yes, it can be frustrating trying to fit it all in. We have to be thinking of better ways to approach what we do. My grandfather, who worked in a wine bottling plant (sounds good, but they were bottling Manischewitz…yum) would always say , “Jonathan, work smarter not harder.” Growing up I never realized the wisdom of my grandpa, I just thought he had one glass of Manischewitz too many when he started talking like that!
On my current project I had to do exactly what my grandpa said. I had to come up with a plan to work smarter, not harder. I am analyzing 145 business processes and have over 30 stakeholders, scattered over 6 offices, to elicit all the information I need. Based on my deadline, if I tried one-on-one interviews or requirements workshops I would be working very hard. Many hours of meetings and follow-ups. With everyone’s busy work loads trying to schedule the meetings would be a heroic effort. To increase my efficiency I turned to surveys to help. What a great way to elicit a lot of information from a large group.
With the list of questions I intended asking in some form or fashion in an interview, I created a survey. This approach allows me to analyze and elicit at the same time. While I am analyzing a group of surveys another group of stakeholders is completing surveys. Brilliant!
Here is an overview of the approach I am taking:
- Create the survey – I am using SharePoint to create and store the surveys. This is the preferred collaboration tool of the client that I am working with. Along with the survey questions I put help text to really clarify what I am asking the stakeholder to answer.
- Distribute the survey – This is fairly easy. I just send an email with a link to the survey to the appropriate people.
- Prepare the stakeholders – I am holding “kick-off” meetings for each of the offices to go over the survey, explain what I am looking for and show an example. This will ensure I get the right level of detail in the answers.
- Complete the survey – I just sit back, sip some Manischewitz and let my stakeholders work their magic! I’ll be available for questions of course.
- Review and Follow-up – Once the surveys start rolling in I’ll start my analysis. I’ll follow-up with the stakeholders as necessary and make updates.
- Track progress – One of the items on the survey is “status”. I have a great PM that will be working closely with the stakeholders to ensure the surveys are getting completed on time so I have a healthy back log to review.
- Compile project deliverable – One of the project requirements is to produce a deliverable of all the process details. From SharePoint I can export the data to my MS Word template. Thank goodness, I would hate to type all of that information again!
I’m looking forward to this adventure. Let me know if you have specific questions. I’d also love to hear your experiences of working smarter, not harder. Leave a comment so we can all improve.
Kupe
7 Comments
We are using this same process for one of my projects. I’d be interested in know how you constructed your template to capture all of the different answers to the questions on the survey.
Hi Kupe,
Were your survey questions open ended or closed?
How much time did you have to spend on stakeholder conflicts?
i like the idea of using the survey specially when you have many stakeholders, my question is how could you use the survey option to gather detailed requirements from the stakeholders ??
regards
laith
I’m about to use SharePoint for three or four separate surveys so I’ll be interested to know how you get on.
My main learning so far is to pilot every survey. Like every other aspect of SharepPoint, it’s easy to use it badly, but great when you use it well. You don’t get the chance to send a survey out twice, so piloting it with a colleagues or your most friendly stakeholder is vital.
My other main learning was to Keep it Simple: don’t get distracted by branching logic and make sure that any scales are consistent (if bad’s on the left and good’s on the right in the first scale then it should be the same all the way through).
Let us know how you get on.
Thanks Ben. I let a few people review it and provide feedback. the next step is to pilot it with a small group then unleash it to the larger audience.
-Kupe
Thanks everyone for your comments! And I’m thrilled so many of us are using surveys. maybe it is not as neglected as I thought!!
@Gail – There are about 20 questions I have in my survey. By using SharePoint I used one list as my template. Then copy that for each business process I need information for.
@Laith – I am analyzing business processes, so I have 20 questions related business data needs, how often the process is run, who uses the output, etc. I will get some detailed ino, but there will be follow-up and reviews to clarify the information.
@Megan – Almost all of the questions were open ended. That’s why I am doing some kick-off meetings to help reduce the follow-ups. I am not sure what you mean by stakeholder conflicts. Can you clarify that question? Thanks
Here is another idea:
I did a couple of workshops; based on the documents, sow, user mannual etc. provided by the client; I did my initial analysis and a brief sketch of how things flow in the project. Then arranged a workshop (kept some snacks – make sure they are very cheap else it can be claimed as a bribe :-p) I think everyone seemed so interested into things that information started flowing like a rainfall; all I had to do is write the comments and later on analyze it! You can also break it down into different levels/sections etc. I mean it depends upon the lenght of the project. The one I was working on had about 30 stakeholders and i’d have to say about 13 departments and I held the workshop for three days in which i did kind of work on the sequence of how things should flow but didnt fuss about it too much. We had a team of 5 people!