FMEA Part 4 - Share your findings with stakeholders
Introduction
The FMEA process allows you to identify and mitigate risks. Communicating the FMEA results and driving real action to reduce risk is critical. This article discusses the communication process to ensure your risk mitigation plans are accepted by key stakeholders.
For an overview of the FMEA process, click here.
The FMEA process allows you to identify and mitigate risks.
The purpose of the FMEA is to prevent defects from occurring in your product or process, so it's important for you as a manager to carefully review all possible risks before making any decisions about moving forward. Once all potential risks have been identified and evaluated, you'll be able to make educated decisions on how to address these issues by implementing fixes or workarounds that will help reduce their impact on your final product or service.
Communicating the FMEA results and driving real action to reduce risk is critical
In addition to analyzing your FMEA data, it's important to communicate the results of your analysis with stakeholders. This communication can be done in a variety of ways, including:
Part of an established project governance meeting
An internal review process for all new products or services
Ad hoc meeting which requires specific stakeholder attendance
Think carefully about the stakeholders required.
The next step is to share your findings with the stakeholders. You want to focus on the leaders who will be most impacted by these risks, as they are in a position to take action and make decisions that can mitigate them.
Keep the meeting attendees to the critical few. FMEA discussions are centered around risk and possible negative outcomes if not mitigated. As such, these sessions can be extremely beneficial, but also potentially political. Know your audience.
Stakeholders may not be interested in the process itself.
The FMEA process is an excellent way to understand and mitigate risks, but some stakeholders may not be as interested in the process itself. In fact, they may not even be aware of it. Instead, they are likely interested in the results of your analysis—what you found and how that will affect their job or business. They may also want to know how the findings will impact their team’s workload and timelines.
Stakeholders who aren't yet familiar with FMEAs can be hesitant to invest time into learning about them because they don't see immediate value in doing so. However, if you can help them understand why it's important for everyone on your team to collaborate through this shared methodology (for example: "We want our designs robust enough so that if something unexpected happens in our financial closing process, we won’t need last-minute fire-drills.") then your stakeholder will realize how useful an FMEA process can be for everyone involved!
Start with a simple executive summary page and consider your audience
This should be a simple overview of what you will discuss in more detail later, and it can help to drive home key points. It should also highlight the most important information from your analysis.
Use simple bullet points and short sentences. A wordy description may sound impressive at first, but you'll lose readers quickly if they have trouble understanding what you're saying. Less is more.
Give a one-bullet explanation of what an FMEA is. Don't assume the audience knows.
Explain why you did this exercise.
Explain who was involved and why. It will help build credibility with the findings.
Reference that a risk rating calibration was performed. The actual risk definitions should be in the appendix.
Clearly state what is needed from audience members by the end of the meeting. This will be re-iterated at the "next steps" page.
In the format of your choosing, go into more detail for each top risk
For example, you might use a simple table that has the risk, the scoring elements, the description of the risk and its mitigation action(s).
This section is an opportunity to explain what drove the RPN score and how it can be mitigated. Is Detectability an issue, why? etc...
Be prepared to show project plans, cost estimates, and timelines if needed.
When you're presenting your findings to stakeholders, it's important to show them how you will mitigate the risks. You want them to know that if something goes wrong and it's within your control, there is a plan in place for how you'll deal with it. Reference these details in the main body of your presentation, but the actual exhibits should be kept in the appendix and only directly referenced if needed. Keep the body of the presentation concise.
Also describe how progress will be tracked and measured over time. This can be done through any number of different methods: visual dashboards, spreadsheets, reports, etc. It all depends on what works best for your organization or project team.
Finally, tell management when and how they can expect status updates from the project team regarding their FMEA results (i.e., weekly meetings).
Create a next steps page to end the overview
Since this may be your only formal chance to get buy-in on the FMEA findings, it's important to wrap up with a next steps page. Use this section of the report to:
Highlight any date sensitive actions required. If there are any time constraints or deadlines that have been set by stakeholders, it's best to include them here so everyone will know how much time is left before action needs to be taken. Also make sure to explicitly state any dependencies. "We can't implement a new control until that interface is updated, etc…".
Highlight any open items that need additional investigation or research before a decision can be made by stakeholders. For example: "We still haven't figured out how we're going to integrate our new tool into our existing technology stack."
Include the date and time of your next meeting if required
Always make sure you have a bullet that states "Integrate stakeholder feedback into action plans". Stakeholders likely will have helpful suggestions and guidance which needs to be considered.
Meet with management separately if necessary.
Sometimes, the "meeting-before-the-meeting" is required with individual stakeholders. You may choose to do this based on the personality type of the leader(s), or if you need to ensure alignment before the big meeting. This will help ensure that they have a clear understanding of the FMEA findings and provide them with an opportunity to ask questions in a more relaxed setting. While this may appear to be a bit bureaucratic, I've found that it ultimately can save a lot of time downstream. Plus, most stakeholders will be appreciative you spent the time to solicit their input upfront.
Conclusion
Communicating your findings is crucial to getting buy-in. By working with management and stakeholders, you can help them understand the risks associated with your project/process. Ultimately, you need to implement the recommended action plans to ensure success.
As always, Apollonian Consulting is here to help your organization through the FMEA process. Click here to schedule a free 30 minute consultation. Your projects and processes are too important. Make sure you have the right skills on the ground to make them successful.