Apply Top-Down Methodology to elevate your solution and add benefits to the business while correcting problems. This is part one of a two-part series.
When responding to change or solving problems, benefit realization management (BRM) is a process of extreme importance. If effective, projects deliver their expected benefits to stakeholders and align with the goals of the business. Benefits are identified prior to starting, established during project execution, and sustained after project completion. But by design, this can be a limiting process when we focus or zoom in on just the problem (a bottom-up approach). It is like crossing the street, but only looking left, but not right; there are benefits and impediments you and stakeholders are not even identifying, so by default they have no potential of being addressed by the solution. But when you take a top-down approach to the solution, you:
Project out a moment of high-level and saturated happiness and success.
Imagine and deduce the conditions that would need to be in place to bring about that vision moment.
Reinforce current state enablers that support this vision moment.
Identify impediments that work to prevent the vision moment.
Build into the plan, benefits that enhance enablers and remove or limit impediments.
This allows you to formulate actions for an elevated existence that pulls you forward to your vision.
To understand this more, I have two more metaphors for you.
First metaphor: the impact of ravel destinations. Think about the difference in your travel condition choices and needed capability when navigating a trip from Ohio to Niagara Falls, New York versus Rome, Italy. To reach Niagara falls, you only have to travel a couple hundred miles. You will probably do this on your own, with your own car, and may return the same day. But if the destination is Rome, you will not only solicit the capabilities of others (e.g., friends who have been there, airlines, hotels, restaurants, travel agent, etc.) but also build more into your time there, since you are already investing the money and time to get there. Similarly, when you elevate your endgame, you "justify" higher costs as you identify necessary actions you would not have taken without this approach, but that take you to bigger successes further down the road.
Second metaphor: the impact of bundling when making purchases. Think about the lure of bundling and how it impacts budgets; most people will spend more to get more. The appeal of every benefit is not the same, and once making a purchase, the threshold for spending more is less. Some benefits aren't standalone and rolling them into a larger project with a broader and bigger impact, can get them implemented. Great examples of this are targeted training of team members on specific skills like problem solving, agile project management, etc. This training may be tough to justify as a "I think we would benefit...". But when a project requires a condensed timeline, this needs a skilled cohesive team "from day one". Suddenly the unjustified costs become necessary enablers to complete a larger project on a challenging timeline.
Taking a top-down approach stretches your outcomes (and required investment) to high levels of engagement, success, and joy. You visualize a future state of enhanced outcomes and you imagine the impact. This is all highly motivating. It is asking, "What would we implement, if we had no constraints?" It might be that regardless of your endgame, the budget can't be expanded to incorporate everything in your vision moment. But I can almost guarantee you will "shoot" higher, and incorporate more into your solution than you would have with a bottom-up approach.
Top-down methodology also incorporates the human experience into business. It enhances relationships between stakeholders, knowing the human element cannot be ignored, because where there are humans, there is human impact. It elevates organizations and systems by shifting the perspective from just problem solving, to one of enhancement. This untethers the system from what is wrong, to what could be excellent. It also emphasizes strengths, leveraging the motivation embedded in positive thought and vision.
I have discovered a great way to use a top-down approach and methodology to ensure projects are designed to deliver step-ahead outcomes and exceed stakeholder expectations. Look for my next post on how to do this and greatly improve your project management success.
Lori G. Fisher, PMP
PLS Management Consulting
Purpose | Leap | Surge
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