Successfully Implementing Your Student Success Plans
Ensuring The Success Of Well Managed Interventions That Work
Thursday, April 16, 2015, 11:00am Pacific Time
IEBC Sunkosi Webinar © 2015 All rights reserved.
Introduction and Welcome
Host:
Brad C. Phillips, President and CEO of IEBC
and IEBC consultant:
Geoffrey P Forster, Managing Partner, Sunkosi LLC
Trouble connecting?
Call 800-644-9070
Web ID 887-677-901
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Learning Outcomes
Your learning outcomes will include how to:
1. Determine why projects fail and how to avoid common missteps
2. Scope project needs
3. Move seamlessly from vision to effective implementation
4. Communicate your project status and needs
5. Successfully deploy your project
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Why you need a project management methodology
• Maximizing our effort
– Why this work is so important and often ignored!
• I have a plumbing problem
– We think we know how to implement the fix
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Student Intervention Projects – Experience From The Field
Context:
Spend precious funds wisely
Ensure the fidelity of implementation
Most educators are not trained in project management
Do not repeat the pattern of past failed implementations
The first step in the journey is the most difficult
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But Project Management Is A Team Sport
Are you a project manager?
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Project Management Isn’t Rocket Science
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Even Good Rocket Science Needs An Intervention Plan
Launch-abort
rocket on NASA’s new Space
Launch System
for 2018
The Space Shuttle
had no effective
launch-abort option
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And Project Management Can Get Complicated
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But Project Management Can Also Be Simple
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The Reality Of Implementation
What can educators do to complete projects when they …
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Have challenging and often vague objectives
Have to manage multiple competing responsibilities
Don’t have management control of team members
Often have so many project stakeholders
Limited opportunity for effective communication
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You Need A Project Methodology
(http://recultured.com/uncategorized/09/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube/, 2015)
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The 7 Key Communication Attributes Of A Great Intervention Project
All team members continually document and openly communicate…
1. The project methodology and everyone’s role in the project
2. The focused, SMART* objectives of the project
3. Each contributor’s tasks, progress, and issues
4. Blockages and the resolution status
5. How deliverables will be verified and validated
6. How deployment will include training, support, and communication
7. Recognition of success and failure
* (SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-limited.)
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Your Assignment is…
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The IEBC Project Management Methodology
In our methodology we use a series of templates optimized for the
community college environment. These templates include:
T1. Project scope definition
T2. Project resourcing
T3. Creating a project activities backlog
T4. Effective project communications
T5. Successful project deployment
Using these templates, IEBC introduces a simple Q&A project
management methodology.
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T1. Project Scope Definition
Each project team gets together to agree and write down a short
complete answer for each of the following questions…
1. What project is on your to-do list?
2. What are the project scope and associated milestones?
3. What project methodology do you plan to use?
4. What are you depending on to make the project successful?
5. What significant assumptions have you made?
6. What are the major deliverables and acceptance criteria?
7. Who are the major stakeholder groups?
8. What is the definition of project success for each stakeholder?
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T2. Project Resourcing
1. Who is going to be the project lead?
2. What are the roles of other key resources and team members?
3. What other resources or tools are needed?
4. Are any resources over or under-committed?
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T3. Creating A Project Activities Backlog
1. What are the project’s major tasks?

(List out major tasks)
2. What is the timeline for completing the major tasks?
3. What are the detailed activities for the next major task?
4. What is the estimated effort for each activity?
5. How well does the detailed effort analysis still fit the timeline?
6. Who has agreed to take responsibility for each activity?
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T4. Effective Project Communications
1. What tools will you use to communicate activity status?
2. What will be the frequency of status updates?
3. What will be included in your project kickoff meeting?
4. How will team members communicate their status?
5. How will status be continually verified?
6. How will management stakeholders be kept informed?
7. How will project direction being continually validated?
8. How will the hard work of team participants be recognized?
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T5. Successful Project Deployment
1. How will overall functionality be verified and validated?
2. What do you plan for an alpha trial?
3. What do you plan for a beta trial?
4. How will you get approval for the final deployment?
5. What end-user training is required as part of deployment?
6. What end-user support will be required?
7. How do you plan to capture key project metrics including
deployment feedback?
8. How will you communicate project success to team members
and all project stakeholders?
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Vision + Method + Effort = Success
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Q&A
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Considerations
This introduction has provided the basics, however there is a lot more to effective
project management
 breaking down major and minor tasks
 estimating level of effort
 effective communication
 dealing with motivation and resistance
 Keeping stakeholder informed
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Next step
Do you have questions about this work?
Are you ready to make your intervention successful?
We can coach you further on template use, or if needed, we
can actively assist you in getting that important project
completed.
Our contact details are:
bphillips@iebcnow.org
www.iebcnow.org
+1.619.252.8503
© 2015 All rights reserved
geoff.forster@sunkosi.us
www.sunkosi.us
+1.858.876.2518
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