This is a true story. The company name
has been changed.
Background
The Acme Corporation was custom-developing
a new web application to manage the shipping and distribution of parts from the
originating plants to Acme’s manufacturing facilities all over the world. More
than three-quarters of the originating plants were owned by suppliers, who also
had their own systems. All functions
were to be available to Acme staff over the web, and many functions were to be
available to suppliers over the web, all with appropriate security.
The development was broken down into
nine modules, scheduled to be delivered starting at month twelve and continuing
to be delivered up to month eighteen.
The project plans were formally
documented, and included appropriate documents and signoffs from the business
for all development work and all new organizational designs and processes.
Development and go-live
The development and testing of the
application proceeded according to schedule, with no more than the usual number
and type of issues to resolve.
The first few modules were delivered
for conference room pilot, which was followed by go-live. During go-live of the
first modules, the European Region VP was worried that the new systems were not
being implemented very well and that the supporting process and organization
changes were not occurring as planned.
The VP discussed his concerns with the
project manager, who was very confident about the project’s progress. She
reminded the VP that all specifications were very thorough and detailed and had
been signed off by all of the user departments.
In addition, she pointed out to the VP
that the new organizational design and processes were clearly defined from the
outset and it was the responsibility of the VP’s staff to ensure they were
implemented properly.
Again the following month, the VP
brought up his concerns, and was reassured by the project manager, who said,
“Don’t worry; everything is going exactly according to plan”.
The VP continued to voice his concerns.
The project manager reviewed the plan with the VP in detail, and the VP
conceded that each deliverable had been developed according to the
specifications, and had been delivered on time. The VP agreed that the
organizational and implementation issues were the responsibility of his staff
to complete and had been clearly defined.
After go-live
Every one of the nine modules was
developed and delivered on schedule and according to the specifications. The
user acceptance testing was signed off, as all modules functioned as designed.
However, the project was seen as a failure throughout the company, and many users
avoided using the new systems where possible. It could not be considered a
success.
The project manager was devastated. Everything
had gone according to plan. How could the project be a failure? She decided to
investigate and determine what had gone wrong.
Conclusion
The problem on this project was that
the modules developed were quite large. There were two significant challenges
that arose as a result of the large modules. First, they required a lot of
pilot and implementation effort, including a great deal of organizational and
process change at one time. Second, because it was twelve months from start of
development to go-live of the first module, the project was well under way
before the issues in implementation and organizational change began to surface.
The project manager planned her next
large project differently. She defined the next eighteen-month project as two
dozen very small modules.
With smaller modules, there was less
development, pilot and implementation time needed for each module. A few
modules were developed and implemented first. Then a post-implementation review
and impact assessment was conducted for the first few modules. Then the plan
was re-worked to breakdown the modules differently based on the feedback from that
review.
Although the implementation and
organization issues were the VPs responsibility, they were valid concerns. If
she had investigated those concerns, instead of trying to re-assure the VP that
her team was producing as planned, the project manager would have discovered
that the large modules were contributing to the VP’s problems.
Even at the twelve-month mark, it would
have been advisable to stop and review the issues and re-work the plan into
smaller units for delivery of the remaining functionality. Probably, late
product delivery would have been preferable to on-time delivery into an
organization that could not absorb the changes in responsibility and process.
The project manager should have checked
out the VP’s concerns to either prove him wrong, or to solve the problem that
he was worried about. Her “don’t worry” response to his concerns amounted to “I’m
not listening”. Because she didn’t listen, she did not find out until after the
project was over that the product, once implemented, was not meeting the needs
of the business.
Copyright
2015 Debbie Gallagher
