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Association Insights | Expert Briefing

Drawing on the input of stakeholders to arrive at an ideal
list of features is sometimes called Co-design. There are
some fine and inexpensive technology tools available that
can help with that sort of consultation, such as IdeaScale
(www.ideascale.com), which opens up these lists to invited
groups of stakeholders for commenting and rating, or
the offer of further suggestions. Consultation can be as
simple and low-tech as getting stakeholders together and
brainstorming their suggestions with Post-it notes and
Flipcharts. A blog can then be a helpful way of feeding
back to a wider stakeholder community the findings of
that group, and giving opportunity for further comment.
This consultation needs time-boxing, to avoid slippage and
endless “feature-creep”. All this will help in arriving at a
prioritised backlog, for a development team to start work
from.
In essence, a transparent stakeholder consultation gives the
breadth of users and consumers a voice, and can help the
product owner ultimately to make insightful choices about
priority, helping them to balance time/cost/scope decisions
from an informed business perspective.

4 People
Don’t think about putting your team together only on an
institutional department basis! It is critical to have the right
mix of talent, skills, aptitude and attitude so that they can
work across the business, increase collaboration and get
the results you need.
There are obviously technical skills required -competence
with systems structure, integration and technical
specification, information expertise on collection, analysis
and use of data, creation of data warehouses and
production of management dashboards and management
information.

Finally, the presence of senior management is essential to
demonstrate the importance of the project and maintain
motivation and momentum. Leadership buy-in is always
required for approval or sign-off but demonstrable visible
support from the very top throughout the project life-cycle
is essential if the project is to deliver for the organisation.
Use your best people at all levels in the organisation,
protect their jobs, provide back fill, and use their business
knowledge and experience to develop tender documents,
project plans, and implementation. This will result in
career development for them and high-quality inputs and
outcomes for the association.
Use different people at different stages of the project,
short-term secondments, as well as longer assignments, to
build understanding of project and how it will change ways
of working across all different departments and levels. This
will enable the business to start to absorb the change by
osmosis as well as via the more formal communications and
planning.
Make sure that people on the project maintain links with
‘business as usual’ teams, to maintain a ‘real view’ of
what is happening on the ground and what the project is
designed to address. Retention of learning, experience and
knowledge in the business via these links will complement
the input from an external partner.
If you aim to keep a consistent core project team structured
around on the purpose of the project, it will work more
effectively across the business and make it easier for those
who are dipping in and out of the project to engage. You
will also avoid issues where specific departments are seen
as exclusive project owners and other departments do not
engage.

Business and strategy champions will be the providers and
users of information. Less obviously, but equally important,
you need communication, management and governance
skills

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