Examples of project teams who may use . Maybe; maybe not. Use this guide to create action items to alleviate project management pain points and keep your team moving in the same direction. Why? You know where the problem is occurring, you know how long it has occurred, you know the magnitude of the problem, and you know how much its costing. Identify. He is a leading speaker and presenter on business and technology trends, and is co-author of Six Sigma Workbook for Dummies, Process Intelligence for Dummies, BPM Basics for Dummies and The Intelligent Guide to Enterprise BPM. Most managers consider financial issues as one of the biggest hurdles in effective project management. First, it significantly clarifies the current situation by specifically identifying the problem and its severity, location, and financial impact. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. First up: a statement with too little information:
\nPoor Problem Statement 1A: Inventory levels are too high and must be reduced.\n
How many times have you heard a problem statement like this one before? Bruce Williams is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. For individuals, it can mean enhancing their own personal well-being. Heres another example of a problem statement with insufficient information, along with a rewritten Six Sigma alternative: This statement has so little information that readers may not be entirely clear on whether a significant problem even exists. In our experience, an effective problem statement is brief, preferably one sentence. Problem Statement: Rigorous labor-intensive processing due to manual paperwork management. He is an operations executive and internationally recognized Lean Six Sigma thought leader and practitioner. First, lets start by defining a problem statement. Do not combine multiple problems. One example is outlined in the book, The Conclusion Trap: Four Steps to Better Decisions, by Daniel Markovitz. Once we landed on a strong problem statement, then we had to align the client with the problem statement. The approach a project manager takes in understanding a fully-formed problem statement will lay the foundation of a project managers personal problem statement style. Other problems may be giving you worse headaches than this one.
\nAt a minimum, some quantification of the magnitude of the problem would help readers make a better decision. Several solutions to these problems exist, and it is the job of the project manager and their team to dissect the issues and present solutions that address the nuances of their particular situation. Keep in mind that you probably have to both convince management to provide resources to solve the problem and enlist team members to assist you; you dont want to spend your precious time explaining over and over what youre trying to accomplish.
\nA problem statement should be concise and include the following:
\nA brief description of the problem and the metric used to describe the problem
\nWhere the problem is occurring by process name and location
\nThe time frame over which the problem has been occurring
\nThe size or magnitude of the problem
\nYou must be careful to avoid under-writing a problem statement. Keep asking why (and check in on the progress). A good way to test a problem statement for bias is to ask questions like these: Does the problem appear to have only one possible solution? Those who find themselves in a leadership position will know exactly what project management brings to the table. While these examples represent three types of problems or goals, keep in mind that there can be many other types of problem statements. For example, the following problem statement is more detailed than Poor Problem Statement 1A, but its still, well, problematic:
\nPoor Problem Statement 1B: Having too few forklifts is making inventory levels too high.\n
By saying Having too few forklifts in Poor Problem Statement 1B, youre purporting that you know what the solution is. In this article, we'll answer those questions and give you some tips for writing effective problem statements. Bruce Williams is Vice President of Pegasystems, the world leader in business process management. Simplify Be clear and concise. Billings could increase by $3.5 million per month, rework cost could be reduced by 50 percent, and an additional 1.3 percent of revenue could be recovered if errors were occurring less than 5 percent of the time. ","hasArticle":false,"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/authors/9794"}}],"_links":{"self":"https://dummies-api.dummies.com/v2/books/"}},"collections":[],"articleAds":{"footerAd":"