Building an Opportunity or Problem Statement

An Opportunity or Problem Statement:

Contains information that gives specificity to the issue

Describes the “pain” caused by the current problem

Identifies the issues What is occurring/happening?

Example: Products are delivered late to our customers

When did the problem start? Example: The problem has developed over the last six months

Where is the occurrence? Example: Our West Coast customers are primarily affected (roughly

75% of the total)

Extent of the problem Example: 30 orders worth $790,000 in July

Project Charter: TEMPLATE

Business Impact

• Why should we do this? What is the benefit?

• How does this project align with the business strategy?

• What is the quantified value of the project ($$$)?

Project Scope

• What are the boundaries of the initiative (start and end steps of the process or parts of a system)?

• What authority do we have?

• What is not within scope?

Opportunity or Problem Statement

• What “pain” are we or our customers experiencing?

• What is wrong or not working?

• Why do we think we can generate the value proposition described in the Business Impact?

Goal Statement

• What are our improvement objectives and targets?

• Specifically, what are we going to do and deliver?

• How will success be measured? What specific parameters will be measured? Define Y = f(x) Team Selection

• Who are the team members?

• What is their role?

• How much of their time will be dedicated to the project?

Project Plan

• How are we going to get this done?

• When are we going to complete the work?

• What are the major milestones?

Business Impact

• Why should we do this? What is the benefit?

• How does this project align with our long term strategy?

• What is the quantified value proposition?

• Increase awareness of IE to non-IIE members

• Traditional marketing is cost prohibitive

• Leverage the personal networks of IAB membership

Project Scope

• What are the boundaries of this initiative? Start & End?

• What authority do we have?

• What is Out of Scope?

• Public side of IAB vs. Yahoo ‘members only’

• The IAB is empowered w/IIE HQ assistance

• Direct Marketing to the IIE Membership is out of scope

• Bring in other orgs, CIE? IIE Fellows? CIEADH? RVPs?

Opportunity or Problem Statement

• What “pain” are we or our customers experiencing?

• What is wrong or not working?

• Why do we think we can generate the value proposition described in the Business Impact?

• IE profession doesn’t have the name recognition (MG)

• Non IEs don’t know what IEs do.

• Getting a message out to non-IIE members

• IEs that move into mgmt positions not considered IE

Team Selection

• Who are the team members?

• What is their role?

• How much time will be dedicated to the project?

Revised 3/18/2010 WGT