Learn about managing program development projects.

Hello and welcome to our Impactful Projects and Planning series. I'm Jami Yazdani. In today's session, we'll talk about what makes program development projects challenging, and I'll share a few tips for managing these important projects. So program development projects are pretty common type of project for many nonprofits, and so these projects or initiatives aim to create, improve or expand a program offered by the nonprofit to their users or community. And so examples of program development projects include developing an entirely new program to enjoy, address maybe emerging needs or a gap in service, enhancing an existing program, perhaps to approve improve effectiveness, expanding an already successful program to serve additional users or a broader scope of users, and testing a new program model or approach, perhaps with a small or beta cohort of users. And so what makes program development projects challenging? One key challenge for program development projects is funding, and so we may be trying to use limited internal funding to support our project. And so if we are expanding or enhancing an existing program, we may have to use limited funds from our existing program budget to try to support these changes, maybe though, we've received grant funding or outside funding to support our new new project. So that is often getting grant funding or outside support is typically more common when we're sort of developing a new program or testing a new program, but that funding comes along with funder requirements that we must meet, this could add additional parameters and reporting elements to the project. Another common challenge with program development projects is tight timelines, and so we often have inflexible deadlines for launching the new or expanded program, either due to funding requirements or our own program life cycles. And so if we are improving or expanding or maybe even replacing a program, we likely need to complete our project in time to implement that program, whenever the program typically begins. And so delays in our project sometimes could mean that we have to wait another year to launch our program. Another challenge is that project or program managers are often managing the project on top of all of their other responsibilities, and so they may already be running another program, or the program that's being expanded or improved and and so even if perhaps they're a new hire, sometimes organizations will hire someone to develop and run a program. If that's the case, they're balancing this project with trying to learn their job and about their organization. And so this dual role, I think, creates a particular challenge for program development projects, as the project manager may be designing or testing a program that they will later lead and manage. And so when project managers will also implement what they are creating during the project, it can have an impact on focus and clarity. And so I've seen project managers get so caught up in all of the elements of implementing the eventual new program that they struggle to focus on the project at hand, which is designing the program. And so while this vision beyond the project can benefit the program's design, it can also make it harder to concisely and clearly articulate a project plan and get buy in for our project. So what can we do? I've got three tips to share to help you manage program development projects. And so my first tip relates to this dual role clarity issue of that we just talked about, which is to clearly define your project's deliverables. And so project deliverables are the concrete, tangible things we are creating during a project. And so let's say we have a scope to develop a new program to address some particular issue that's affecting our users. So this type of scope. So many people would say, well, it lays out our deliverable, right? It's the new program. But what does developing a new program mean for this project? What are we actually going to deliver during and at the end of this project? So maybe we intend to start our project by completing an assessment of program needs. We'll use what we learn there to develop a beta program. We're going to run that beta with a small cohort, get feedback on it from those folks, and then use that feedback to create a final program design. So if that is how we are approaching our project, we actually have four deliverables for this project, the assessment results, the beta design, the beta test results and our final program design. Now this is just an example 10 different nonprofits with the exact same scope could define very different deliverables, but what we want to do is narrowly define what we will do in this project so that we can focus our energy and attention there, not on what happens after the project ends. And so what isn't a deliverable for this project is everything that comes afterwards, right? And so as part of this project, we are not launching communications or implementing the new program, and we also aren't planning how we're going to assess it a year from now. We are developing the design for this program that needs to be our focus. And so again, we want to narrowly define deliverables, defining what we will do in this project so that we can focus our energy and attention there, not on what comes after the project ends and the program begins. And as I mentioned earlier, defining deliverables can really help project managers who will also be implementing or managing the new program they are designing. Of course, it's best practice generally in project management, but I think it's particularly important to focus on that in this case. And so I worked with a client, a client recently, that was kind of in this exact position, and thinking about the implementation specifics for the program she was designing was taking a lot of her attention away from those elements of the program that was being designed, and from the beta cohort and what needed to be done with that group. And so she would get very sidetracked by thinking about how she was going to communicate about it and some of the specific details for the eventual project, which I totally get. It's hard not to think beyond the project, but defining a clear scope and clear deliverables helped bring her and her team back to the work that they needed to do during the project. And so we don't have to ignore all of those ideas for implementation, but they do need to be given their proper place in the project. And so that is why my second tip is to plan for sustainability. And so we can plan for all of those things that will come after our project ends and our program launches as part of Project closing or as a separate deliverable. And so there are lots of different ways to do this. One approach is to conduct a sustainability assessment. And so I've talked about these assessments before, but they're particularly useful for program development projects. And so with sustainability assessments, we're trying to understand the needs and impact of sustaining our new program. And so I find it useful to consider the context the needs and the impact of that program across a couple of different areas. So people are stakeholders, effort, resources, time and alignment, and so, for example, for people, we might consider, you know, who is going to sustain or implement the program. Is there a program manager? Is it going to be assigned to some new or existing team for sustainability needs around people? We can consider who needs to be involved in the program, who might lead activities or perform tasks. And for impact, we can think about who will be impacted by the program in the short term and the long term, and how will they be impacted.

For effort, we might ask what needs to be done to sustain this program. So how much effort is running this program going to take? How are we going to maintain that effort, maybe into a second or third or fourth year? Are there activities that have to happen to implement the program? And so this could be communications, this could be different elements of the program design that still need to be developed. And so we can ask similar questions about resources and time. So what resources do we need and how much time will it take to implement the program? Questions about alignment can be used to help us consider how our program is aligned with other programs, with organizational priorities and goals. And so this is an exercise that can be done with your project team or leadership team or key stakeholders. This type of assessment can help you begin your implementation planning efforts. And so that's one approach. Another approach is to create an implementation plan as a project deliverable. And so this could be simple or complex plan, but it's a great way to capture all of those ideas and details for implementing your new program. And so an implementation plan could include a timeline for program implementation, a plan for communication about the program, a budget or resource plan, and maybe an evaluation or assessment plan. So my third tip is to carefully plan for stakeholder feedback. So many program development projects include the gathering of stakeholder feedback, and so this could be feedback on program needs, on elements of the program. So what should be included in the program or feedback from beta or test cohorts? And so I often use a who, what, how and when approach, which is the same approach I use to plan project communication. So who needs to know what about our project, and how and when will they need to know it. And so this approach really allows us to consider all of the ways that we will communicate within and about our project, including how we will gather stakeholder feedback. And so, for example, for a program development project, we can consider who we want to get feedback from. So is it experts, community members, potential users. That answer is our who we can think about what type of feedback we want from them. So maybe, in our example, we're getting feedback on program needs. That's our what. So how are we going to get this feedback? So maybe we're going to conduct focus groups or send out a survey. That's our how, and then our when is when we're going to do this, when we're going to send out the survey, when we're going to hold our focus groups, and so we can map out that, who, what, how and when for stakeholder feedback. And this is something that I would encourage you to do as early as possible, because we want to make sure those stakeholder feedback tasks and deadlines make it into our overall project plan, and so gathering feedback may even become a deliverable. So we want to plan for it early. All right, so those are a few tips for managing program development projects, we want to clearly define the project's deliverables, plan for program sustainability and the who, what, how and when of stakeholder feedback. I would also recommend focusing on these five key elements as you manage your program development projects, planning for and managing scope, stakeholders, deliverable, schedule and communications can greatly impact your project success, especially for nonprofits and other mission driven organizations. And so before I take questions, I'd encourage you to download our five key elements worksheet. This free download of our simple worksheet is a great start to project planning and is available at Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation. If you need more support leading projects, visit our project solution page at Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation projects to learn about how I might be able to help. All right, so I'm happy to take questions you have about managing program development projects. Please add them in the comments. Due to a slight streaming delay, I'll give folks a few moments here to add their questions. If I can't answer your question live, I'm happy to respond later in the comments. You can also find all of the ways to contact me at Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation. Please reach out to me if you'd like to chat about program development projects. All right, so let's see, oops, sorry. Let's see if we have questions. All right, so a question is, we often do sustainability assessments before a project begins, should we also do it at closing? And so ideally, a sustainability or feasibility assessment would be done before a project begins, or as part of project initiation, if you have already done. One. I do think it's something that you can review and make any updates to at closing. Sometimes things have changed based on what you actually end up creating or learning during the program development project. But if you've already done one for a program development project, then my recommendation, beyond sort of those updates, would really be focusing on that implementation plan, either as a project deliverable or just as part of Project closing, because I think that would be most helpful if you did not do any sort of sustainability or feasibility assessment before the project began. It can be incorporated into closing, Alright, wonderful. Well, thank you. If you have other questions, feel free to comment or reach out to me and message me with any additional questions. So thank you for participating in our impactful projects and Planning series. If you visit Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation, view all of the past sessions in this series and learn about upcoming session topics. Thank you.