In my free time (can any of us say “free time” with a straight face anymore?), I volunteer as chair of a committee for the leading professional organization of my field. A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the Board of Directors to lead a project to analyze one of the websites our organization offers as a service to members. Currently, we host and provide overall guidance for the direction of the website and pay a third-party provider to make it a reality, but many members of the board have started to wonder whether there is a better hybrid sourcing arrangement that would decrease our costs and provide a better value to our members. They believe that there are a number of problems with the website that the organization is not equipped to address or they do not want to spend the time and resources to address them. In fact their exact words were, “We could pay a consulting firm to do the analysis for us, but we were wondering if you think your committee could take it on instead.”
Because I just don’t know how to say no (and I have all that free time mentioned above), I agreed to lead the project. In a way, this assignment to focus on different aspects of MP couldn’t have come at a better time. During our last committee meeting, we began brainstorming the key problems with the website, the positive and negative outcomes, and possible solutions. I found myself relying on problem trees far more than I ever expected.
In a Project Management article at Bright Hub PM, the author describes a helpful method to brainstorm and pinpoint causes and consequences of a problem using a problem tree in a way that I haven’t tried before. He suggests dividing a board into three vertical sections in which the team lists the problems in the center column, the causes of these problems in the left column, and the consequences in the right column. The author also recommends clearly delineating between the direct causes and consequences of these problems compared to those causes and consequences that are indirectly related. Then, finally he suggests pictorially connecting the causes, problems, and consequences into a tree.
During the discussion, I often had to put forth questions in order to get the conversation moving. An article by Overseas Development Institute provides some helpful starting points, including:
– “Which causes and consequences are getting better and which are getting worse and which are staying the same?”
– “What are the most serious consequences? Which are of most concern?”
– “Which causes are easiest/most difficult to address? What possible solutions or options might there be?”
– “What decisions have we made, and what actions have we agreed?”
This method is a little different than the method my team used to create a tree in our previous semesters, but the advantages are clear. It provides a method to break the problem into manageable pieces that can be assigned to different members of the team while clearly establishing links between the various cause and effects of each problem. It will help our team prioritize both the big picture and more detailed actions that need to take place to ensure a successful project. In particular, I think creating a problem tree with a team that is international really helps all of us visualize the project. It becomes a tool that each one of us can reference at different times during the project to make sure we’re on track. Problem or issue trees are proving to be pretty useful.