Document Templates

Posted on October 2, 2012July 22, 2021 by tom lauren — Leave a comment

Dynamic Status Dials – to communicate project status with RAG on a single page.

Communicating a large amount of information on any project into a simple, easier to read and digest format is always something of a challenge. The trick is to focus on the key areas and “zoom” in on them.

We have read a fair bit of conventional wisdom which states that creating the ideal dashboard template should be kept simple (we agree) and that attempting to replicate the most traditional of dashboards in that of a car is to be avoided as it is not necessary. This struck a chord with us as we fundamentally disagreed – after all, cars display the most complex of information in a format which is universally accepted and which in spite of digital advances has remained largely the same using dials with redder bits akin to a RAG status.

So we started to build one and soon understood the reason behind conventional wisdom – making a car dashboard which is fully automated, pleasant on the eye and useful to those looking at it is really quite difficult! Being that difficult is our middle name (well it is documents but you get the gist) we would not take really quite difficult as an answer so persevered and finally late one night we had done it.

You can see our status template with dynamic dials here.

…in all of its 3-colour glory!

We are quite proud of it, but as ever, feedback is always welcome. As an added incentive, the first 5 people who can e-mail us with “How hard could it be” in the title will get a free version to give it a test drive.

Our Status Templates

Posted on September 30, 2012September 30, 2012 by tom lauren — Leave a comment

How to effectively compare companies, products, services or even people.

Let’s consider the picture above for a brief moment. We know that each vehicle here is going to be a different make, model, specification and colour, but from our initial view point all we can see is a very similar array of vehicles. Asked to chose the best one for any particular purpose (other than maybe size), we are going to have to use guess work and it will be a lot more luck than judgement if we get it right.

The snow which so confuses the issue here is like a marketing campaign or a very good sales person; unless you get beneath the outer layer, you can only judge on what you see. We tend to view this as an issue in the world of procurement from a sense of buying poor goods or services from a very good sales force, but over the years we have found that increasingly it can translate as missing a superb offering because of an inexperienced way of selling.

Running full blown RFI’s will always get to the core of an offering and on a large spend or critical piece of outsourcing this has to be the way forward unless you have an intimate market knowledge. If you don’t and it’s a crowded market, the question is how do you devise your short-list first? For every tender you issue, someone is going to have to score it, and if you really want to be focussing your energies on evaluating the cream rather than working through the, well, not so creamy.

To that end, we at BDUK have always employed a short-listing comparison tool to whittle down the market to a more suitable and manageable number of companies to then approach.

Not only does this make our life’s simpler, but we have learnt the hard way that to run a short-list tender with the short-list leaves us wide open when a friend of the board has a company doing exactly what we are buying and we not only did not include them, but have nothing in the way of justification as to why.

Self preservation. It should be our company motto.

Posted on August 26, 2012July 22, 2021 by Jeff Armstrong — Leave a comment

Simple Roadmap Templates to help with your Presentation

Our Simple Roadmap Templates use successful Roadmap design formats that are popular the world around. Download these Simple Roadmap Templates now.

We’ve been developing a variety of Roadmap Templates for a few years now, and we would like to offer these ones for a reduced price!

Simple Roadmap TemplatesSimple Roadmap Templates — The Simple Roadmap Templates communicate your product or project plans simply on 1 side of paper

Features of our Simple Roadmap Templates.

A4 Page size (premium are A3)
Title area
“Version” area
Roadmap Legend
Four Roadmap Workstreams
Activity bars in each workstream
Configurable Timeline
Milestones

Our Simple Roadmap Templates are A4 Roadmap formats. For our larger and more elaborate roadmap templates, see the Roadmap Template Samples and Examples.

See all of our Roadmap Templates.

Posted on May 5, 2012November 21, 2020 by Tobias Edwards — Leave a comment

How to look good at work (from a business rather than image perspective!)

We have been on some management courses over the last few months and having let the dust settle (thus avoiding the immediate post course evangelicalism which irks even the most tolerant mind) we have come to the conclusion that we have actually learnt a great deal and that it is relevant. And useful. And in some cases actually surprising!

1. Niche is good, no matter what your niche is. So long as there is a market.

Progressive Corp is an insurance company which focusses on all the types of people the other firms avoid like the plague.

So, know your market. REALLY know your market and show that you know it through market analysis tools. Such as Porters Five Forces or PEST.

2. Synergies are not always actually a good idea. Most companies have traditionally thought they are, but the world has changed.

It is more demanding and quite simply it is a tough market out there; focus on what you are good at, world class at, and do it.

This means that backwards or reverse integration is not the answer. Outsourcing is. Unless you are world class at it. (You get the gist). Japanese car manufacturers realised very early on that they were not as good as the electronic companies at making stereos, so they did not try and complete, they just struck up a deal. Get good at finding who in the market can deliver what you need for you, via procurement channels. Or have a look here.

3. IGNORE your customer. Yep, you read that right. Ignore them. Not on everything, of course, answer the phone, respond to e-mail and help them.

But think what would have happened if Steve Jobs had asked the mobile phone using public what they wanted from a phone and then given it to them? It would not have been anywhere near the i-phone by a long, long way. He didn’t ask, he gave them something they hadn’t even dreamed of yet.

4. Customise your output in what ever you do. Make it fit the needs of what you are doing not the other way around.

These are the highlights, there was a lot more!

If anything has struck you, contact us. If point 4 has struck a chord and you want to talk about how our content could be modified to fit your needs, PLEASE contact us. We shan’t follow our own advice concerning point 3!

Posted on December 8, 2011June 15, 2020 by Jeff Armstrong — Leave a comment

How to Score Risk Simply – the Risk Matrix

There are many ways to measure and communicate risk – this is just one that we have found useful, and easy to communicate.

The 25 cell “Impact vs Likelihood” Risk Matrix is a popular format used to communicate Risk Scores. It helps you summarise your risks for project reporting.

The Risk Score Heatmap Matrix

This 5 x 5 (25 cell) matrix gives an easy way to associate a “Severity Score” with a Risk. NB you will see a lot of variations on this – so this is just one approach of many that Project Managers can take.

Each cell in the matrix is a combination of impact and likelihood.

This allows you to group your risks, based on a score, into some Risk Severity groups:

This Risk Scoring approach is used in our RAID LOG template.

An approach to assigning Impact and Likelihood scores

Project Managers use a list of score definitions, to help one another assign and understand the scores for each risk.

Here is an example approach:

ASSIGNING RISK LIKLEHOOD VALUES
Score	Title	Likelihood	% Chance
1	Rare	Rare. A very unlikely event. It could happen, but probably never will.	Below 5%
2	Unlikely	Not expected. Slight possibility. An improbable sequence of events.	5% – 25%
3	Possible	Moderate likelihood. Foreseeable. May have occurred in projects like this before.	25% – 50%
4	Likely	Strong possibility. High likelihood. An easily foreseeable event.	50% – 75%
5	Almost Certain	Very likely. Almost certain without any intervention.	Above 75%

ASSIGNING RISK IMPACT VALUES
Score	Title	Outcome / Impact / Consequence	Cost / Time / Scope Implications
1	Insignificant	The project will have to make some minor changes to scope. Resolvable by management team.	Can be managed. Acceptible.
2	Minor	Some changes to deliverables. Outside of Project Tollerances or Contingency.	Adjustment to scope with some impact.
3	Moderate	One or more areas likely not to deliver as planned. Descoping required.	Significant impact.
4	High	Significant descoping required.	Major Impact.
5	Extreme	Serious failure of project objectives.	Disastrous Impact.

Example Guidance for Project Managers according to Risk Severity

GENERAL GUIDANCE ON RISK MANAGEMENT
Extreme	Escalate immediately to project authorities. Include recommendations. Actively control.
High	Manage immediately. Inform project authorities. Act on mitigation and ensure you have response plans ready.
Moderate	Manage risk and escalate in normal reporting. Watch carefully for change in exposure.
Low	Manage risk.

Problems with Scoring Risks with a Matrix

There are many ways to allocate weighting to risks, and to group severity, with no right or wrong answer. The allocation of severity groupings helps you give summaries to your colleagues, but the groupings you choose will need to vary depending on the project type, size and environment.

See more here on Wikipedia about the problems with Risk Matrices.

Project Managers manage their Risks in a “RAID Log”.

RAID Logs are used by project managers and programme managers to track and manage project risks.

Many projects have 10s and sometimes 100s of Risks to manage, and so it is essential to keep track of severity, status, next steps, and who owns each risk.

RAID is an acronym that stands for

Risks
Assumptions
Issues
Dependencies

Posted on October 23, 2011July 23, 2021 by Jeff Armstrong — Leave a comment

Status Report

The Status Report is an important Project and Programme -level reporting tool – it should give all the important high-level project information on 1 page.

Status Report Dashboard

This image shows a Status Dashboard Template slide, which can be found in the Status Template pack.

A Status Report Dashboard may literally show some dashboard dials (as this figure shows), or may just be displaying key information, like a conventional dashboard.

The key similarity with a Dashboard is that you can get vital information AT A GLANCE – i.e. ON ONE SIDE.