EXPERIENCE SAVES YOU TIME AND MONEY
Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Often credited to Winston Churchhill, the phrase dates back to philosopher George Santanyana (1863 – 1952). Through working with over 34 companies Jeff has seen, and prevented, many of the costly traps companies find themselves in when managing large projects.
SMALL SAMPLE OF GUIDELINES TO
Give Your Project the Best Chance at Success
1
Plan Entire Vision & MVP
At the beginning of the project, use a story mapping approach to lay out the capabilities and new features in the product vision. Prioritize the capabilities from most to least important in columns. Prioritize the features underneath each Capability from most to least important. Agree on the point under each capability that truly represents the minimum viable product (MVP) you absolutely must have in order to go live with clients. It is much easier to prioritize and set the boundary for MVP before you are forced into it due to time or budget constraints.
2
Face Challenges ASAP
Always do the hardest, least known, or most complex part of a project first. This approach was first recommended in the 1990s with the Rational Unified Process. Most companies where Jeff has rescued a never-ending project as a consultant had not done this. It is human nature to do the easiest things first, but there are technical challenges that cannot be overcome, forcing entirely new technical directions on projects. You want to know that as soon as possible.
3
Project is More Than IT
Often great attention is paid solely to the IT or technical portion of a project. This tends to be the most expensive part of a project, as well as the least understood by the business, and often runs the most risk of surpassing the budget and the due dates. Jeff has found the business is often unprepared to collaborate, make decisions, train, and support clients on new software. Many times, the business thought IT would fail and they would never have to participate. Other times the business was just hurt they were not involved enough on the journey, so they are going to teach IT a lesson.
4
Plan to Go Live In Phases
This recommendation goes hand in hand with MVP. Although it is always a sound practice, it is important when your company has to convert multiple clients to a new platform and has added benefits when those clients use different capabilities. Although you begin work on the hardest things first, it does not mean those clients have to be implemented first. Design your capabilities and features map in such a way that you can implement a few clients, gain success, and then add a few more clients by adding a few more capabilities. The clients using the fewest capabilities who are also open to working through issues with you are the best first adopters.
5
Knowledge of Offshore Resources
Jeff has had repeated success with offshore staff from Infosys, Cognizant, Accenture, and other offshore vendors, both when they augment local staff and when they run entire development or testing components of a project. There are common ways these vendors staff projects and how they utilize their highest skilled staff that can lead to pitfalls for your project. Those pitfalls will often result in both missed dates and missed requirements. There are ways to avoid these traps and Jeff can walk you through them, so both the company and vendor can be successful. Knowing these differences could also change your mind on using offshore resources.
6
The Calendar Is Critical
Depending on the software you are deploying, the fiscal calendar for your company and your clients can dramatically drive or change the release of new software. There are often critical times of the year when staff is doing work too critical to be interrupted by training or the possibility of system down time. If systems of record are being changed, your client may not have the technical capacity to pull data from one system for part of the year and merge it with the new system for the end of the year. You need to be prepared to make life easy for your customers.
Why You Need An Expert
Regardless of project size, 59% of all IT projects are completed within budget, 47% are completed on time, and 44% deliver the intended benefits. This might sound good, but . . .
Just one in every 200 IT projects meets all three of these measures of success, and only one in every 14 is delivered on time and on budget. Projects that fail to meet one or more measures exceeded their budgets by 75%, overran their schedules by 46%, and generated 39% less value than predicted, on average.