PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Community Cafe Project Management

Community Cafe Project Management

A cluster analysis is a technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups such that the members of each group are as close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart as possible. Cluster analysis is used to segment customer information…to help identify customers with similar behavioral traits, such as clusters of best customer or one-time customers (Baltzan & Phillips, 2007).

A competitive advantage is product or service that an organization's customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor…These advantages are usually temporary because they are often duplicated by a competitor which in turn creates a perpetual cycle of improvement strategies (Baltzan & Phillips, 2007).

A growing environmental protection attitude is leading the movement away from uncontrolled use of private vehicle to developing strategies for co-ordinated and more efficient networks of different types of public transport within the state boundaries. In commissioning the strategy and developing recommendations for implementation, it was realised that management of the conflicting and diverse needs and requirements of all those groups and individuals who felt that they needed to have input was key to success. The SHC was adopted in full with multiple workshops being held to identify the summary (or program level) of stakeholders along with the lower regional levels of stakeholders. In a efficiently and documented project, using both the methodology and the software, this organisation demonstrated Level 4 “readiness”, even proposing a creative additional use of the methodology and software in the guise of providing the ability to develop program reports from the rolling up of the various regional reports.

A longitudinal study of an implementation of stakeholder management methodology and culture into an organisation or a group of organisations. Has this staged approach been more beneficial and longer-lasting than the usual “big bang” approach?

A methodology to extend the effectiveness of stakeholder management was described in the doctoral thesis: “Project relationship management and the Stakeholder Circle” (Bourne, 2005). This methodology provided guidance in the identification of a project's key stakeholders and through a graphical display of the stakeholder community, ensured awareness of the key stakeholders as the project moved through its various stages from initiation to closeout. The methodology incorporates five steps: identify, prioritise, visualise, engage, and monitor. As a result of actual application with projects, and suggestions for improvement from clients, colleagues and peers, software tools were developed to support its effective and efficient use and implementation in organisations (Bourne and Walker, 2006a; Bourne, 2008b; Walker et al., 2008; Walker and Rowlinson, 2008). At the time of writing, the methodology is in use in projects and organisations in many sectors and in many countries. The purpose of this paper is to report on advancements in the theory and practice of stakeholder management as a result of the author's experiences, and to invite other practitioners and researchers to collaborate in, or contribute to, research to further advance stakeholder management theory and ...