When discussing the project plan with management, give them a role. Do not let people just sit passively by and look at the plan. They will not buy into the results. Get them involved in trade-offs to speed up the plan and address issues.
How do you develop templates? Take the existing plans that you have and extract the high-level tasks. Group the projects into types or categories. These steps serve as the basis for creating your first set of templates.
How do you develop issues? Get hold of one project. Make a list of the current major issues. Do the same for other projects. You will find a recurring pattern of the same issues surfacing again and again—sometimes in different forms and sometimes in the same form.
What about the lessons learned? Gather these more slowly in project meetings. We’ll give tips for this in several chapters later.
Get started slowly. If you are a manager, don’t impose the method on people. They will resent it. Start using the method on one or more subprojects. Then build up to the project level.
Should you appoint a coordinator right away? No. It can wait until there is a sufficient body of templates and issues.
Should you impose standardization? You can try, but in international projects you cannot control what people are doing on a daily basis halfway around the world. Thus, a better approach is to show success by example. Then people will see that it is in their self-interest to adopt the methods.