Author: Drew Davison

Drew Davison is the owner and principal consultant at Davison Consulting and a former system development executive. He is the developer of Project Pre-Check, an innovative framework for launching projects and guiding successful project delivery, the author of Project Pre-Check - The Stakeholder Practice for Successful Business and Technology Change and Project Pre-Check FastPath - The Project Manager’s Guide to Stakeholder Management. He works with organizations that are undergoing major business and technology change to implement the empowered stakeholder groups critical to project success. Drew can be reached at [email protected].

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Nine Practices for Infrastructure Transformation

Written by Drew Davison on June 27, 2018. Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Nine Practices for Infrastructure Transformation

“The IT organization can’t drive or lead a digital transformation. It has to come from the business and the business strategy, because they’re fundamental to how a company or an organization evolves.”
– Michael Dell

Founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world’s largest technology infrastructure companies

Everyone gets stuck in a rut occasionally. We get acclimatized to a normal routine, which can be a good thing. It takes less time, less energy and creates less stress to go about our daily business. We can take that extra time, effort and energy to do other things. But over time, a routine can be a significant hindrance to progress. That’s why we see all those new diets, exercise routines and self-help programs. To lift us out of the doldrums.

Organizations can get stuck in a rut too. In fact, for organizations, being stuck in a rut is probably the norm rather than the exception. All those people making all those sales calls, sending out all those invoices and processing those widgets the same old way simply reinforces the rut.

That’s why organizations develop strategies and strategic plans and initiate and manage projects in support of those plans – to drive change. To get out of the rut.

In this case, we’ll see how a geographically distributed organization found itself struggling to maintain its customer service and manage its costs after numerous, unrationalized acquisitions. It was in a serious rut. To extricate itself, it revised its strategic plan and went outside for help to transform its operations, regaining a satisfied client base and cost-effective operations in the process.

The Situation

Christopher Brooks is the Operations Manager for Outsource IT Computing Inc. based in Burlington, Ontario. The company is a leading provider of managed IT services, supporting businesses throughout Ontario and across Canada and in the US.

Outsource IT was contacted by a manufacturing company about some challenges they were experiencing. The company had acquired a number of small businesses over the last several years to grow their company. They had not rationalized the business processes, practices and technologies and were experiencing an ever increasing rate of failure across their regional offices in Canada and the US. That left some customers frustrated enough to go elsewhere.

The small IT support group in head office wasn’t able to respond to local problems in a suitable time frame and was severely challenged supporting the diverse set of technologies spread across the continent. That led to increasing frustration and turnover and an even further decline in service. Local managers responded to the problem by hiring or contracting local staff with mixed results. Of course, there were no configuration or operating standards locally, so the local staff would fix it their own way. When the head office staff became involved, it almost always took longer and cost more than anticipated. Customers continued to show their dissatisfaction by going elsewhere.

It was this continuing downward spiral in customer retention and service delivery and the continuing escalation of costs and staff turnover that caused the company to contact Christopher at Outsource IT. After reviewing the company’s situation, Christopher’s team developed a high level strategy and plan to remedy the company’s problems. The proposal was accepted.

The Goal

The program’s goal was to drive ROI through client retention, reduced staff turnover and cost and productivity improvements over a thirteen month program by standardizing the technology infrastructure and support practices.

The Project

With the signing of the contract, Christopher’s staff took a multi-pronged approach to getting the program up and running quickly. They engaged with the CEO and his senior executives to clarify the problems, scope, priorities, expectations and goals. They proceeded to inventory every element of the existing infrastructure including standard configuration and support practices, the associated vendors and their related contracts. They analysed problem logs to build an understanding of the hot spots that should receive priority attention. They talked to local managers, support staff and vendors to understand their experiences and views on the issues.

Christopher’s team consolidated this information into a current infrastructure assessment and future state recommendation and vetted the results with everyone involved, from the CEO to the local support technicians. After the changes brought about by those consultations were incorporated, they developed a program plan with eight specific projects to be delivered over nine months, addressing the highest priorities and risks first. Again, the plan was reviewed with all stakeholders and received unanimous support. After three months of preparatory work, the fixes began.

A key part of the program was to rationalize technologies across the company. The development of that target architecture was one of the first projects to get underway and involved lots of vendor contact, contract scrutinization and negotiation. Technologies were selected based on a combination of factors, including cost-effectiveness, robustness, proven expansion and upgrade capabilities, locally available support and integratability. The target architecture was developed along with the supporting rationale and reviewed top to bottom. It was approved expeditiously.

An element of Outsource IT’s practice manifesto was the development and maintenance of a Playbook for each technology component. It is a current best practice document about a component, how to acquire it, install it, configure it, test it, connect it, service it, whatever is relevant to keeping the component and the infrastructure operating at peak efficiency. New releases or versions of a component required a review and update, if necessary, to associated Playbooks before they could be put in production. The benefits of the Playbook practice were enormous. Any support technician, once trained, could handle any component in the infrastructure in a standard manner. The practice improved responsiveness and quality and reduced costs and failures dramatically.

With the target architecture approved and the corresponding Playbooks under development the project proceeded largely according to plan. Ongoing and active engagement of all stakeholders turned staff who were seen initially as part of the problem to a key part of the solution. What resistance was encountered melted with the embracing engagement.

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The Results

One year after starting the project, Christopher, his team and the company declared the project complete with all goals achieved or exceeded. Clients were no longer leaving because of poor service. In fact, client numbers and orders were showing healthy growth. Outages were down hugely. The time to repair was a fraction of the previous experience. Staff turnover had stopped and morale was higher than it had been before the acquisition binge began. Infrastructure costs were 30% lower because of technology standardization and renegotiation of hardware and software licences. It was a most successful transformation.

How a Great Leader Succeeded

Christopher and his team bring a standard approach to all of their engagements and refine and adapt it to each client’s needs. In this case, there were nine practices that helped deliver a successful infrastructure transformation.

There is no such thing as an IT project – As the opening quote by Michael Dell states, the business needs to lead the infrastructure transformation. It is, after all, targeting business needs – customer service, productivity, revenue and costs. Christopher and his team did just that. They brought the company’s CEO on board and up to speed and left him leading the charge. That made it easy to get the other executives committed, decisions made expeditiously and the right local resources assigned when and where they were needed.
Engage all stakeholders – In addition to the CEO and his executive team, local managers, vendors and local service technicians were all fully engaged. That was a practical move to ensure access to needed information about current infrastructure configurations. It was also a strategic move to open discourse and overcome initial resistance to the changes that were coming.
Implement a common vision – Outsource IT worked with the senior business and IT managers to develop a common vision of the desired future state. When that was achieved, those same business and IT managers worked with their staff to explore the impact on people’s day-to-day jobs, practices and procedures. As a result, everyone in the organizations involved in supporting its infrastructure was marching to the same drummer.
Establish clear goals and priorities – In addition to the shared vision, Outsource IT facilitated the development of specific goals and priorities. Again, this exercise started at the top but was debated widely and thoroughly. When the goals and priorities were finally nailed, there was an amazing level of commitment at all levels. That enabled a reasonable plan that everyone could commit to and be measured by to be delivered in a few weeks.
Always consider alternatives – Things change. What wasn’t available or possible yesterday might now be an option. New or changed technologies, client priorities, costs and pricing changes can open up exciting new opportunities. By keeping their options open, by taking advantage of things like cloud storage and server consolidation, Outsource IT was able to offer its client significant price/performance and service improvements without having to redo the basic plans and priorities. They were always opportunity aware.
Keep changes small – From the foundation established by the stages above, Outsource IT was able to craft and sell a plan that delivered in small chunks, responded to priorities, reduced risks and improved quality, and provided the ability to change the plans and priorities quickly if conditions warranted.
Deliver quickly – In line with the Keep Small mandate, delivering quickly is simply part of Outsource IT’s DNA. It allows accelerated response to the identified priorities and the accelerated delivery of benefits.
Leverage current best practices – The use of a Playbook for every standard technology component ensured an infrastructure wide consistency in configuration and operation from Victoria to St. John’s to Tallahassee. It improved performance, reduced the costs of training and configuration and reduced risks of outages or bottlenecks by a significant degree.
Communicate – The glue that tied the diverse elements of this program together and accelerated progress across all the sites was the communication plan and its execution. The communication barrage was full force from beginning to end, top down, bottom up, all ways, person to person, featuring the vision, goals, measures, plans, progress, successes, failures and voices from across the company. The training programs that accompanied each release were as much about exchanging ideas and views as they were about imparting knowledge and expertise.

Resistance melted in the face of the onslaught.

Outsource IT’s approach to this engagement was Think Big, Engage Widely, Do Small, Deliver Fast. It worked beautifully. They spent over three months up front talking, listening and postulating to nail the ground rules that formed the bedrock of this successful change initiative. It was that foundation that allowed them to deliver solutions rapidly, consistently and successfully.

It’s interesting to note that Christopher was recently appointed to the Varnex Advisory Council because of successes like the one covered in this story. Varnex is a Synnex peer-to-peer community of businesses and organizations that work together to drive growth and success in the IT industry.

So, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can be a Great Leader. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group, the decision management process and Decision Framework best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their own unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, good, bad and everything in between, send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Big Dreams, Bigger Excuses

Written by Drew Davison on May 23, 2018. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Big Dreams, Bigger Excuses

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome.”
– Booker T. Washington

American educator, author and advisor to presidents and a dominant leader in the African-American community.

Change is often a challenge to master. It is also ubiquitous. So, if our standard response to change is to ignore it, or to resist it, or to attempt to embrace all change, the results can be equally trying – feeling overwhelmed, feeling depressed, trying to check out (figuratively or literally) and other assorted and nasty consequences.

About 18% of the US population over age 18 are affected by an anxiety disorder. With the exception of PTSD, women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety disorders as men. Add in those affected by alcohol and drug addiction and Facebook fixation and other social media dependencies and the total affected by anxiety, depression and addiction could well exceed one in four.

As project and change managers, we impose change on others and have it imposed on us. We’re the folks in the middle, so to speak. Undoubtedly, a similar number of our cohort is experiencing anxiety, depression and addiction. When the change load gets too great, how we respond can determine the fate of our project, our team members, our stakeholders and the state of our careers and personal lives.

In this story, we’ll see how one individual coped with changes to his world, feelings of anxiety and depression, low self-esteem and subsequent addiction. His trials and triumphs are a testament to the power of individual and collective determination to change the world for their betterment.

Thanks to Dan Wischnewski for the details on this story.

The Situation

I met Dan Wischnewski through LinkedIn. As the District Manager for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in the Winnipeg area, I thought he might have some stories that I could pass on about major change and the lessons learned. Of course he has those stories. But I opted to go with this story instead. It is a universal theme world-wide, the struggle for personal meaning, safety, self-sufficiency, achievement and self-realization.

In school, Dan was a chronic underachiever. He suffered through his school years with an undiagnosed learning disability. He just tried to get by. His teachers let it be known that they considered him “stupid”. As a result, his classmates viewed him in a similar light. He developed a violent temper to defend himself against taunts in the school yard and beyond.

Throughout primary and high school Dan was the comedian, the class clown, which alienated his teachers further but brought some respect from his classmates. Fortunately he was a great talker, outwardly engaging and an excellent athlete, which helped his feelings of belonging. But behind the cool façade, his self-esteem was near zero. The problem became worse in Junior High. But he felt he couldn’t tell anyone about how he was feeling. He didn’t believe anyone cared. His approach was to grin and bear it.

Dan started participating in the party scene, drinking to excess. He used pot, dropped acid. In his early 20’s he started to use cocaine. He moved from job to job, province to province. Dan called it the geographical cure. He worked in restaurants, partied all night and had ready access to drugs. He was a functional addict

After years of abuse, partying, little sleep and bad diet, he started feeling ill. He realized that the people he knew and hung out with were also ill, or dying, or murdered. He found himself on the street and living in his car. The final indignity occurred when the car got towed, with him in it.

Over the years his parents had tried to help. His mother asked Dan to pin a note in his pants with their address and phone number on it. Just in case someone found his body. Finally, desperation won out. He got in touch. They sent him a plane ticket home. He went into a recovery program. But, he had one foot in recovery, one foot using. He was back-sliding.

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Dan was a single parent with a young son. Dan’s moment of truth came because of that relationship. Dan and his son were walking down their apartment hallway. Dan was in a hurry and so surged ahead, expecting his son to keep up. Instead, his son said “Daddy, don’t leave me”. That simple message shook Dan to the core. From that point he vowed never to let his drug use affect his son. He committed to doing whatever it took to get clean.

And so he started his search.

The Goal

Don’t celebrate sobriety. Shut the door.

The Project

Dan tried a number of recovery programs. Some of the components made sense and worked. Other elements didn’t. He decided to create his own roadmap to clean.

Dan spent 3 or 4 hours every day in his car on the job. He started listening to podcasts to fill the time and to provide insights into how he could move forward. Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer were big influences. One of Dr. Dyer’s quotes aptly describes Dan’s search: “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

Dan started talking, and listening, to experts in addiction, anxiety and depression. He read everything he could get his hands on. He started making notes about what worked for him, what didn’t work and the things he needed to try. He started meditating. He started setting personal goals. He started journaling, notes to himself about what he was thinking and feeling, how he related to people he met, about hopes and fears.

The project, Dan’s search for his cure, lasted five years, with a myriad of twists and turns, with back-sliding, small victories and a multitude of hopes and fears along the way. But he succeeded!

The Results

Dan has been drug free, other than the occasional beer or glass of wine, for a while. He wouldn’t tell me how long. As Dan states, “When people ask me how many years I’ve been clean I really don’t have a number. What I say is, I’ve been clean long enough to change every part of who I am and become the person I was meant to be.” Not a bad answer!

He has written a book, Big Dreams Bigger Excuses, which sold out its original order. It’s now in reprint. He dedicates a share of sales to local charities.

He is a motivational speaker. He has spoken of his addiction struggles and on other topics at local MoMondays, an organization dedicated to sharing stories and life lessons. His speeches were recorded on Youtube. He has talked about his addiction struggles in online forums. He has volunteered with the local United Way.

He is a personal coach, with a mission to guide people on the path to living the life they have always dreamed of.

Finally, he has set his sights on The Toastmasters International Accredited Speaker designation, a program designed for professional speakers who combine expert knowledge in a particular subject with mastery of the spoken word.

And, oh yes, he also has a challenging day job that he loves and a girlfriend and son who are his biggest backers. Along with his parents, of course. Not bad for someone who was considered challenged during his school years.

Dan’s motto – for everyone who wants to overcome challenges in their life, who wants to live a better life:

It’s never too late
There’s always hope
Everything is possible if you’re willing to do whatever it takes.

What Dan Learned

Dan’s journey provides a blueprint for anyone who is facing anxiety, depression and addiction challenges. In fact, it’s a pretty good framework for anyone who just wants to up their game and get more out of life. Here are the practices that worked for Dan.

Count on friends, family and colleagues – Dan’s low self-esteem led him to believe no one cared about his problems. Fortunately, he discovered a different reality. If you’re struggling, let others know. You’ll be amazed at how quickly and whole heartedly people will try and provide the support you need or point you in a helpful direction.
Do Research – Dan’s time alone in the car gave him the opportunity to hear what others had to say about the challenges he was facing. Those podcasts, along with his other inquiries and his parents support and direction provided the foundation for his climb back to health and self-respectability.
Leverage daily rituals – Driven by the research, Dan established daily rituals for when he gets up in the morning and before he goes to bed at night. He follows them rigorously. He uses techniques like meditation, visualization, affirmation lists and journaling to reinforce his feelings of well-being.
Keep a Journal – Dan uses daily journaling to elicit his successes and failures and shape his plans to keep him feeling confident and strong. He records his goals for the day, how he performed, how he feels, how he interacts with others, and any other thoughts and ideas to guide his future actions, beliefs and behaviours.
Contribute – Dan benefited from the help of others. He wanted to give back. So he wrote a book and gave part of the proceeds to charity. He’s also a public speaker and personal coach.
Set goals – Dan realized one of the major gaps in his life was an absence of goals. So he started setting targets for himself – small daily challenges, weekly targets, monthly and longer term goals and finally his life’s mission.
Celebrate small victories – It’s vital to recognize any success, regardless of how small. In Dan’s case, those many small victories have resulted in a stunning personal transformation.
Use failures are an opportunity to learn – It’s easy to get discouraged when something doesn’t work out the way you had hoped. Dan took his defeats, and there were many, and used them to spur his journey to happiness.
Happiness is a choice – Perhaps this is Dan’s most significant discovery. Happiness is up to you. That realization drove every action Dan took to put his life back together.

These nine techniques helped Dan provide a framework for his healing and sustained well-being. They may work for you as well. If you’re suffering from addiction or depression or experiencing anxiety on your job or in your personal life, try Dan’s techniques. If you know someone who is going through these challenges, give them Dan’s list. Or do as Dan did – build your own. We wish you all health, happiness and well-being! From the number of Happiness Doctors, happiness courses and happiness professors around, it’s obvious that there’s a huge need for help to combat our often frenetic existence.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Power Planning with a Business Plan Framework

Written by Drew Davison on April 3, 2018. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Power Planning with a Business Plan Framework

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

—Sun Tsu, Ancient Chinese Military strategist

As a project or change manager, the more information you have about a planned change, the better. Knowing the rationale for the change, the strategic relationships and the milieu within which the change will be delivered are essential. Getting that insight at the start amplifies your ability to help the stakeholders and their clients achieve a timely and successful outcome.

Unfortunately, most projects start out with vast voids and expansive shades of grey on a multitude of key factors. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a practice that could help you illuminate and eliminate those unknowns expeditiously, right up front? Well, there is! This case is about a boutique consulting firm based in Winnipeg named Certio Group. Certio Group prides itself on its ability to help organizations and projects understand and address the potholes and pitfalls that litter the road to success.

Thanks to Andres Holm for the details on this story.

The Situation

A successful welding company had been operating in the local and regional community for some years. It offered steel fabrication and installation for commercial, industrial and residential projects as well as on-site welding. Part of their business involved the repair and modification of shipping containers, those big steel boxes that are used for shipboard, road and rail shipping. This started with the creation of pools for particular clients and morphed into providing full-scale customization of the containers.

The company owners, Andrew and Jaclyn Rhodes, saw an opportunity to expand their business using their expertise with the shipping containers. They were aware of a growing market for custom homes using the shipping containers like Lego blocks. The blocks were being connected side-by-side and end-on-end and stacked in a multitude of creative ways to deliver homes that adapted to unique physical sites and addressed customers’ desires.

The Rhodes, in considering the expansion opportunities, decided to seek outside expertise to accelerate the process. They contacted Andres Holm at Certio Group for advice. Certio Group is a business consulting firm based in Winnipeg, Canada that offers a variety of services including assistance with funding acquisition, developing business plans and proposals, market research, strategic planning and business development.

The Goal

The Rhodes and Northern Green Homes had a vision: to build their container home business leveraging the skills and processes from their welding operations to create a profitable, sustainable company. They dreamt of high quality, highly productive, just-in-time manufacturing process with a core of cost-effective standard practices and mass customization capability to satisfy a wide range of clients. Certio Group signed on to help them achieve their goals.

The Project

Andres Holm, Certio Group’s Managing Partner, met with the Rhodes and proposed a rapid response plan to get them started on a solid foundation. There were some key components:

The Rhodes had to be actively involved every step of the way. They had to know as much about the plan as Certio Group’s staff. Ultimately, they had to own it.
Certio Group proposed using their standard business plan framework. The Rhodes agreed.
Certio Group proposed a ten-week target for the completion of the plan, with subsequent increments as needed. Again the Rhodes agreed.

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The framework that drove the work is shown below:

Over the next ten weeks, Certio Group’s staff designed the plan while providing incremental updates for the Rhodes to review. That was power planning indeed

The Results

On completion, the Certio Group had produced a plan that the Rhodes could embrace wholeheartedly. The plan included a number of key recommendations that varied somewhat from the Rhodes’ original thoughts.

The plan recommended focusing on housing for indigenous and remote communities. The high-end market was well served and very competitive. The recommended market was poorly served, often with inadequate housing.
A standard two shipping container unit with two bedrooms, fully framed, glazed, insulated, plumbed and wired could be supplied to the target market for approximately $160,000 (or less in some instances). The homeowner needed to provide the lot, road access and electrical, water and septic system services plus furniture and appliances.
A variety of customizations were possible using the planned standard practices, skills, and facilities including additional bedrooms and utility rooms. That would allow the company to be responsive to a variety of market needs.
The research found numerous sources of funding and financing from both the public and private sectors. There was also unexpected interest from outside investors. The target market and target pricing could provide reasonable profit margins for the company while enabling future growth and expansion.
Many of the processes and skills used by the welding company would be perfectly suitable to the new venture’s needs, reducing costs and risks and accelerating the start-up process.

With the Rhodes at the helm, Northern Green Homes are now working that plan. We’ll check back in a year or so to see how the plans have weathered reality.

What a Great Leader Learned

Northern Green Homes leveraged Certio Group’s strengths to accelerate its start-up effort. The following factors were crucial to that process:

Frameworks – Certio Group developed a standard framework for business plan development and refined it on a client by client basis as needed. The framework ensured that all vital information was captured and considered. As a result, the business plans developed from the framework were robust and comprehensive.
Targeted research – Certio Group took pride in its research capabilities. Driven by the framework, it examined, among other things, the competitive landscape, financial and funding needs and offerings and the regulatory climate. The findings surgically shaped the resulting business plan contents and directions.
Relationships – While Certio Group’s relationship with the client was paramount, it also maintained ongoing relationships with all levels of government, with banks and potential funding organizations and outside investment organizations. Those in-place contacts and the insights they provided allowed Certio Group to respond rapidly to their client’s interests.
Vision – Creating an appropriate and compelling vision isn’t waiting for serendipity to provide the answer. It requires an iterative exploration that blends the client’s needs, expectations and dreams with the research findings and constant collaboration. The aspirational meets the possible.
Change management – Certio Group is not just about one business plan and done. They recognize that well-executed tactics are the glue that makes strategies and plans a reality. To enhance ongoing operational performance, they offer the “Virtual Board Member” role to provide an independent voice to help keep things on track or revisit findings if the market changes.

These five best practices helped Certio Group provide the insights and guidance the Rhodes and Northern Green Homes were looking for. In fact, I think these best practices are relevant to any project. I can recall a number of new product launches that would have been helped immeasurably by people in the know wading through the Certio Group’s business plan template to reveal hidden secrets and brilliant insights.

So, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can be assured that you and your team have covered the bases. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group, the decision management process, and Decision Framework best practices right up front, so you don’t overlook these key success factors. In fact, add those factors in Certio Group’s Business Plan Template to your own Decision Framework.

Thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First-time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, good, bad and everything in between, send me the details, and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Want to Start a Business? Treat It Like a Project

Written by Drew Davison on March 26, 2018. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Want to Start a Business? Treat It Like a Project

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”- Walt Disney

Wouldn’t it be nice to be your own boss? To be able to make your own decisions, plan your day and your future without answering to someone else?

It’s often that desire for control over one’s life and the lure of a lucrative payday that prompts many to try and start their own firms. Unfortunately, the success rate suggests it’s a very difficult journey. Bloomberg says 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first eighteen months. What this months case suggests is, if you want to be successful at starting a business, treat it as a project.

In this story, we’ll follow a former teacher and business analyst, let’s call her Rebecca, who took a journey from the employee in a large organization to the owner and employer in her own firm. We’ll learn what steps and missteps she took, what she’d do differently the next time around and why she believes treating her entrepreneurial venture like a project saved her sanity and enabled a successful business.

Thanks to L.R. for the details on this story.

The Situation

Rebecca had been a math and English teacher for ten years when she decided that she needed a new challenge. After searching and considering possibilities, she set her sights on becoming a business analyst. The role leveraged her analytical and linguistic skills and opened up opportunities in the business world.

Rebecca took some business analyst courses and soon had a BA job in a major financial services organization. She loved the work and achieved IIBA certification. She thrived on the stimulating and diverse challenges the job offered. The only downside was the three-hour daily commute, and the time it took away from being with her young family.

However, she persisted. She received a promotion to senior BA. She became more involved in planning and leading the projects she was involved with. She took some project management courses and obtained project management certification as well. Her expertise and success were recognized by her boss and many business executives. Consequently, she was in demand and was being called upon to run the largest and most complex projects. Unfortunately, the commute and the additional hours demanded from her senior role began to take its toll. She wanted more control over her time and her life.

About this time, a friend of Rebecca’s, a real estate agent, approached her about forming a company together. He knew Rebecca was frustrated with the amount of time she had to spend away from her family. He also saw an opportunity to tap into his real estate knowledge to acquire property for the business. He knew of Rebecca’s background as math and English teacher, and so he proposed a tutoring business using his building and her skills.

Rebecca considered his proposal. She mulled it over in the back of her mind but didn’t take it seriously. When her friend threatened to find someone else to partner with, she took the plunge.

The Goal

Rebecca’s goal was threefold – to spend no more time than she was currently spending between her job and the commute, to have greater flexibility over the time she did spend and to earn equal to or greater income within two years of startup.

The Project

The first thing Rebecca did was develop a project charter. That’s what she did at work for new project initiatives. So she tried to answer the following questions relating to her new venture:

Reasons for undertaking the project
Mission and vision for the enterprise
Objectives and constraints of the project
Attributes of the desired future state
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats assessment
Expected future returns
Measures of success
Services offered
The main stakeholders and their responsibilities, skills, and expertise
In-scope and out-of-scope items
Potential risks and remediation alternatives
High-level budget and timeline

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Filling out the charter was an illuminating experience. At work, the information needed to complete the charters for the projects she worked on was readily at hand and was, for the most part, provided by the projects’ sponsors and senior stakeholders. For her new venture, she and her partner were the sole sources of information, and they didn’t have all the insight they needed.

However, Rebecca persisted and finally managed to produce a draft she was reasonably happy with. She then reviewed the charter with her partner. That was an eye-opener. He didn’t understand the need for the charter. He knew real estate, not projects. He took exception to much of the content because it reflected Rebecca’s aspirations, not his expectations for the future enterprise and his plans for the building he was going to acquire. After a considerable amount of give and take, sometimes acrimonious, they delivered a document they were both able to live with.

One of the key issues out of the charter process was the provision of operating capital. After looking at numerous alternatives to reduce their up front and ongoing financial needs and securing the amounts they both agreed on, they decided to search for a partner who would be willing to contribute the necessary funds. The real estate agent managed to convince a friend of his, an accountant by trade, to become the third partner. Of course, that entailed another review of the charter and further revisions until all partners agreed.

It had taken four months from the time Rebecca committed to the venture to get a completed charter. She had allocated three weeks. Her initial timeline had allowed six months to go live, with a January start date. The revised charter now allowed three months with a go-live date in February. All of the partners were already occupied with their full-time jobs, and three-quarters of the remaining work fell on Rebecca’s shoulders. Not only was she not freeing up time to be with her family, her outside time commitments were expanding.

In an attempt to manage the demands of her full-time job along with the needs of the tutoring company, she took another look at divvying up responsibilities more equitably. Using her work breakdown structure, she assigned the work as shown below:

Surprisingly, the partners agreed to the plan. And so they began.

The Results

It was a challenging three months. Each activity depended to some degree on the results yielded by the other activities. The number and type of teachers required depended on the number and ages of students and subjects to be taught. The preparation of facilities also depended on the number of students and teachers and the number of classes being run concurrently. The availability of the teachers impacted the timing and duration of the classes. And so on.

Initially, the real estate agent was placing advertisements in local papers and social media and mentioning the new tutoring service to his real estate clients, but nobody was actually closing the sales. In fact, the ads referred prospects to Rebecca, not the real estate agent. The partners had assumed that they would offer instruction in English and math but found considerable demand for French and English as a second language instruction as well as a variety of technology subjects.

The partners checkpointed daily and revised their individual plans and approaches as needed based on progress to date. The daily meetings not only kept their plans and activities aligned and on track, but they also built a bond between the partners and reinforced their commitment to their shared goals.

On the second Monday of February, the tutoring company opened its doors to two students. By the end of June of that year, they were operating with over twenty students in five subjects four days a week including Sundays. The fall term continued on a successful upward trajectory.

They were being acknowledged in the community. Feedback from students and their parents was outstanding. Given the continued growth, the accountant was expecting to realize or exceed her return on investment targets at the end of year two. Likewise, the real estate agent was satisfied with the return he was getting on his building while it continued to appreciate in value. Rebecca was satisfied as well. She had resigned from her business analyst/project manager job and was looking forward to working less than twelve hours a day for the first time in a long time. Regarding her earnings, like her partners she was hopeful.

What a Great Leader Learned

To be successful, every change requires an investment of time, effort, and energy by the people affected. Fortunately, the three partners were ultimately willing to make that investment work to their advantage. Rebecca identified eight keys to their company’s successful launch and operation:

Nail that vision – Rebecca and her partners shared a vision of the kind of business they were going to create – local, lean, focused and flexible. Certainly, that vision shifted and clarified as they worked together but early on they were unified in that focus. It just gained clarity as they progressed together. That clarity of vision is essential on any project.
Fully engage with your partners – Initially, both the real estate agent and accountant were expecting Rebecca to do the lion’s share of the work. As she worked with them to agree on the charter and plan, she made it very clear what had to happen. Gradually they gained an understanding of the challenges and, as investors, they were convinced to take on a greater share of the workload. The venture would have failed without that participation. In many project situations, one can’t always pick their partners, the key stakeholders. They are key stakeholders because of their positions in the organizations affected by the planned change. That gives all the more reason to engage them early and often. It is, after all, their change.
Balance roles and responsibilities – Rebecca’s first cut at roles and responsibilities left her with most of the work. Not only was that not workable, but it also was not equitable. The financial investment was the same for each partner as was the share of profits. Balancing investments – financial, knowledge, skills, opportunity, time – with rewards makes for an effective and committed team.
Ensure a sound financial footing – The development of the charter forced the two initial partners to address their capital requirements. Bringing in the third partner with an appropriate injection of cash allowed them the cover the development expenses and initial operating shortfall. Dealing with the issue up front allowed them to focus on getting the business up and running, not worrying about how they were going to pay their bills. This lesson is equally applicable to traditional projects. Trying to deliver a champagne solution on a beer budget is a recipe for failure. Resolving the wish and the reality up front is an essential best practice
Stay in touch with your customers – At the end of each tutoring session, in addition to test results, Rebecca would ask for feedback on the courses as well as suggestions for improvements and desired new subjects. Early on, the real estate agent started tracking every viable contact and query and the reason for their interest. Every quarter he would send out follow-ups to this group plus former and current students covering the current offerings and timings and include quotes from satisfied clients. They weren’t just marketing; they were having conversations. That’s a necessary ingredient for any kind of project.
Be resilient – With only three months to get the venture open and operating, each partner had to be willing to change plans daily and to pitch in as needed. They were. In Rebecca’s words “Things will go wrong. Get used to it, get over it and deal with it. Fix the problems for the short term and find more lasting solutions for the long term.” Words to live by!
Iterate – The business opened with two students. As the enrollment and the number of subjects increased, Rebecca tried different approaches to maximize the learning experience. Teachers that were willing to experiment with new and different approaches were retained and rewarded. Teachers who were not willing or able to seek better ways to increase value to the students were let go. Adapting, iterating and experimenting were keys to their success.

These seven lessons helped this project deliver a successful business on budget and in an accelerated time frame. I think the lessons are relevant to any kind of project. So, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can go from start-up to success with a smile on your face. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group, the decision management process, and Decision Framework best practices right up front, so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First-time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their own unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, good, bad and everything in between, send me the details, and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

From the Sponsor’s Desk – It’s the Mastery that Counts

Written by Drew Davison on March 6, 2018. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – It’s the Mastery that Counts

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.” – Thomas Jefferson

How many times have we been challenged with a knowledge gap in our personal or professional lives? We need to learn a few words in a different language to welcome guests from a foreign country. We need to invest our hard earned millions to earn the best return at minimum risk. We need to follow some obtuse instructions to assemble a new piece of furniture. We need to apply a mandated new process, procedure or methodology at work. We need to navigate through a detour in a construction zone to get to our destination. We need open heart surgery. We need to figure out a new or changed technology. And so it goes.

Life is filled with these know-how gaps. We have a few options to address those challenges. We can acquire the needed information on our own. We can rely on someone who already has the knowledge and experience to educate and guide us. Or, we can hand the job off to someone else. Which option we choose depends on a myriad of factors, from how big or critical the challenge is, the time and cost of the options available, to our personal and organizational strengths, interests and inclinations.
In this story, we’ll see how a major financial services organization responded to a mandated regulatory change that required them to identify and track the source and pathway of data deemed critical to accurate and timely financial reporting. We’ll discover that it’s the mastery that counts.

Thanks to Peter Szirmak for the details on this story. Full disclosure here – Peter Szirmak has been a colleague and friend for over a decade. His accolades for the Project Pre-Check practice appeared on the back cover of my first book on the subject. I was not aware of the project covered in this article until recently and had no personal involvement in its conduct.

The Situation

The global financial crisis revealed shortcomings in the ability of banks to provide timely, complete and accurate aggregation of risk exposures. The correctness of reporting data proved to have severe consequences not only to individual banks but to the entire financial system. In response to these shortcomings, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) issued the “Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation and Risk Reporting” (RDARR), outlining key areas to strengthen risk data aggregation capabilities and internal risk reporting practices.

One of the requirements of RDARR related to what is called data lineage. Data lineage tracks data from its origin to its destination, the different processes involved in the data flow and their respective dependencies to ensure that the final presentation in financial reports is accurate and transparent.

Our company of interest, a large international financial services organization, like its peers, was faced with the challenge of ensuring the accuracy and transparency of the data used in its financial reports. In 2014, it launched a project to ensure data lineage compliance with the new regulations.

The Goal

To track the data lineage for 125 different pieces of information and ensure their use in the company’s financial reports was accurate and transparent. The target date for completion of the project was December, 2016. The budget allocated to the endeavour was $10 million based on what the organization felt was a worthwhile investment. Accountability for the project was assigned to the Chief Data Officer (CDO), head of the Enterprise Data Office.

The Project

The CDO assigned the project to a senior IT project manager along with three senior data analysts from his organization. Together they considered options for how to tackle the challenge and, after due consideration, recommended a team of 20 data analysts to manually trace each piece of information back to its source.

The organization had a standard practice in place to submit every project to the Enterprise Architecture Group for an assessment of the planned approach and possible alternatives. The practice, called an Initiative Assessment or IA, was a collaborative and iterative exercise developed with the organization’s Project Management Office. Its intent was to build a comprehensive and holistic view of a project’s impact on the organization and beyond. Project managers and teams used the practice to get feedback and insight on a multitude of fronts as the work progressed.

The first IA review about a month after project launch received full support from the review committee. The consensus was to continue exploring and building an understanding of the project’s breadth and depth using the IA practice.

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Three months in, the scope was much better understood. The 125 information items had burgeoned to at least 275 data elements in over fifty systems involving over ten programming languages and a multitude of scripts and fourth generation tools. The IA review at that point was able to consider a number of viable alternatives to achieve the project’s goals.

One of the alternatives proposed was to use the data lineage expertise offered by Mapador International Inc. A member of the review team had had previous experience with Mapador and their approach to what they called application cartography. She was most impressed with their mastery in the data lineage domain and believed their expertise would help deliver a comprehensive, high quality solution on time and within budget.

After Mapador’s offerings were reviewed and their references checked, they were invited to bid on the project. With their quote and projected time frame well within the allocated budget, Mapador were welcomed aboard and the work progressed.

Mapador’s approach was to work backwards from presentation to origination. They relied on the company’s data analysts and business owners to provide the necessary context and access. The work was divided into subprojects by information groupings so the work could progress in parallel, reducing the time required. When a dead end was encountered – for example, no obvious source for a data element – the Mapador staff worked with the organization’s business and data resources to solve the problem. A number of external information sources were identified in the process.

Mapador’s suite of tools and the staff’s parsing talents incrementally revealed the required data lineages. As part of that process, a knowledge repository evolved to manage the incremental results from the lineage analysis. The repository, accessible through a web browser, allowed the data analysts and business staff to review and approve the results on the go.

And so the work continued.

The Results

The project was completed by September, 2016 for a total of $4.2 million including Mapador’s costs. Over 500 data elements were ultimately traced to the 125 information items. Those data elements involved some 97 internal systems and 7 external sources using seventeen programming languages plus the aforementioned scripts and code generation tools.

Mapador’s process also delivered the knowledge repository covering the targeted data and applications. That allowed the company to refresh the information at will to identify possible or actual changes to the lineage profiles.

What a Great Team Learned

There is often a tendency to think inside the box in situations like this. The project didn’t look particularly challenging. It appeared the organization had the skills and resources needed in house. Why look anywhere else? In fact, another large financial services organization chose to hire a boatload of analysts and tackle the analysis themselves. After spending in excess of $80 million, they pulled the plug and called Mapador. Fortunately, the organization we’re concerned with had the IA practice to force teams to think outside the box.

Four key factors provided the foundation for a very successful undertaking:

A Roadmap – The IA practice was the catalyst for exploring alternatives. In fact, considering both business and technology alternatives along with a myriad of other potential impacts was a prerequisite for any project to get approval and follow-on funding.
Mastery – This assignment was in Mapador’s sweet spot. That’s what they do, day in and day out. They are masters of code and documentation navigation and exploration. They had the practices, tools and know-how from the get-go. There was no learning curve to get up to speed. They hit the ground running and brought the organization’s staff up to speed on the job. As well, the organization’s IA practice demanded mastery on all fronts for the exercise to work effectively. It was a match well made.
Collaboration – Culture can play a huge role in an organization’s success or failure as well as the outcomes for individual projects. In this case, collaboration was institutionalized with the IA. It wasn’t a formal checkpoint review. It didn’t involve senior executives ruling from on high. It was peers – IT staff, business folks, contractors, architects, data analysts, programmers, whoever was needed – sharing information, ideas and strategies on the best way to achieve success for the team and the organizations.
Iteration – Two of my last three posts in this blog have covered massive project failures that delivered nothing of any substance for years. This organization’s culture embraced iteration through the IA’s process of creeping commitment. When Mapador joined the fray, it was just business as usual. They proceeded on an information item by information item basis, organized sub-projects operating in parallel, vetted results, built the knowledge repository incrementally and proceeded accordingly. That reduced the risks, accelerated delivery and imbued everyone involved with a confidence build on achievement.

These four building blocks enabled this project to deliver the goal set two years prior, with minimal risk, moderate costs and a reasonable time frame. In fact, the IA was really the progenitor of the other three factors. The IA couldn’t work without mastery, collaboration and iteration. In fact, it sustains that culture.

I haven’t done an exhaustive study on this thought, but I expect you’ll find the presence of these four factors in most successful projects and the absence of one or more in failed ventures. Let me know what you think.

Finally, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can acquire and build the mastery you need to achieve project success. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group, the decision management process and Decision Framework best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their own unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, good, bad and everything in between, send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks