The Template Collective Blog

Project management templates… and more

Monthly Archives: May 2016

Training

Four Steps to Show the Value of Training

May 23, 2016 – 6:35 pm

Four Steps to Show the Value of Training

Many businesses struggle with whether they are getting their money’s worth in sending employees to training classes. This question can be applied to project management training as well as any other type of business training. You know the cost side of training too well. But how do you tell what the business value is?

The most common way to determine value today is to ask the trainee whether he or she thinks the class was valuable. This is very touchy-feely and doesn’t give you much information to go on, but it is probably the most that most companies ask in terms of follow-up.

A Rigorous Approach

There is a process to more rigorously determine the value received for your training dollars. These ideas are not for the faint of heart. They take more preparation and they take more of that most precious commodity – time. But see if it makes sense, and whether the results of this process will give you a much better feel for the value that you are receiving from training. You can also start with some of these steps, and try for the rest later.

    1. First, the trainee and their manager meet a few weeks before the training is scheduled to make sure the trainee is ready for the class. One of the important parts of the discussion is to identify opportunities where the trainee can apply the new skills on their job. This information should be documented so that it can be compared with a post-class assessment done later.
  • When the actual class begins each of the trainees should complete an initial survey showing their specific knowledge level of the class material.
  • A week or two after the class, the trainee completes a post-class survey showing their current knowledge level in the subject. For the most part, it is exactly the same as the initial survey from activity #2 above. This is compared to the initial survey to provide a sense for how much the trainee learned – at least in their own opinion. If this survey comes out close to the original version, it may show that the training may not have been very effective. You would expect that the post-class survey would show improvement.
  1. Here is the key step. A few months after the class, the trainee and their manager meet again for a post-class assessment, which is a follow-up to activity #1 above. In this discussion, the trainee and manager discuss the value of the class, and whether the trainee has been able to apply the new skills. In fact, the training may have been superb, but if there have been no opportunities to apply the new skills, then the business value will be marginal. The trainee and manager can then discuss the business value that was gained by applying the new skills on the job.

Summary

In most training classes today, the trainee completes the class feedback for the benefit of the training company, and then tells his or her manager how good the class was. This superficial feedback is all that is available to gauge business value. However, the real test of business value is whether the class resulted in an increased skill level that can be applied to the job to make a person more productive. This cannot be determined immediately after a class. The only way to determine business value is to determine in the months after the class whether or not the training has actually been applied on the job. If you capture this information on all your classes, you will get a much better and more fact-based view of whether the classes you pay for are providing business value to your company.

Permalink | Comment (0)
Uncategorized

Three Techniques for Scope Change Management

May 2, 2016 – 4:03 pm

1. Hold Everyone Accountable for Scope Management

Many scope management processes work well at the project manager level, but get compromised by team members. If the project manager is diligent in enforcing the scope change rules, your customer may try to go directly to team members for changes.

The bottom line is that everyone needs to be held accountable for the scope management process. Team members must understand the process and why it is important. Your customer  must also understand the process and its importance. Don’t consider these procedures to be only of interest to the project manager and the sponsor. Make sure the procedures are communicated to the entire team.

2. Use a Change Control Board for Large Projects

Sometimes on very large projects, the project sponsor does not feel comfortable making the scope change decisions alone. This may especially be the case if the effect of the change will impact other organizations. It may also be the case that multiple organizations are participating in, or contributing to, the project funding, and want to have some say in evaluating scope change requests. For these cases, a group of people might be needed to handle the scope change approval.

A common name for this group is a Change Control Board. If a Board exists, it may be more cumbersome to work through. However, the general scope change management process does not need to change dramatically. For instance, there is still a document for the initial the scope change request. The project team needs to determine the impact and cost to the project. The Board must consider the impact, the value to the project, the timing, etc., and then make a determination as to whether the request is accepted.

The Scope Change Procedures must be more sophisticated to account for the Board. For instance, you need to clarify who is on the Board, how often they will meet, how they will be notified in emergencies, how they will reach decisions (consensus, majority, unanimous, etc.), how incremental work will be paid for, etc.

3. Make Sure the Right Person Approves Scope Changes

A typical problem on a project is that the team does not understand the roles of the sponsor, customer and end users in the area of change management. In general, the project sponsor is the person who is funding the project. The sponsor is usually high up in the organization and not easy to see on a day-to-day basis. 

The people that the project team tends to work with most often are normal customers and end users. End users are the people that use the solution that the project is building.

It doesn’t matter how important a change is to an end user, the end users cannot make scope change decisions and they cannot give your team the approval to make a scope change. The sponsor (or designee) must give the approval. The end users can request scope changes, but they cannot approve them. The end user cannot allocate additional funding to cover the changes and cannot know if the project impact is acceptable.

Permalink | Comment (0)