Tag Archives: PMP

Remote Project Management – The Visual Project Charter™

Leave a reply

Remote Project Management - The Visual Project Charter™

The truth is that for most of us project managers, whether we want to admit it or not, the process of creating a project charter is one that we often dread.

We sit there in front of a Microsoft Word template blinking at us on the screen and realize just how much missing or incomplete information we have when we begin typing into the one of the very first, and potentially most important artifacts for any project.

We know we face the sending of a series of emails, follow up emails, follow up to the follow up emails, and maybe even some escalation emails and phone calls just to get the information we need to create the first draft of a project charter. And that’s before we even begin trying to get alignment, buy-in, and sign-off on the document.

Now, add in the challenges of trying to create a project charter when everyone is working remotely and our sacred task of initiating a project doesn’t get any easier.

So, there has never been a better time to leverage the Visual Project Charter™.

The Visual Project Charter™

With online whiteboarding tools like Mural, Miro, LucidSpark and Microsoft Whiteboard you can easily download the Visual Project Charter™ for FREE as a JPEG and upload it as a background to place digital sticky notes on as you collaborate with cross-functional team virtually using Zoom, Cisco WebEx or Microsoft Teams.

Visual Project Charter™

Click here to access the PDF poster (35″x56″) and JPEG of the Visual Project Charter™

To help give you a better idea of how easy this is to do and what it might look like, I created the following short six-minute video introduction to the Visual Project Charter™ to show how easy it is to take the JPEG and upload it as a background into online whiteboarding tools like Mural, Miro, LucidSpark or Microsoft Whiteboard where you can place digital sticky notes instead of real ones as you collaborate with cross-functional team virtually using Zoom, Cisco WebEx or Microsoft Teams.

Click here to access the PDF poster (35″x56″) and JPEG of the Visual Project Charter™

Remote Project Management

Whether you download the Visual Project Charter™ PDF and print it as a poster (35″x56″) or use the JPEG in the digital world I’m sure you’ll agree that this a much more visual, collaborative, enjoyable and effective way to gather all of the information to populate your project charter and build the buy-in and alignment necessary to make your project a success!

Here is a step-by-step guide for how to use the Visual Project Charter™ with online whiteboarding tools like Miro, Mural, LucidSpark and Microsoft Whiteboard:

  1. Download the Visual Project Charter™ from this web site

    2. (both JPEG and PDF)

  2. Create a new workspace in your online whiteboarding tool (Miro, Mural, LucidSpark or Microsoft Whiteboard)

  3. Upload the JPEG version of the Visual Project Charter™ to your online whiteboarding tool
    • MIRO – ‘Upload->My Device’ (left side icons)
    • MURAL -‘Images->import images’ (left side icons)
    • LUCIDSPARK – ‘Insert->Images’ (under hamburger menu on the top)
    • WHITEBOARD – ‘Images->Library Image’ (bottom icons)

  4. Resize the JPEG image after it is added

  5. Lock the JPEG image down so people can’t move it around when placing their sticky notes

  6. Create work areas around the Visual Project Charter™ to give you larger, targeted areas to work (if desired)

  7. Plan and execute your cross-functional team meeting to populate the Visual Project Charter™ via Zoom or Cisco WebEx or Microsoft teams when the workspace is built

  8. Have fun!

  9. Use the results of your Visual Project Charter™ session to create a traditional project charter and route it for signatures

Charting ChangeI’m sure you’ll get a lot of value out of the Visual Project Charter™, especially when using it as part of your remote project management best practices.

And, if you like the Visual Project Charter™, you will LOVE the Change Planning Toolkit™ and should definitely pick up copies of my books:

  1. Charting Change
  2. Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit™

Leave a reply

Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit

The business world is showing an increasing interest in the people side of change, and there is a very real reason for this…

Companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating a more efficient and effective business.

Everyone knows that a lot of technology projects fail to achieve their intended objectives, timings, and budgets. This fact and the increasing investment levels are causing more executives to look for ways to de-risk these technology investments in digitizing the business.

That’s why we’re seeing an uptick in the hiring and certification of change management professionals, which is great, but companies are still thinking about the relationship between project management and change management backwards.

In most cases change management is brought to bear as an afterthought, a bolt on to project management when the reverse should be true. Managing a change is a bigger endeavor than managing a project, and in fact you could say that because every project changes something, that every project is a change initiative.

It is thinking about managing projects in this way that I sat down to begin managing a new project several years ago and like many project managers, I found myself sitting at my computer by myself starting at an empty Microsoft Word template for a project charter knowing the uphill battle I’m going to face trying to route this document around via email and succeeding at both getting any responses at all and at getting meaningful input and a diversity of perspectives to make my project charter a really strong document that anyone will actually look at after week two of the project. I also found myself thinking that there has to be a better to plan and execute change initiatives and projects.

ACMP Standard Visualization

And sure people like pull ADKAR (a modified version of AIDA from the marketing world) and the ACMP Standard for Change Management (see the visualization I created above and download it for free here) and John Kotter’s change leadership approach, but they all fall short of making the planning and execution of change initiatives and projects a more visual and collaborative process, so I found myself starting to create new tools to help people (intended to link up with the PMBOK and ACMP Standard for Change Management).

These tools started to collect until they formed a comprehensive and new visual, collaborative approach to planning and executing change initiatives, and yes projects. This collection of tools became known as the Change Planning Toolkit™ and was first introduced in my latest book Charting Change which pairs nicely with my first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. Both are designed to pack more insights into each chapter than most books contain in the entirety of their pages. Two of the most important frameworks introduced in the book are the Five Keys to Successful Change:

Five Keys to Successful Change 550

And the Architecting the Organization for Change framework:

Architecting the Organization for Change

Both frameworks are designed to help people challenge the way they think about organizational change. They are designed to help people think about more than change management and to think differently about how organizations are transformed and how change management and project management relate to each other.

To help people begin their participation in changing change I’ve made ten free tools available for download from the 50+ tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™, and people who buy a copy of Charting Change get access to 26 of the 50+ tools (including the Visual Project Charter™ and the Change Planning Canvas™). The book does a great job of helping to explain the philosophy behind the toolkit and how to get started with the tools, but people who purchase access to all 50+ tools (including tools to help people think through their Digital Transformation) also get a QuickStart Guide to explain each tool.

But if we are going to truly work together to change how change is planned and executed I thought it would make sense to give people a more in depth sneak preview into what’s inside the toolkit and so I’ve created the following Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit™ webinar recording:



I encourage you to reflect upon your own experiences planning and executing both projects and change initiatives and what you’ve found lacking in the tools you call upon from ProSci, PMI, ACMP or others and then check out the book and the webinar and then let me know if there are any tools that you feel are still missing – and if it makes sense, I’ll create them!

My goal in creating all of these tools for you after all is to help you beat the 70% change failure rate, so let’s work together at changing change so our organizations are capable with more capably transforming themselves as the environment changes around them.

You can let me know if there are any change tools that you still need (or if you’d like me to come show you and your team personally how to use them) via the contact form.

Let’s change change together!

Change Planning Toolkit Million Dollar Value

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Empowering Every Resident with Tools for Change and Innovation

Leave a reply

Empowering Every Resident with Tools for ChangeWhat if you could empower every citizen with tools that will help your city, state or country innovate and change faster than the competition for a penny a person?

Well, now it’s possible…

A revolution is beginning, and the smart cities, states, countries, and even organizations, are arming themselves with the tools they need to win…

The Change Planning Toolkit™ has been designed to create a more visual, collaborative and agile method for getting everyone literally all on the same page for change. The Change Planning Toolkit™’s collection of tools, frameworks, and worksheets and the approach outlined in the book Charting Change operate together in a spirit built upon the standards created by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and the interactive approaches that the Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas have made comfortable for people.

ACMP Standard Visualization

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is anchored in the best practices of organizational change and project management. At its center is the Change Planning Canvas™, a powerful tool that will help you beat the 70% change failure rate by enabling you to quickly visualize, plan, and execute projects and change initiatives alike. The more than fifty (50) tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you deliver projects and change efforts on time, while simultaneously accelerating implementation and adoption.

Change Planning Wall

If the benefits are not clear, be sure and get your 10 Free Change Planning Tools and you’ll get a better sense of the power of the Change Planning Toolkit™ (it is visual after all) and check out the additional benefits in the image below:

Change Planning Toolkit Benefits

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is breaking away from the business model where people traditionally license intellectual property in the innovation and management information space by the named user, where fees for example are:

1. Gartner — $20,000-30,000 per year for a single user
2. Forrester — ~$20,000 per year for a single user
3. BeingFirst — $975 per year for a single user
4. ProSci — $350-400 per download (for a single user) or $4,000+ per user for training
5. MarketingProfs.com — $279 per year for a single user
6. Skillsoft — $150 per year for business skills training for a single user

… or you can hire a top consultant to do some knowledge transfer to your organization for $400-$1,000 per hour (or more).

Change Planning Toolkit Valuable Tools

Now, what is Change Planning Toolkit™ offering that is different?

First, the Change Planning Toolkit™ provides an integrated system of tools far more powerful and far more capable of increasing organizational agility than any other.

Second, the Change Planning Toolkit™ is now available using two business model variations not usually offered in the intellectual property space, which include:

1. Access for Every Employee (aka the Site License option)

  • Access for EVERY employee in your organization, priced at a very affordable $2/yr per employee plus a $299.99 annual fee
  • Includes access to a QuickStart Guide to get you up and running quickly
  • Includes access to POSTER SIZE versions of key tools, including the Change Planning Canvas™ and Visual Project Charter™
  • SPECIAL OFFER – The next three (3) firms to purchase a full-day training session (which includes train-the-trainer) will receive a free* Change Planning Toolkit™ site license

——————————————————————————–
Book a Training Session and get a free* site license
——————————————————————————–

2. Access for Every Resident (aka the City/State/Country License option)

  • Access for EVERY resident of your city, state, or country. Priced at a very affordable $0.01/yr per resident ($1,000/yr minimum)
  • Yes, that is right. Cities, states and countries are all eligible for a license that makes these tools available to all residents for just a PENNY per year per resident!
  • SPECIAL OFFER #1 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $25,000 and get up to 50 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for one session, expenses still to be reimbursed)
  • SPECIAL OFFER #2 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $100,000 and get up to 200 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for four (4) sessions in up to two (2) locations with two adjacent days per location, expenses still to be reimbursed)
  • SPECIAL OFFER #3 – Purchase a city, state, or country license worth more than $1,000,000 and get up to 1,000 people trained to use the toolkit and how to train others to use it (training fees waived for twenty (20) sessions in up to ten (10) locations with two adjacent days per location, expenses still to be reimbursed)

——————————————————————————–
CONTACT ME to get access for all of your residents
——————————————————————————–

Some educational institutions may be able to apply for grants from the government to cover the cost of the license and training as part of their efforts to raise the skills of their local residents. Central Wyoming College is an example of an educational institution that won a Federal grant to do just that. It’s possible.

And these licenses are available for both the:

  1. Change Planning Toolkit™
  2. Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ (coming soon)

Become a Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ Patron

The Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ will be coming soon, and you can become a Patron by helping to fund its completion through a site license or a city/state/country license and as a reward get instant access to the POSTER SIZE version of The Experiment Canvas™ and the many other tools I’ve already completed. You’ll then of course get access to the rest of the toolkit as I complete it. You’ll get this instant access at a permanent 50% discount off the normal $2/yr per employee or $0.01/yr per resident, meaning your cost will be a paltry $1/yr per employee or $0.005/yr per resident for the lifetime of the license.

SPECIAL BUNDLE DISCOUNT:

— Get instant access for both the Change Planning Toolkit™ and the Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ (coming soon) for all of your residents for a low bundle price of $0.014/yr per resident ($1,000/yr minimum) – that’s less than a penny-and-a-half per resident (a full 60% discount off the second license).

——————————————————————————–
CONTACT ME to get a jump on the competition
——————————————————————————–

Empower Your Residents and Employees to Cope with the Accelerating Pace of Change

So don’t wait, act today and get access for all of your employees or all of your residents to these powerful, intuitive and beautifully visual and collaborative tools that will help increase the speed of innovation and change in your organizations to cope with the accelerating pace of change in the world all around us. Countries all around the world are fighting to be the destination of choice of aspiring entrepreneurs and bold innovators and to rise in comparative rankings like the:

World’s 50 Most Innovative Countries (license cost based on population)

  1. Switzerland ($84,541)
  2. Sweden ($99,206)
  3. Netherlands ($170,328)
  4. United States ($3,264,740)
  5. United Kingdom ($655,111)
  6. Denmark ($57,118)
  7. Singapore ($57,845)
  8. Finland ($55,413)
  9. Germany ($806,361)
  10. Ireland ($47,492)

    11. ————————————–
    State of California ($392,500)
    ————————————–

  11. South Korea ($507,050)
  12. Luxembourg ($5,841)
  13. Iceland ($3,343)
  14. Japan ($1,260,452)
  15. France ($649,387)
  16. Hong Kong ($74,019)
  17. Israel ($83,232)
  18. Canada ($366,261)
  19. Norway ($53,308)
  20. Austria ($85,924)

    21. ————————————–
    State of Texas ($278,625)
    ————————————–

  21. New Zealand ($46,049)
  22. China ($13,882,327)
  23. Australia ($246,417)
  24. Czech Republic ($105,551)
  25. Estonia ($13,058)
  26. Malta ($4,205)
  27. Belgium ($114,438)
  28. Spain ($460,701)
  29. Italy ($597,980)
  30. Cyprus ($11,876)

    31. ————————————–
    New York City ($85,504)
    ————————————–

  31. Portugal ($102,648)
  32. Slovenia ($20,713)
  33. Latvia ($19,446)
  34. Slovakia ($54,322)
  35. UAE ($93,976)
  36. Bulgaria ($70,453)
  37. Malaysia ($311,642)
  38. Poland ($385,636)
  39. Hungary ($97,879)
  40. Lithuania ($28,306)

    41. —————————————
    Chicago ($27,205)
    —————————————

  41. Croatia ($42,098)
  42. Romania ($192,375)
  43. Turkey ($804,175)
  44. Greece ($108,929)
  45. Russia ($1,433,750)
  46. Chile ($183,135)
  47. Vietnam ($954,146)
  48. Montenegro ($6,263)
  49. Qatar ($23,381)
  50. Ukraine ($444,051)

Are you happy with your country’s position on the World’s 50 Most Innovative Countries list?

Are you happy with your company’s level of organizational agility or level of innovation success?

Is your organization or country keeping up with the accelerating pace of change?

If not, then you need these tools. And if you are satisfied with your competitive position, then you need these tools to maintain your current position…

——————————————————————————————————
CONTACT ME to get access for all of your residents or employees
——————————————————————————————————


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

13 Change Management Experts Share Their Tips

2 Replies

13 Change Management Experts Share Their Tips

Recently my colleague Daniel Lock collected and published points-of-view (POV) from 13 change management experts on implementing fast, dramatic and powerful change.

Here is mine:

If your change effort or project begins in a Microsoft Word document, you’re already in a whole world of trouble. Change is a human endeavor, so the most powerful way to embark on creating a dramatic and powerful change on an aggressive timeline is to surface the key challenges and opportunities as early as possible.
That doesn’t happen with a single individual tapping away at the keys entering prose or data into a traditional project charter. Instead, I recommend taking the following three steps to accelerate your change effort or project and increase its chances of success:

1. Evaluate the Change Readiness of Your Organization

Too often we just jump in and announce the start of projects and change initiatives without even looking around to see if the resources that are going to be crucial to our success are even available.

Convene a cross-functional change planning team to identify the resources you are going to need to successfully complete the project (physical, financial, human, etc.). Then begin to draft an initial high level project schedule including when different resources will need and map that against their availability (including their commitments to other existing and potential projects and change initiatives) to create a change readiness heat map.

My PCC Change Readiness Framework and Worksheet from the Change Planning Toolkit™ are also useful tools for evaluating your change readiness.

2. Architect Your Organization for Change

One of the biggest barriers to successful change initiatives is viewing change management as a subset of project management when we should really all be instead viewing project management as a subset of change management, and but one of Five Keys to Successful Change.

Consciously approaching the design of our organization and how it operates from the outside as changes in the environment dictate changes inside our organization can benefit from using a tool like the Architecting the Organization for Change framework.

3. Develop a Holistic View of the Change You’re Trying to Make

Change planning should never be a solo activity. You must identify those individuals who can verbalize the current and desired states, the risks and resources, identify the potential barriers and benefits, craft effective communications, etc.

You need to also involve people who know how to leverage a human-centered approach to affecting change using The Eleven Change Roles and who can build and maintain momentum by understanding and harness The Eight Change Mindsets that cause people to choose change.

I truly believe that only by taking a more visual, collaborative approach to change and capturing the key information on a single page using the Change Planning Canvas™ as you build your change plan, will you ever create and sustain the alignment necessary to beat the 70% change failure rate.

Click here to read responses from the 12 other change management experts


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Charting Change Book Launch Special – Free Visual Project Charter™ Poster Download

Leave a reply

Charting Change Number One New ReleaseIn celebration of the launch of Braden Kelley’s latest book – Charting Change – we are proud to make two new poster size downloads from the Change Planning Toolkit™ available for a limited time for FREE:

  1. Visual Project Charter™ – 35″x56″ scalable PDF download

  2. ACMP Standard for Change Management® (Visualization) – 35″x56″ scalable PDF download

11″x17″ scalable PDF downloads of these two tools will remain as free downloads from the Change Planning Toolkit™ here on the site. BUT, these 35″x56″ poster size versions are only available as free downloads for a LIMITED TIME here on the site. If you run marketing for a consulting firm or a software company targeting change management or project management professionals, I am looking for sponsors to help keep them free.

Contact me to sponsor one or both.

The Visual Project Charter™ helps organizations:

  • Move beyond the Microsoft Word document
  • Make the creation of Project Charters more fun!
  • Kickoff projects in a more collaborative, more visual way
  • Structure dialogue to capture the project overview, project scope, project conditions and project approach

Use it in planning your projects in a more visual and collaborative way for greater alignment, accountability, and more successful outcomes.

Visual Project Charter™

One good place to get it printed at the 35″x56″ size to put up on your wall for your cross-fuctional project charter collaborative meeting is PosterPrintHouse.com for about $50.00 plus or minus depending on any specials they might be running.

The ACMP Standard for Change Management®:

  • Outlines generally accepted practices, processes, tasks and activities used by change management practitioners across multiple roles, organizations and industries.
  • Provides a clear and consistent vocabulary of essential change management terminology and offers guidance for organizational change mgmt. for any type of change.
  • Supports organization decision making regarding change management resources.

ACMP Standard Visualization

So grab these 35″x56″ poster size free downloads while you can, and get yourself a copy of Braden Kelley’s books:

Keep innovating and making positive change!

Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.