This is a true story. The name of the
company has been changed.
Two projects, one plan
Acme Corporation, a U.S.-based
retailer, created two projects, one to replace their financial system and the
other to replace their credit card processing system.
Both projects were to go live on the
same date. The credit card system was to take eight months, so it started
first. When it was at the two-month mark, the six-month financial system project
started.
The credit card system project was to include
development of an interface between the new credit card system and the new
financial system.
The credit card project was kicked off
with the project manager’s declaration that “It’ll be tough, but we’ll make
it”. There was no project plan, and therefore no scope definition, resourcing,
or timelines.
Prior to starting the financial
project, a comprehensive plan was developed. It included detailed definitions
of items in and out of scope, team member roles and responsibilities,
timelines, and a communications plan.
Progress
on the projects
The financial system project had a
steering committee, which met monthly. Due to the dependency on the credit card
project, that project manager was required to attend and provide updates.
At the first steering committee
meeting, both the financial system and credit card system project managers
reported that their projects were on schedule.
At the second meeting, the credit card
project manager stated that work was falling a bit behind, but they would be
caught up soon and would be back on schedule.
Unfortunately, at the third meeting,
the credit card project manager confessed that the project had continued to
slip, and they could not catch up because the team was busy with extra work.
They had decided to expand the credit card capabilities to allow an additional
brand, which required dealing with a new financial institution and file format.
There’s no plan
The financial systems project manager
asked for details of the credit card project, but the credit card project
manager had no plan and no other documents to support resourcing, scope, and
timelines.
The steering committee insisted that
the credit card project manager prepare the information requested and present
it as soon as possible. Preparation of project plans for the credit
card project took nearly three weeks. The credit card project manager concluded
that his project could not be completed on time.
The steering committee did not accept
the credit card project manager’s recommendation to defer his project’s go-live.
The go-live date of the two systems had been carefully chosen, the company
staff had been informed, the financial data conversion would require re-work if
the go-live date moved, and the new process designs were dependent on the two
systems both being live at the same time.
The financial system project manager
realized the critical importance of the credit card project to her own
project’s success and offered to help the credit card project manager develop a
catch-up plan.
The catch-up plan
The new plan defined the scope of work
that would be done by the go-live date and the work that would wait until after
go-live. Resources and timelines were identified in detail. The team on the
credit card project would have to work 50-hour workweeks, reports would be
delayed, additional specialists were hired on contract to assist, and some
testing was eliminated, necessitating risk mitigation strategies for go-live.
The financial systems achieved the
expected go-live date within budget, and the stripped-down credit card system
also was live. However, the interface between the two systems did not work
properly.
Acme management decided to live without
the interface for over a month, which required a huge effort in creating manual
entries to replace the data that was to be supplied by the interface.
Conclusions
The financial systems project manager
did a good job of developing the plan and managing her own project. However, despite
knowing about her project’s dependency on the credit card project, she took a
hands-off approach to it until it was in trouble.
It was a good idea to include the
project manager from the credit card project in the steering committee
meetings. However, the financial systems
project plan should have included key elements of the plan for the credit card
project, including critical milestones, scope, and resourcing.
This story illustrates how critical the
project plan is. It allows the company to define expectations, measure
progress, assess priorities, assign the right resources at the right time, and
communicate as needed with the company.
Prior to starting the financial system
project, the project manager and five others spent a full month developing the
detailed plan. It seems like a big investment, but as a result of the detailed
planning, her six-month project with thirty resources finished on time and on
budget.
A project plan should include a
detailed list of what is and is not in scope for the project. This definition
would have prevented the credit card team from going off on a tangent,
developing capability for a new credit card brand, when they should have been
focused on the development of the credit card functionality and interface that
were required by the go-live date. At a
minimum, clearly defined scope would have allowed Steering Committee to discuss
the branding need, the impact of that effort and the implications for the other
project.
Copyright
2015 Debbie
Gallagher
