Project preparation

Tangible goals, known environment, risks in view, opportunities exploited thanks to project preparation with BCS

With the project management software Projektron BCS, you can start your project professionally and ideally prepared: Capture and evaluate project ideas with idea management, define and operationalize project goals, perform comprehensive project environment analyses and operate holistic risk management and stakeholder management. The right project preparation functions are also available for your communication planning and management. Project preparation with Projektron BCS - all tools in one software.

Comprehensive project preparation from Z for target definition to A for application

You want a perfectly prepared start to the project by...

➤ defining project goals with software support and always having them available as a guide during planning and implementation?

➤ identifying and taking into account all stakeholders and interest groups?

➤ convincing stakeholders of your project with the right measures and a targeted communication strategy?

➤ recognizing and correctly assess project risks and are prepared for possible consequences?

➤ recognizing opportunities and increase their probability of occurrence?

➤ turning your team's best ideas into successful projects?

➤ generating project applications at the touch of a button?

Opportunities and risks in Projektron BCS

The purpose of the project preparation phase is to get a rough overview of the project in order to make a fact-based decision as to whether the project application will be approved and whether you will even be awarded the contract to enter the planning phase. If your PM guide allows it, you can also carry out project preparation in parallel with project planning.

In project preparation with Projektron BCS, you gather essential information about the framework conditions of the project. A wizard guides you step by step through the project preparation from goal definition to project application.

Determine the strategic importance of a project

Analyze the strategic importance in Projektron BCS

In Projektron BCS, the “Significance” view helps you with the data-based evaluation of the strategic relevance of your projects. You can capture values for central criteria, such as innovation potential, market potential, image, customer requirements and profitability, which are then visualized in a dynamic radar diagram. These criteria can be weighted in the system so that the results are objectively evaluated according to the priorities of your corporate strategy. The diagram shows both a raw evaluation and the weighted representation. This provides you with an objective basis for deciding where to focus your limited resources to create the greatest added value.

In addition to the strategic evaluation, you can store additional project-relevant information in this view, such as details on the market environment, competitive conditions or dependencies on other projects. You can also record framework conditions and potential restrictions that need to be taken into account when making decisions about the project.

As part of project portfolio management, strategic analysis in Projektron BCS provides a valuable basis for prioritization and resource planning. The structured recording of strategic importance enables you to allocate resources in a targeted, transparent and well-informed manner.

Target definition: Achievable. Measurable. Clear.

Without carefully and precisely defined project goals, no successful project. Clearly defined project goals are crucial to the success of a project because they fulfill five important functions:

Control function: as part of project controlling, goals allow you to measure during the course of the project and at the end of the project whether previously defined requirements have been met. Without goals, therefore, there is no clearly defined project conclusion.
Orientation function: A goal sets the direction. All project participants (team and management) can orient themselves to it during implementation.
Binding function: firmly agreed goals ensure a uniform understanding of the project and prevent misunderstandings. The team is united and motivated in its actions.
Coordination function: Different people can be held responsible for achieving different goals. Thus, a division of labor and coordinated action is possible.
Selection function: In the case of difficult decisions, a goal can provide orientation and decision support.

Projektron BCS supports you with proven project management tools in a targeted manner when defining your project goals. The project management software provides the appropriate forms for the precise formulation of overall and sub-goals, including their qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria. Each form ensures that you execute and operationalize the project goal SMART (specific, measurable, attractive/achievable, relevant and scheduled) and define suitable measurement criteria.

Dynamic target hierarchy graphic: Keeping an eye on targets at all times

Of course, all target categories are available to you:

Performance Target
Deadline target
Cost target
Social target
Non-target
Additional goal

How many goals you enter in Projektron BCS is, of course, up to you and the requirements of your project. Thanks to dynamic target hierarchy graphics (project target graphics), you have a clear overview of all targets, even with fine-granular target definitions or very large projects. Thanks to the goal prioritization according to high, medium and low priority, you can immediately see which goals require your main attention.

Environment analysis: Recognizing and understanding influences

Conduct a project environment analysis to identify factors that influence the success of your project - an essential part of any project preparation. A project environment analysis should capture all external factors that influence a project, including

capture,
examine,
evaluate and
document.

How could parallel projects affect my project? Are there any synergy effects or conflicting relationships? The project environment is a decisive factor for your project success. BCS offers you the view environment for this. Here you define the environmental factors which could influence the progress of your project. In doing so, you differentiate between:

Internal environmental factors
External environmental factors
Factual environmental factors (factual factors)
Social environmental factors

With Projektron BCS, you can quickly capture the most important framework conditions of your project and visualize the environmental factors in the form of a clear diagram.

Stakeholder management: Identifying stakeholders

BCS pays special attention to stakeholders. In the environment analysis, you have already identified social factors that influence the success of your project. The social environment consists of stakeholders that you can influence with systematic communication in the interest of your project's success. Stakeholders can be individuals, groups or institutions that have a legitimate interest in the project, its progress and results, such as the client, customer, end user, project manager, project team, suppliers and many more. A stakeholder analysis is used to record these stakeholder groups and subsequently develop strategies for dealing with different stakeholders.

In Projektron BCS, you can record the potential and interests of all stakeholders and analyze them with regard to the factors of attitude and influence using a dynamically generated matrix(stakeholder portfolio diagram). Using the contact management (CRM) in BCS, you can declare external persons, organizational units or groups of persons as stakeholders.

You can also store

known and presumed interests of the stakeholders
Measures for concrete handling of a stakeholder or stakeholder groups

In this way, you can identify both possible opportunities and potential conflicts at an early stage and implement the appropriate strategy for your successful stakeholder management at the right time. The stakeholder analysis provides the basis for developing a communication plan and corresponding content. To implement the strategy, BCS provides you with tasks and the ticket system, which you can use to define concrete and personalized measures. Tasks and tickets document your actions, allow you to delegate work, control your actions in the future and thus check the effectiveness of your stakeholder strategies.

Thilo Menges

Head of Corporate Development, Medical University of Lusatia - Carl Thiem

"As a municipal house, we are dependent on also integrating external stakeholders into the platform and having them participate and contribute to projects and their implementation in various ways. BCS offers the ideal conditions for this, as external project participants can also be involved without any problems and everyone receives the information they need."

Eva Klama

Project Management Office, Hörmann KG Antriebstechnik

"For example, we wanted to integrate an earned value analysis, which worked wonderfully in consultation with our responsible consultant at Projektron GmbH. This function has long since even become part of the BCS standard. Other examples of features that we share responsibility for developing are strategic importance and idea management in BCS."

Tobias Trosdorff

Office Manager, kanalprofi GmbH

"The decision in 2011 to coordinate our projects with a professional project management software and to prepare them accordingly was the only right one. This was the only way to cope with the constant increase in complexity as well as the number of individual projects. It is hard to imagine how we would have been able to cope with this change without BCS. Currently, we are further expanding the project processing function, which is crucial for us, by automating more, especially in project preparation."

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Risk management: Identifying risks, exploiting opportunities

Despite good preparation and sound planning, external and internal events can disrupt or even jeopardize the successful course of a project. You should identify these risks at an early stage and plan appropriate countermeasures, because the first risks may already arise during the subsequent project planning phase. During risk analysis, however, you can also identify opportunities to generate revenue or save time.

Identify, record and monitor risks

With Projektron BCS risk management, you clearly record any risks and their probability of occurrence both in the preparation and planning phase and during project execution. The Opportunities and Risks view offers you the subviews Risks, Countermeasures, Opportunities, Support Measures and Diagrams.

In the Risks subview, you can view and edit the list of project risks and enter new risks with possible costs and expenses, causes and effects. Here you can also evaluate the risks.
In the Countermeasures subview, you can define strategies and view planned countermeasures, define measures, and link the measures to corresponding tasks.
In the Opportunities subview, opportunities such as revenue, effort savings, and time savings can be captured.
In the Supporting Measures subview, supporting measures for the opportunities can be presented with cost and effort information and linked to the corresponding opportunities.
In the Diagrams subview, the risks and costs are displayed graphically in terms of severity and probability of occurrence.

In addition to a risk list or risk diagram, you can display all risks in the project overview or structure plan, if required. BCS allows you to categorize risks by type and distinguish between:

Political risk
Scheduling risk
Economic risk
Resource risk
Technical risk
Information security risk

To better structure risks, it is also possible to create sub-risks and filter by them.

Project risks occur within the scope of a project. With BCS, however, you can also record enterprise risks and thus, for example, continuously monitor existing risks in the company by means of enterprise risk management.

Take countermeasures

Projektron BCS risk management also offers you professional support when working out preventive measures to reduce risks. In addition to the detailed recording of measures, the project management software automatically calculates the cost reduction. This allows you to easily read off the quantitative efficiency of your measures.

Also enter how the probability of occurrence was reduced by a countermeasure and compare the values before the countermeasure and afterwards in the clear risk diagram. The risk value is important here; this looks at the risk according to severity and probability of occurrence.

Risks can never be completely eliminated, but BCS helps you to realistically assess the risk value and choose the appropriate way to deal with each risk. This will enable you to effectively avoid, mitigate, shift or budget for risks that need to be accepted.

Opportunity management: Identifying and seizing opportunities

If you only keep an eye on your goals and the risks, you can easily miss opportunities. Opportunities are unexpected events that can positively influence the course of the project and possibilities that arise in addition to the actual project goals. To ensure that you seize opportunities and don't let them pass you by, you should also be prepared for any opportunities that may arise and have appropriate measures ready.

Opportunities can also help to convince critical stakeholders or additionally motivate the project team. Therefore, in addition to risks, BCS also allows you to capture and categorize opportunities (political opportunity, schedule opportunity, economic opportunity, resource opportunity, or technical opportunity) and evaluate their positive impact on revenue, effort savings, and time savings. Projektron BCS calculates the corresponding revenues or savings for opportunities in "targeted" or "realized" status, taking into account the probability of occurrence, and marks them as "evaluated opportunities".

You even define support measures that increase the probability of occurrence of the opportunities in BCS and link them to concrete measures in the form of tasks or tickets.

In the diagram, you can directly confront and compare opportunities and risks. This helps you assess how effective the opportunity is in generating additional revenue, saving time or effort.

Idea management: Every successful project starts with a good idea

Every project is unique and every successful project starts with a single idea. Idea management is therefore the nucleus of project management. The goal is to develop, promote and sift ideas, and to feed the best ones into project preparation.

In Projektron BCS, employees simply enter a project idea. Checklists of ideas make it easier to decide whether the idea should be turned into a project. Depending on which idea type is selected, the responsible reviewer receives a suitably tailored checklist.

A diagram shows the reviewer at a glance the status of the checklist and whether the project idea has received a generally positive assessment or not. After the check, the idea receives the status accepted, rejected or approved. Approved ideas are transferred directly into a new project.

Submit project application

Have you defined goals, analyzed the environment, identified stakeholders, and recorded opportunities and risks? Then it's time to submit your project application. Finally, you can use a checklist to check whether the project is fully prepared and can be applied for.

The Project Application report concludes the project preparation process. In BCS, you generate the report as a PDF at the push of a button according to a customizable template - all relevant data is already available. To have the prepared project released for planning by the responsible persons, you send the report directly from BCS.