Project Management for the 21st Century, Third Edition
A modern, proven approach to project management that has the potential to supply structure, focus, and control to drive work to success.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Project Management for the 21st Century, Third Edition
Chapter 13: Managing Issues in Projects Problems and Opportunities
PROBLEM VERSUS OPPORTUNITY
Recall that a problem is a situation that threatens the project and has to be addressed by the project team and leader. We seek not only to resolve problems, but hopefully turn something negative into something positive. Opportunities represent means to improve the project or its results in some way. Opportunities may not have the same urgency as problems, but they are important. We have grouped both problems and opportunities into issues.
STEPS IN ADDRESSING ISSUES
We will employ the following steps in defining and addressing issues.
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Step 1: Identify the issue
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Step 2: Get consensus on the issue
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Step 3: Develop alternative actions for the issue
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Step 4: Decide on the alternative, seek consensus, and develop an implementation plan
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Step 5: Market and sell the approach to management and carry out the implementation
Step 1: Identify the Issue
By identification, we mean that we have studied and understand the issue in terms of the following: (1) symptoms of issue; (2) underlying parts of issue; (3) potential impact of issue on project; (4) urgency of the issue; (5) priority of the issue. Note that urgency and priority are not the same. Urgency is the importance to the project. Priority is the order in which you will get to it as a project manager. If you are still collecting information, then an issue can have a high degree of urgency, but only a medium level of priority.
We differentiate from symptoms that are visible and the parts of...
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