Key Concepts
An important part of starting a project is getting everyone pointing in the same direction, heading towards a common goal. This task covers building that consensus, understanding the work, choosing the approach, gathering the inputs, and keeping the plan current as things change. When everyone works from the same picture, that is a common vision in practice.
One of the best ways to understand the importance of creating a clear vision for a project is to consider how we act when we do not have a clear vision. What do we do when we are driving in fog?
We slow down, unclear of what lies ahead. We take our foot off the gas and proceed very cautiously. The same happens on projects, without a clear view of where we are trying to get to, teams are hesitant. Clarity and direction allow focused effort and speed.
When we have a shared understanding of where we are trying to get to, even if things go wrong or problems arise, we know how to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward in the right direction. Contrast this with merely completing assigned tasks where, if something goes wrong, people stop work and explain the task is no longer possible. Having a shared understanding allows people to keep progressing when the unexpected occurs.
Vision unites and concentrates effort while providing stakeholders with a uniting view of the destination, helping them make better local decisions aligned to the overall goal. Leadership Challenge authors Kouzes and Posner liken creating a strong vision to “Revealing a beckoning summit towards which others can chart their own course.“
Once we explain and illustrate where we are going, it helps everyone as they make decisions in their day-to-day work. When faced with choices or forks in the trail towards project completion, they make decisions aligned with the larger goal.
What Makes an Effective Project Vision
To be effective, the project vision should be:
- Ideal – it represents some future preferred state
- Specific – not generic statements like “happy stakeholders” or “conforms to requirements,” but a product of a specific team addressing a definite problem
- Visual/Image – Images connect the right and left sides of the brain, enabling us to better understand the preferred end state
- Future-Oriented – providing a target to aim for in the future
- Common Purpose – provides a common goal that stakeholders with different skills can all work towards
Project Vision statements describe the desired end-goal and outcomes for the project. They depict the project’s direction and general destination, which helps with funding and stakeholder alignment. A good vision gives project participants a reason for contributing beyond it just being their job.
When writing vision statements, be clear, concise and have a time-horizon, yet be inspiring about the goal to get people to want to be a part of it and with the right level of challenge, so it is ambitious but not unrealistic.
1.1.1 Help Ensure a Shared Vision with Key Stakeholders
Creating a shared vision requires engaging key stakeholders in the vision-building process. One effective approach is the Design the Product Box exercise.
Co-Creating the Project Vision with Design the Product Box
Agile projects often use a vision/kick-off exercise called Design the Product Box to co-create the project vision statement. The activity is derived from “Design the brochure description” described in the book “Managing the Design Factory” by Don Reinertsen. Later, Jim Highsmith outlined the “Design the Product Box” exercise in his book “Agile Project Management.” Since its introduction, the exercise has started to be used in hybrid and traditional project settings too.
This exercise can be used at Kick-off meetings to help clarify the project objectives and align stakeholders around those objectives. Sponsors, business and team members are split into two mixed groups to contain people from each functional area. The groups are asked to imagine that we were to sell the completed successful project outcome. Each group then has 20 minutes to design the box the product will ship in following some simple rules.
On the front of the box, they must create the product name, optionally a logo, and the top three features. Not four or five, just the three essential features for the project/product to deliver. Then on the back, they can list the next 10-15 most important features.
After the 20 minutes is up, each of the teams presents their product boxes and explains why they thought their three items were the most important. The dialog that ensues as executives and business representatives who were split between teams debate the merits of their top three list compared to others is incredibly valuable.
Kick-off meetings can otherwise be limp, introduction-focused sessions, but by using the product box exercise, we quickly drive out key project issues. A final product box is created (sometimes with executive tie-breaking), and a strong sense of purpose and vision emerges.
This exercise embodies the five principles of a good project vision: it is Ideal, Specific, Visual/Image, Future-Oriented, and creates Common Purpose.
Other Tools for Building Shared Understanding
Beyond the product box exercise, other tools help ensure a shared vision with stakeholders:
Project Charter – While the project vision focuses on “Where?” we are trying to get to, the project charter fills in the Why?, How?, with Who? And by When? details. It summarizes a wealth of project information, including the business case, high-level description of in-scope and out-of-scope items, the core stakeholders and project approach.
In terms of building a shared understanding of the project, the project charter is what we would give most stakeholders to get an appreciation of why the project was authorized and what its goals and approach are.
XP Metaphor – The XP metaphor is a shorthand, a story, a way of explaining a product or service (or some portion of it) so that people can understand it more easily. Having a single, consistent metaphor helps align everyone around the same view of the product or service being created.
1.1.2 Promote the shared vision
Establishing a project vision is not a once-and-done process. A critical role of a project leader is to communicate and re-communicate the project vision so that, by creating a clear image of the completed solution and project goals, stakeholders can check and align their decisions and work towards the common project objective. This is the “Reveal a beckoning summit towards which others can chart their own course” idea; put simply, a common vision helps keep people pulling in the same direction.
When busy executing a project, it is common for divergent views to develop between well-intentioned team members. Team member’s desires for simplicity or to try new technology can diverge from business requirements. Quality analyst’s desires for completeness and conformance can separate from the sponsor’s wishes for rapid progress and completion.
Jim Collins in “Good to Great” writes that a trait of Level 5 Leaders (the most effective leaders of great companies) dedicate a much higher percentage of their work time to communicating and re-communicating project and corporate vision. Kouzes and Posner believe it is almost impossible for leaders to over communicate project vision and it is a critical step for effective leadership.
So, don’t have just one vision exercise at project kick-off and then assume you are done. Continually look for opportunities to communicate the project vision and new ways to illustrate and reinforce that vision.
Tools for Promoting Vision
Taskboard – A taskboard shows all the work recently done, work in progress (being done), and what is up next for development. Gantt charts and work breakdown structures also contain this information, but taskboards are easier to interpret and interact with since having a big board in the team room or on the team website makes the work extremely visible.
The low-tech, high-touch approach is deliberate by design to encourage its use. Seeing exactly what is next for development allows people to move forward if they complete their work early or flag it as blocked if they need help, while boards promote pairing and mobbing to get difficult items completed and generally raise awareness of what is on deck and what is coming soon.
1.1.3 Keep the vision current
The best leaders spend a significant portion of their time maintaining the shared vision of success criteria. This is in part because people forget, people adopt simpler interpretations that suit their needs better, and stakeholders leave and join the project.
Projects are full of unexpected extra steps and setbacks, so continuously updating and reinforcing the shared understanding of vision, goals, roles and work is essential.
Project Plan – When we hear the term “project plan” many people think of the schedule, perhaps expressed as a Gantt chart, but that is just one (critical) component. The project plan, also called the project management plan, integrates all the individual management plans into one document.
The project plan includes a description of the development approach, the lifecycle, the requirements management plan, the configuration management plan, the change management plan, and any processes or baselines used. These are all critical explanations aimed at creating a shared understanding of how functions will work and when things will happen, and as the project evolves, keeping these plans current ensures the vision remains aligned with reality.
1.1.4 Resolve misunderstandings about the vision
Full ECO Title: Break down situations to identify the root cause of a misunderstanding of the vision.
Even with the best tools to build a shared understanding, problems still arise where people get the wrong idea, priorities are misaligned, tasks get dropped, and expectations are not met. We need to get to the root cause of why it happened and then rebuild a stronger alignment to the objectives.
Five Whys
Five Whys is an exercise to discover the cause-and-effect connections in a problem and get to the root causes. It originated with Toyota and is commonly used in agile and lean approaches. Teams work in pairs or small groups and ask “Why?” five times about the problem to move past superficial answers and get to the root cause of the problem.
Fishbone Analysis
Often done alongside the Five Whys exercise, creating a fishbone diagram can help display the root cause analysis of problems. The team identifies factors that are causing the problem and looks for their likely causes. The process starts with writing the problem at the head of the fish. Then the team identifies and adds the contributing factors to the bones of the fish.
Deliverables and Tools
- Project Vision Statement
- Project Charter
- Design the Product Box (exercise)
- XP Metaphor
- Taskboard / Kanban board
- Project Management Plan
- Five Whys
- Fishbone Diagram (Ishikawa)
Related Topics
Further Reading
- Overview of the Five Whys Technique
FAQ
What does it mean to develop a common vision on a project?
It means building one shared view of the project destination that everyone works from, instead of separate plans that drift apart.
Why is a common vision important for a project?
Without a shared vision, teams slow down and move cautiously in different directions, like driving in fog. A clear picture of the destination gives the team confidence, clarity, and direction, so everyone works toward the same goal.
How do you build a shared vision with stakeholders?
By engaging key stakeholders in creating the vision together. Exercises like Design the Product Box give teams twenty minutes to agree on what matters most, and the dialogue that follows turns separate ideas into one shared picture of the completed solution.
Why do you need to keep communicating the vision?
Because people forget and adopt simpler interpretations that suit their own needs. A project leader communicates and re-communicates the vision to keep it current as the project evolves, so the team always works from the same picture of success.
What causes misunderstandings about the project vision?
Different people take away different ideas: priorities get misaligned, tasks get dropped, and expectations are not met. Resolving these starts by finding the root cause of the misunderstanding, using tools like Five Whys or a fishbone diagram, before realigning everyone on the vision.
Mastery Map & Quiz
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