MSP Foundation cheat sheet

MSP defines seven principles: lead with purpose, collaborate across boundaries, deal with ambiguity, align with priorities, deploy diverse skills, realize measurable benefits, and bring pace and value.

Principles describe what a good programme looks like; they are applied proportionally to every programme and are not optional or selectively adopted.

Lead with purpose: the programme has a clear, compelling purpose and vision that is communicated so people understand why it exists and what success looks like.

Collaborate across boundaries: work spans organizational, professional, cultural and geographical boundaries instead of staying inside functional silos.

Deal with ambiguity: uncertainty is a normal condition of programmes; ambiguity is surfaced, discussed and addressed with the best available evidence rather than deferred.

Align with priorities: programme objectives and work remain aligned to strategic priorities and are reprioritized when strategy or the external environment changes.

Deploy diverse skills: the programme draws on a mix of skills, experience and perspectives, which improves the quality of decisions and solutions.

Realize measurable benefits: benefits are defined, measurable, owned and tracked; delivering outputs alone does not constitute programme success.

Bring pace and value: value is delivered early and incrementally, bureaucracy is limited to what control requires, and change happens at a pace the organization can absorb.

The people domain covers leadership, teams and team development, stakeholder engagement, communication and organizational change.

Leadership is the ability to establish vision and direction, influence and align others to a common purpose, and empower and inspire people; management plans, organizes, controls and delivers predictably.

Stakeholder engagement sequence: identify stakeholders, analyse them (interest, influence, attitude), plan engagement, engage them, and measure the effectiveness of that engagement.

Attitude categories (supportive, neutral, opposed) combined with level of interest and degree of influence determine the engagement effort and approach for each stakeholder.

Tuckman's team development stages occur in order: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning.

The Kubler-Ross change curve runs: shock or denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and is used to anticipate individual reactions to change.

Lewin's organizational change model: unfreeze current behaviour, make the transition to new ways of working, then refreeze so the new approach becomes the norm.

The Business Change Manager defines, realizes and sustains benefits and embeds new capability in the business; the Senior Responsible Owner is accountable for the programme overall.

A communication plan specifies the message, audience, channel, timing, sender and the feedback mechanism used to confirm understanding.

Programme: a temporary, flexible organization created to coordinate, direct and oversee related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits that meet strategic objectives.

Delivery is structured into tranches; each tranche delivers a capability step towards the blueprint and ends at a tranche boundary review.

Benefits management cycle: identify, define, plan and realize, supported by measurement and review of realized benefits.

A benefit is a measurable improvement resulting from an outcome, perceived as an advantage by a stakeholder and contributing to objectives; each benefit needs an owner and a defined measure.

The vision statement is a short description of the future state; the blueprint is the detailed model of the future organization and the capabilities it will need.

The business case justifies the programme by weighing benefits against costs, risks and timescales, and is reviewed and re-approved at each tranche boundary.

Risk management cycle: identify, assess, plan responses, implement and communicate; a risk is an uncertain future event, whereas an issue has already occurred.

Accountabilities: the Senior Responsible Owner is accountable and owns the business case, the Programme Manager runs day-to-day delivery, and the Programme Board provides direction and approvals.

An end-of-tranche review confirms the capability step has been achieved and benefits remain viable, and results in a decision to continue, change or stop the programme.