What do I need to complete a project? This is a basic question project managers need to ask themselves before they can execute a strategy. By conducting a needs assessment, you’ll be able to figure out what tools you’ll need to have available, what kind of skills will be necessary, and what type of resources will be needed to successfully plan and complete a project.
A needs assessment can be defined as a systematic process projects managers will use to evaluate requirements that are considered non-negotiable to a project. These are specific requirements that can include a set of particular skills, knowledge, software, tools, and more.
Needs assessments can be performed to discover how far apart the current conditions of the project are, in comparison to the needed condition for successful execution. Then, a gap analysis will be performed to determine how to close the gap between where the company is at present, and where it needs to be at a later date.
When performing needs assessments, there are three main stages to cover:
Initiation
Data collection and analysis
Final production
Why Is a Needs Assessment Important?
A needs assessment allows you to plan and ensure you have everything you need to successfully finish a project, which is the ultimate goal. By performing a needs assessment before you and your team tackle your initial tasks, you’d be making sure you’ll have the necessary resources required to complete them as you had planned.
Needs assessments also help uncover gaps that could potentially compromise the success of your project. By uncovering gaps, you can address them proactively so that you can ensure you have everything you need to perform. And most importantly, by identifying those gaps, you’ll have time to make good decisions and avoid moving forward with solutions based only on what’s the quickest approach to fix an issue.
But conducting a needs assessment also means you’ll have a much more realistic schedule in place. Why? Because you will be building a timeline based on previously analyzed information, which means any last-minute sourcing would be significantly reduced.
What Are the Four Steps of a Needs Assessment?
A needs assessment provides many benefits but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a complicated or intimidating process. Let’s take a look at the basic steps to conduct a needs assessment.
Requirements: Understanding everything that’s involved with your project it’s essential to its overall success. As a project manager, you need to ensure that you and your team are clear on a project’s context and objectives. By understanding the specifics, you can then better identify the needs associated with the project. Explaining individual milestones and deliverables to the people involved can help to provide a broader context.
Resources: After you have identified what’s required, you can turn your attention to resources. This means it’s time to create a list and to match your existing, available resources to what’s needed to perform the project. Most of the time, you’ll realize you already have existing resources that will prove to be useful when planning and executing your new project.
Gaps: Once you’ve identified the resources that you already have, you can truly address the ones that aren’t fulfilled. You can create a list and pinpoint what you’re missing. This way, you’ll make sure to uncover and address any gaps, which can vary from a particular skill set to the software you will need to execute a task.
Create a plan to fill the gaps: There’s no point in identifying issues if you don’t create an action plan to fix them. Once you’ve successfully identified the gaps, you can use this information and address these issues before you start executing your project.
Needs Assessment Example
New projects are always exciting, so, commonly, your team would be eager to jump right in before taking the time to analyze and plan their actions. But in reality, taking a step back and conducting a needs assessment will ensure that your project will run smoothly, without any issues.
To conduct a successful needs assessment, you’re going to need the right tool, one that enables you to keep track of objectives, resources, and gaps, and project management software, such as Instagantt, can help you do just that.
With Instagantt, you’ll be able to create, manage, and keep track of your needs assessments. Moreover, you will be able to map out your tasks and initiate your data collection and analysis stages using gantt charts. Then, you can quickly build a timeline and assign tasks to your team members, so that they can focus on completing them on time, ensuring your project is executed as planned.
