Card Description (10-15words): It sounds simple, but an important part of managing projects is helping clients visualize plans, schedules, and progress.
Prompt:
Before an engagement—or client project—begins, it is important to clearly define the scope of the engagement with the client team so that your team doesn’t end up “boiling the ocean” (which refers to trying to tackle too large of a project for a team size and timeline). This is a common mistake in consulting, but is avoidable with great project (and expectation!) management.
format) is the foundation of a client engagement / project plan, and the timeline is often supplemented by a more detailed project charter, a communication plan (often presented as a
), initial data requests, and regular status updates. Client data is treated with utmost sensitivity, and sometimes you may be asked to sign a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA). One nuance here is that depending on the audience for your project plan, the level of detail required may vary greatly. Always ask up-front for clarity on the level of detail.
Very Detailed Use: Your project manager may use it to allocate resources and plan team member workload. In this case gather a granular level of detail on expectations and likely plan down to the weekly level at least.
Less Detailed Use (which you will do in this case): In project kick-off meetings the client is often presented with a high level timeline to manage expectations and milestones based on.
Case:
Sylvan Home, the home cleaning products retailer you helped in Week 1’s Weekly Challenge, was impressed by your initial hypotheses and has hired you for a full-length strategy project. They would like you to propose tasks and timelines for the upcoming 8-week engagement, going into detail on how you will assess each hypothesis.
Guidelines
Create a 4-6 slide presentation with the following components:
A weekly project timeline in the form of a Gantt Chart (using Excel or Google Sheets -
if you need help getting started), including important meetings, due dates, dependencies, and other milestones. Oftentimes a more detailed project plan in excel is summarized in a simplified ppt slide. For Optimal learning, create both!
A RACI matrix: Be sure to include everyone you think might be important from both your team and the client side. Be creative, and by default your team should at least include an analyst (you!), an engagement manager, a “SME” (Subject Matter Expert), and a Partner. SME’s and Partners will usually have less assigned to them as they are expensive resources and often have multiple clients at once. Your client team should at least include a Manager (your main point of contact), an analyst, a technical/IT resource, and an executive)
A status update template, to make regular status-update meetings easy to run. It should be designed appropriately for this specific engagement.
Details:
Follow the guidelines mentioned in the prompt to create a slide deck of 4-6 slide presentation.
Save this as a PDF and upload the file to complete your submission.
Week 3 Prompt
