In the last blog, we discussed how the factors that contribute to an organizational disconnect between business information and the systems used to manage and measure organizational success and the project data and the systems used to manage and measure project/portfolios.
We presented this topic at SharePoint Saturday in D.C. and a member of the audience pointed out that the only place he’d seen this gap addressed in any meaningful way was with large consultancy/systems integration companies. We all agreed that this makes a lot of sense since project type work is the core of their business and they must have at least some level of automation to get timely invoicing compiled for their customers.
So for the rest of the companies that are facing this problem, how do you go about solving it? The first step is to gain consensus in this is a substantial issue. What is really at stake if it is not addressed? Some clients we talk with can quickly identify cases where hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars were ‘unexpectedly’ expended due to a lack of adequate forewarning of upcoming changes, overages, risks, etc.
While there are many ways to approach such an initiative, we see two common approaches:
1) A complete project consisting of a series of phases, each ending with a gate check and review of funding for the next phase. This approach looks like this:
Assessment -> Planning -> Implementation (development/UAT/launch) -> Support (maintain/enhance)
2) A series of mini projects, each ending with some increasingly complete level of functionality. This is somewhat less efficient than the former method, however, the reality in many organizations is that there is often no time/budget/culture to go through the complete project lifecycle. Some organizations take more of a ‘prove it first’ approach where value must be shown incrementally before gaining resources (budget, management attention, IT support, etc.). In this case, the phased approach might look more like this:
¡ Phase 1 - Rapid POC to prove capability
¡ Phase 2 – Incorporate standard branding, UI enhancements, usability improvements, Pilot
¡ Phase 3 – ‘Operationalize’ environment, refine usability, adoption/training, complete project rollout
¡ Phase 4 – Feature enhancement based on lessons learned, Integration with key business systems
At the end of each phase, management can assess the benefit of what has been accomplished, scope/cost estimate the next phase, and proceed or not.
In the next blog, we’ll look at some of the elements (i.e. architecture) that these systems usually contain.