Instructor-Led Workshops

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P3-D01 - Manage risks, issues, and change requests

20 to 25 minutes

Explain the purpose of the activity and write it down on the board or main map.

Give them this scenario:

You’re having lunch with one of the team members who represents the design department.

Them: By the way, I was talking to one of my peers in a supplier company called Artobuilders when I realized that they had already finished running a project like ours.

You: Oh, interesting. Has it been successful?

Them: Yes. They only had a few issues with their CAD application.

You: Such as?

Them: They had selected QCAD, which is a well-known application. However, some engineers were not comfortable with it. After a few months, they realized that there’s a fork of that application called LibreCAD that has solved those issues. They were fine after switching, but they effectively lost a few months trying to adopt QCAD.

Give them 10 minutes to use the scenario and their own imagination to design a few follow-up actions.

When the time is up, ask each facilitator to present one follow-up action and then move on to the next team. Repeat this multiple times until they have presented all their items. For each item, ask everyone to comment, and add your own comment if needed.

The obvious item would be something like this:

  • Cause: QCAD is a famous application that many people use. However, it’s a little old-fashioned.
  • Effect: It doesn’t satisfy some of the expectations of the engineers.
  • Impact: That makes it difficult for the engineers to adopt it.
  • Response: This problem was solved in Artobuilders when they switched from QCAD to LibreCAD. It may be a good idea to give a high priority to LibreCAD when it’s time to select a CAD application.
  • Status: Open
  • Custodian: TBD

However, we don’t expect to end it here. There’s another great opportunity here: Other people in Artobuilder may have more to say about other applications. So, let’s add another follow-up action:

  • Cause: Companies that work in the same domain have similar needs.
  • Effect: Their experience in transitioning to libre applications may be applicable to us as well.
  • Impact: If we can use their learned lessons, we can avoid a lot of trial and error and rework, and finish the project more easily, quickly, and smoothly.
  • Response: Let’s check for other companies in our industry who have transitioned to libre applications, and find a way to get in touch with them and use their experience.
  • Status: Open
  • Custodian: TBD

Now tell them that after documenting this follow-up action, one of the team members has contacted you and told you that there’s a company called Artoaudit that has a relationship with Artophile and works in the same industry. They started a similar project only a few weeks ago. Give them 5 minutes to document the follow-up action, and then think about various possible responses.

When the time is up, ask each facilitator to present their item, and explain their planned responses.

For example:

  • Cause: Artoaudit has a good relationship with our company and works in the same industry, and they have recently started a project similar to ours.
  • Effect: We will probably share many concerns, and a good solution for one would likely be a good solution for the other as well.
  • Impact: If we can work closely and share as much experiences as possible, we will avoid problems and build better solutions.
  • Response:
    • It would be helpful if we could both agree to share our focused communications and Follow-Up Registers with each other (?)
    • Maybe we can arrange for some of the project team members from each side to attend the E02 activity of the other company (?)
  • Status: Open
  • Custodian: TBD

Ask them a few questions to see how they would decide about responses such as those above. What we expect is for them to point out that such decisions are significant enough to be escalated to the sponsor because sharing information between two companies should not be done without permission from managers.

Then ask them what they would do if the sponsor was to approve those two responses. In that case, besides updating the follow-up item, we would also update the Project Description to add the new stakeholder and include them in our communications.



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