Eat our own dog food!

April 25, 2008

It’s great to see LÛCRUM eat our own dog food! That may sound negative but it’s really a very positive statement. I heard this phase regularly from a former manager. What this means is if a product or procedure is good enough to recommend to our customer’s, it’s good enough for us to use as well.
Yesterday I had my first opportunity to participate in an Alignment Session at LÛCRUM. In simple terms, an Alignment Sessions is one of LÛCRUM’s differentiating tools we offer to our clients to help organizations align on key business decisions.
Our LÛCRUM meeting was to look at a new internal system. Our senior management team and key system users followed the Alignment Session process to help drive to consensus and define next steps. The process helped us document the current system’s Strengths (ie, it’s free!), Problems (ie, too many manual processes), Threats (ie, might cost too much), and Opportunities (ie, interface with other business systems). From that point we were able to define our required Objectives and differentiate those from the ‘Nice to Haves’. Then we documented the Challenges (ie data conversion), Resources (ie PM, Sponsor), and finally our Game Plan (a high level project plan).
As the project manager of this internal project, I am thrilled to have at the end of the session all the information I need to complete a Project Charter and move forward on the project. In addition, I’m comfortable that the right people are aligned on the decision. I went home that day feeling like the day had been a big success.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.