Author: Drew Davison

In my last post, I reviewed a most successful project, the Interface Initiative, and how the PM leveraged the Project Pre-Check fundamentals of stakeholders, defined processes and a best practice based decision framework to achieve great results and gain recognition from the stakeholders as a great PM.

Here’s an example of a project that could have used a great PM. Unfortunately, it was a challenged undertaking due, in part, to flawed incentive compensation. That’s way I call this post You Get What You Pay For!

The Situation

This organization provided pension administration services to clients and their employees. Its obsolete technology and obsolete application software along with a large manual work load resulted in high error rates and less than desirable service to its customers. There was about 150 staff at head office.

The Goal

To modernize the administrative and service processes including a technology upgrade to provide internet access for customers, improved quality, more automated function to reduce costs and improve responsiveness. Expected cost was $50 million.

The Project

The organization reviewed available alternatives and selected a vendor based on a comprehensive review of its capability. The company decided to co-source the operations, where the organization’s employees would use the application software operated by the vendor, rather than totally outsource administrative processes. A unique requirement was to be able to manage the pension records for staff that moved from one participating employer to another and could also work for more than one participating employer at the same time.

The organization had two managers in place to run the project, one from the internal IT organization and one from the vendor. They also contracted with an independent third party to provide oversight on an ongoing basis.

The Results

The project progressed well up to the planned implementation of the first release with costs of $20 million on target. Both the internal and vendor project managers reported solid progress and the external third party agreed with their findings. With these glad tidings, the organization planned a first release celebration to recognize the achievement.

In actual fact, the implementation was a disaster. Nothing worked. The changes were pulled out. There was no contingency plan so the reversion to the original systems was messy and time consuming. The review found the following factors contributed to the failure:

• The product from the selected vendor had two major deficiencies – their systems needed major modifications to handle individual pension records across organizations and they had never co-sourced a solution before. The latter fact did not come to light until the first phase implementation failed.
• The vendor and internal managers were to receive substantial bonuses based on making their delivery target. They covered up the problems, hoping that they could clean up the issues after implementation and still be entitled to their bonuses.
• Why didn’t the third party consultant discover the problems and blow the whistle? The consultant used two sources for input to the periodic reports – the internal and vendor managers. Their definition of an independent review differed significantly from what was expected.
• The estimated cost to complete the project ballooned to $70 million, 40% greater than originally forecast.

How a great PM would have helped!

There are a number of actions a great PM would have taken to ensure a successful outcome.

• Formation of an effective and representative stakeholder group would have exposed the two project managers and the external consultant to decision makers representing the organizations and staff affected by the planned change. These stakeholders would have been very vocal in their demands for project results that demonstrated the integrity of ongoing operations.
• It’s clear that this was a huge undertaking for such a small organization and the stakeholders lacked experience in this size of project. A great PM would have provided the stakeholders with the required insight or brought in additional help to provide the required oversight.
• There are a number of best practices that would have undoubtedly been deemed relevant and given appropriate attention by stakeholders over the course of the project including risk management, quality management, performance management (including incentive compensation), and project tracking, control and communication.
• The use of appropriate stakeholder processes would have provided senior management with a broad decision making foundation and an ongoing scorecard independent of the project managers’ reports.

I also expect a great PM would have negotiated an incentive contract that was based on the stakeholders real needs, not on hitting some arbitrary date. On your next project, put these points on your checklist of things to do so you too can be a great PM, and your sponsor’s best friend.

Next, we’ll look at a project that just kept going, and going, and going. In the interim, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens, send me the details and we’ll have a go.

In my last post, I reviewed Project Pre-Check, a practice that PMs have used to become a project sponsor’s best friend, and a great PM in the process. You don’t need to use Project Pre-Check. You can use or build your own practice, just as long as you address the three core building blocks; the stakeholders, the process they’ll use to guide a project through to a successful completion and the decision framework, a collection of best practices (I call them Decision Areas) that the stakeholders need to consider and agree on over the course of a change.

Here’s one example of a PM who used Project Pre-Check fundamentals to achieve PM greatness. It’s called the Interface Initiative.

The Situation

This organization provided insurance and savings products to individual clients through over100 Canadian offices coast to coast. There were 600 plus staff in these regional offices.

The office personnel responsible for administering clients’ needs were faced with a motley array of mainframe, server and PC applications with widely different interfaces and formatting requirements, each application supported by its own 3-ring binder of procedures, entry protocols, codes and rules. The environment was a huge drain on productivity and quality and negatively impacted client service.

The Goal

The sponsor wanted to improve client service and the quality and productivity of the office staff by standardizing the look and feel of the interface and formatting requirements, providing online access to all support documentation, and ensuring that all new applications and future changes complied with the interface standards.

In addition, because of the number of staff affected, the new environment was to be sufficiently intuitive that it could be implemented effectively without formal training.

The Project

The organization reviewed available alternatives and launched the Interface Initiative, a tactical approach that would offer a standard PC-based interface to the office staff (this was before the ubiquitous web browser). Behind the scenes this new interface would connect to and communicate with the existing application interfaces. Over time, those old interfaces would be eliminated and the new interface would communicate directly to the required function. This approach was seen as the best way to accelerate project delivery with manageable risks.

In addition, the project (known internally as “In Your Face”) contracted with a recognized expert on usability and interface design and trained project staff to help address the no training target. All the content of the manuals would also be converted and accessible through context sensitive online help.

The project was sponsored by the VP Administration to whom the majority of the affected staff reported, through office managers and regional managers. The PM assigned had a proven track record as team builder and project manager. Project staff covered all the skills necessary to deal with the diverse set of technologies. An advisory council including ten office managers was formed to provide direction and feedback as design and development progressed, and to liaise with their counterparts across the country.

The Results

The project was hugely successful. It won the Conference Board of Canada’s ITX award for technology innovation and excellence. The ROI calculated by the (ITX Award) judging committee was about 800%.

The project delivered on plan and within budget and the high quality of the implementation was confirmed by the standing ovations the PM received as she travelled across the country introducing the new environment. When was the last time you received a standing ovation from your stakeholders? Let me know!

How a Great PM Helped

The project’s sponsor had a number of factors in his favour. The majority of the staff affected by the change was in his own organization, so he didn’t have to worry about the commitment of peers who might have had their own ideas about approach and priorities.  There were no new technologies involved so the risks were largely known and manageable.

However, the great PM the sponsor and his IT counterpart selected turned what probably would have been a good result into a great result. The great PM:

• Helped mould the stakeholder group into a cohesive and productive force. The amount of collaboration was inspiring.
• Leveraged the stakeholders’ authority to get the right resources at the right time.
• Clarified and quantified the project’s goals and measured project performance against those goals on an ongoing basis.
• Communicated upwards, downwards and sideways continuously, in whatever form was necessary to gain understanding and agreement including one on one, group sessions, presentations, demos, email, written reports, coffee klatches…
• Used the project management, software development and management of change methodologies that existed within the organization and adapted them to suit the project’s needs.
• Developed and managed a risk plan that resulted in some pragmatic changes in approach to improve quality and value
• Developed the application in phases and rolled out in stages to reduce risk and accelerate business value.
• Used industry best practices including usability, prototyping, partitioning and reuse to address the stakeholders’ needs and ensure effective ongoing support of the delivered solution.

On your next project, put these points on your checklist of things to do so you too can be a great PM, and your sponsor’s best friend.

Next, we’ll look at a project that demonstrates the old adage, you get what you pay for. In the interim, if you have a project experience, either good or bad, that you’d like to have examined through the Project Pre-Check lens, send me the details and we’ll have a go. 

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