How Is the Delphi Technique Used in Project Management?
It’s no secret that project management requires decision-making, planning, and shared understanding amongst stakeholders, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. When it comes to reaching a consensus during a project, it can feel impossible. But what if there was a technique you could use to help solve the impossible? That’s where the Delphi Technique comes in. We’ve rounded up the basics of the Delphi Technique, how it applies in project management, and the benefits and drawbacks of using it. What is the Delphi Technique? According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Delphi Technique was developed in the 1960s due to changing technological environments and the impact this had on assessing and forecasting the future. It is also referred as the Delphi Method or Delphi Studies. To put it simply, the Delphi Technique is used to make decisions about complex issues based on individual opinions. In this method, a group of experts writes down and shares their thoughts about a problem with a facilitator. Each expert’s view is compiled into a summary report by the facilitator. The experts then review the information and provide updated predictions to the facilitator to produce a new report. This process continues with systematic reviews until participants reach a consensus or agreement on the topic. How to use the Delphi Technique Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Here’s a rundown of how to use the Delphi Technique: Determine the problem you want to solve. What is the problem you are trying to solve? Be as clear and specific as possible. Understanding the issue at hand will inform who the experts are. Identify and engage your panel of experts. Now that you know what you’re trying to accomplish or answer, you should have a good idea of who you need to include in the process. Choose a facilitator to manage the process. Select a neutral person who has enough understanding of the topic to understand the conversations and compile results without bias. Start the process. Use questionnaires and surveys to gain an understanding of experts’ views and consolidate information. Create a summary report. Once you’ve gathered the group’s responses, you should remove irrelevant information and consolidate the results. Circulate the report back to the group to contemplate their peers’ ideas before the next round of questioning. Ask more questions, summarize the results, and repeat. Cycle through as many rounds of questionnaires and surveys as you need until a consensus emerges. In between, continue to create anonymized reports to share back with the structured group to use in their considerations. Reach consensus and find the way forward. Once your group of experts reaches an agreement, you should analyze the results and create plans to address future risks and opportunities accordingly. The Delphi Technique isn’t an exact science — it’s a process. You might need only two rounds of questionnaires to reach a consensus for more minor problems but upwards of 10 rounds for more complex ones. Regardless, keep the desired goal in mind: achieving agreement based upon expert viewpoints and guidance. Delphi Technique in project management Sure, reaching consensus is essential in projects, but where exactly do we see the Delphi Technique used in project management? The method is commonly used for both scope management and risk management. Using the Delphi Technique for scope management is valuable because it can help stakeholders reach an agreement on the scope of any given project. This helps eliminate big reasons for project failure, such as lack of clear requirements and inadequate planning. For risk management, the Delphi Technique can help project teams predict and better prepare for future risks. That’s what the method was created to do in the first place: to help forecast for the future and get ahead of potential issues. Delphi Technique examples You’re probably getting a grasp of using the Delphi Technique in projects, but let’s run through a quick example related to scope management. Let’s say your business is kicking off a multi-phase project. You are going to implement a Project Management Office (PMO) and a customized project management methodology across your organization. Your experts, or key stakeholders, will likely have different views on what’s needed. They might also want other elements from the PMO, such as resource allocation, a template library, or project reporting assistance. You would use the Delphi Technique to reach a consensus on the scope of the PMO implementation as the initial phase of the project and then prioritize the elements of the following phases. The advantages of using the Delphi method Successful projects require stakeholders and project teams to be on the same page, and that’s what the Delphi method can do for you. Here are the advantages of the Delphi Technique: There’s potential to meet consensus rapidly. Have you ever been in a project meeting and needed to make a decision quickly but couldn’t get everyone in the room to agree? It happens to all of us. The Delphi Technique can help you achieve consensus and do it quickly, depending on the issue at hand. Less “groupthink” and more individual contributions. Sharing opinions, especially in a professional setting, can be challenging, particularly when there are a couple of dominant speakers in the room. One major perk of this method is that anonymized answers allow everyone to express and share their opinions freely. It’s cheap and quick to conduct. It’s relatively easy and inexpensive to use the Delphi Technique. You don’t need a lot of fancy tools or expensive materials to achieve results — just some time and a way to write down and compile ideas. The drawbacks of using the Delphi analysis As with any technique, you might experience some challenges with the Delphi Technique along the way. One key challenge: While it’s possible that you can achieve consensus quickly, it could be a long and tedious process to reach an agreement. If multiple rounds of questionnaires are required before your group hits consensus, you could fall behind schedule and put your project at risk. Another hurdle is that the technique is designed to help you reach an expert consensus, but just because your group of experts agrees doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve found the best or the right way to solve a problem. Don’t be mistaken – level-setting opinions and getting everyone on the same page is a huge win, but it’s worth noting the difference between consensus and identifying the best possible solution. Using Wrike for the Delphi Technique As we mentioned, you don’t need any fancy tools or a big budget if you want to use the Delphi Technique. However, once you’ve reached a consensus about a particular problem related to a project, a project management tool may come in handy to help ensure you follow through with what all experts have agreed upon. With Wrike, you can follow up on action items from your Delphi method analyses and put together full project schedules. The Delphi Technique can help you determine the next steps of a project, and Wrike will help ensure you stay on track to achieve those next steps without fail. Ready? Get started today with a free trial of Wrike.
How to Make Project Management Best Practices Work in a Small Organization
One thing I've noticed about smaller organizations, though, is that beneath that layer of enthusiasm lies a company in need. They often lack structure, but that may not really be their primary need. Indeed, too much structure will stifle the efforts of those entrepreneurial spirits running the show at a smaller, startup-type company. But they are almost always in need of more efficient processes and some organization. Their wins are often coming by luck, because they're too busy innovating and meeting growing customer demands to actually track what's working and repeating those steps again. Setting the stage So, as a project manager or incoming consultant, the best thing you can offer to a smaller organization is an injection of project management best practices. How you do that and what exactly those best practices are may indeed be somewhat dependent on the organization, the industry, and the state of the projects that are in progress or ready to start. From my past experience, what I've found these organizations need quickly are: Customer education. Sit down with each customer for the small organization and explain what changes will and are being made to make their projects more successful and the PM oversight more accountable. Injection of successful project management processes. Next, rollout PM best practices within the organization and on the many projects being executed. This likely will involve some teaching and learning and it will definitely take some refinement over time. Eventually it will be second nature as project successes become more frequent with more PM structure. Project management oversight of the development process. To further ensure a tighter ship and more successful PM practice, I highly recommend initially having heavy oversight of the development team by project management. I've seen it work in smaller startup-type situations…I've made it work personally in smaller startup-type situations. When you must inject better processes and you must turn projects around quickly, it may be your only choice. The best practices We've discussed some quick actions to take to roll out best practices into a small organization where they were previously needed but lacking. Now let's consider what those best practices should be for the small startup-types... Consistent project status reporting. Come up with a fairly standard project status report and stick to it. Include project status, key dates, key tasks and assignments and outstanding issues. Include all key information for both your team and your customer and provide it on a weekly basis to every stakeholder on the project. Consistent project status meetings. Hold weekly meetings with your team and customer on the project. Adhoc meetings are ok and often necessary, but relying on them all the time can be annoying and can lead to decreased attendance and, subsequently, decreased effectiveness. Detailed budget management. Manage the project budget tightly. Too many PMs shoot from the hip in small organizations because they're given too much freedom. And then they wonder why the project failed because it went way over budget. A budget that is watched carefully, reforecasted consistently, and reported on relentlessly can never get too far out of hand. Don't let the financials be the reason why your project failed. Use of a collaborative project management software. I highly recommend going web-based for a project management tool, but it's imperative that it be a collaborative tool. In a smaller organization like the ones we're discussing, everyone is wearing multiple hats and often working long hours. They also may be very decentralized – they may often be very geographically dispersed. Many small organizations don't even have a headquarters yet. So a powerful, inexpensive, and web-based project management tool that allows the team to gather, share documents, update tasks, etc. on their own without the obligation of running every piece of information through a central PM figure will ensure that the project is well-managed in real time. Summary While there's no way to guarantee project success in any organization – big or small - no matter what you do, utilizing PM best practices will always provide some level of benefit to the projects being managed and the organization as a whole. Communication is improved, customers are more comfortable during the engagement, and the project staff is usually able to work more cohesively as a unit focused on the overall goals of the project. Injecting PM best practices into a newer, smaller, growing organization will help that organization retain customers and develop into a mature organization that can regularly and successfully deliver on projects in the future.
