The above diagram represents in a hierarchical structure, the existence of projects in an organization. As seen, projects help an organization achieve targets/business goals set out by the organization in harmony with their core strategy and in order to achieve the organizational vision. A carefully set-out project helps an organization to stay in business but we have known that far too often, project failures can also bring an organization to its knees.
In my opinion, a project is set out to fail when companies do not see projects in the above hierarchical structure. Any project, if well-defined, should be able to deliver some business goals that need to be achieved. Far too often, the scope of a project is defined so broadly that people fail to see what it is supposed to help them achieve.
Such failures can be avoided by a method called “ result chain analysis”. The result chain analysis is a method that helps clarify business benefits of a project and ways that these benefits can be achieved.
Result Chain Concept:
A result chain diagram carefully depicts the links between business goals, objectives and initiatives that need to be undertaken in order to achieve these objectives and thus business goals.
Layout of Result Chain Diagram:
Ground Rules:
1. Activities / Initiatives should start with a verb to indicate that it is an action item, e.g. “understand current market dynamics”.
2. Objectives should be measurable outcomes that need to be achieved to get to a business goal, e.g. “potential competitors”. It is important that these be measurable so the progress can be tangibly monitored.
3. The business goals should be the final desired outcome which is more strategic, e.g. “achieve 10% market capitalization by 2012”.
4. Each activity / initiative should have a connection that comes out of this activity and ends at a one or more outcomes, this depicts that the particular action helps in achieving the outcome that it points out to.
5. One outcome may result in another outcome. As such, there can be a connection between two outcomes where a link comes out from one and ends at the other.
6. The model aligns from left to write. As such, the business goals (or the final outcomes) should always be at extreme right.
Limitations:
The result chain diagram is not a timeline. As such, it does not show time required to perform a certain activity or even the chronology or sequence in which these activities need to be performed. However, it can depict dependencies which can indirectly point out a sequence of action items.
Example of a Result Chain Diagram:
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