Project Goal
The Global Development Bank (GDB) consists of ten Pacific Countries. The GDB has active investments in all 10 of the Pacific Countries, and this Pacific portfolio currently consists of 70 projects valued at over $1.5 billion. In spite of the support provided by the GDB project support staff, this portfolio of projects continues to experience weak project implementation and project management. Project management is an issue for the country offices for projects the central organization finances. This contributes to almost one-third of the Bank’s commitments being considered “at risk” of not achieving project development objectives. Our team was tasked with building a needs assessment plan to help identify where to implement training on core project implementation and project management skills. We would also help by establishing a monitoring and evaluation framework to facilitate iterative improvement of the PTP, as well as reporting on its effectiveness to internal and external stakeholders.
Process
Initial Scoping
Our team started this project by defining our stakeholders and where they needed to be involved in the project. During this identification, we listed groups that may be resistant to change and any barriers to adoption. Once these were defined, we scoped out our initial discovery meeting and what we were hoping to learn and accomplish in the meeting. We listed our scoping questions to ensure we asked all the right questions and listed the subset of stakeholders required for the meeting. One potential barrier we identified is a misalignment between the GDB leadership and the country leadership. We will need to ensure that we are driving alignment between these groups by providing a summary of the benefits that solutions will have for each group.
Data Collection and Analysis Plan
One critical piece of information was an agreed-upon understanding of what success looks like for this project from an organizational and human performance perspective. We needed to make sure any outcomes were repeatable for future programs. We then mapped the described performance problems throughout the organization and identified the alignment level of the work request. Our plan identified relevant results, metrics, and performance targets. We also plan to estimate the gaps in outcomes, compare current performance with desired performance, and assess performance context. We will identify the current level of results. We also plan to depict relationships between organizational goals, strategic priorities, and stakeholder expectations and collaboratively design a data collection strategy. Our plan for this included all tasks, meetings, and deliverables that would be expected from our team and the client team.
Data Collection Protocols and Procedures
Finally, we built a plan that mapped the collection methods, logistics, and timing for the data collection. All communications had templates in this plan to ensure that all stakeholders received consistent communications. Each interview and survey was clearly defined in this document with all logistics planned to be sent to the stakeholders needed in the sessions. Interview questions were defined for each interview to ensure consistency between interviewers to make data analysis easier and more consistent.
Outcome
The final output of this project was a complete plan for the needs assessment that was ready to be executed. The plan document was inclusive of all elements and ready to be presented to the stakeholders for approval. We felt confident our approach would uncover the right solutions and allow the stakeholders to make data-driven decisions to drive the outcomes.
Sean Putman 