Define goals and manage external demands

define_progress_and_manage_external_deman-2.JPGThis tool offers a comprehensive method for establishing and assessing your distance to targets, increasing your chances of reaching these targets through improvement, maximizing complementary interests between internal and external demands and organising your key success indicators. 
 
 
What you need to do: 
  1. Begin by filling in your known success criteria, indicators and baseline situation in the template provided at the bottom of this page.
  2. Continue with the external demands from your stakeholders (fill in the interested stakeholder contact information and the type of information they are seeking).
  3. For each indicator, determine a feasible ‘milestone’ where you will attempt to determine the ‘health’ of these indicators. This could be at regular time intervals (i.e. every 3 months) or after a major deliverable has been completed.
What do you need to look out for: 

Once you have filled in both the internal and external success criteria, keep an eye out for complementary demands. In some situation an external stakeholder may request something similar to one of your success criteria, in these situations it would be wise to contact this stakeholder to see if they are willing or flexible to adapt to your criteria. This simple conversation could save you a great deal of time and other resources during the course of your project – but you will only be aware of these opportunities if you are aware of all demands.

Keep in mind that the power of this tool comes through regular usage and reference. Your chances of reaching your success criteria will come through monitoring and evaluating their ‘health’ throughout the course of your project

 

Template / Checklist:

This template will help you visualise your key internal and external success criteria and help you manage these interests to best suit your project’s goals and resources.
application/msword icondefine-progress-and-manage-external-demands.doc