tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58181256947929971562024-02-08T13:05:01.004-05:00Project Management, IT and InsuranceShare your comments and feedback on Project Management Topics.
This Blog discusses about general Project Management tips and articles. It focuses on how different Project Management aspects like cost, time, scope, quality and resources impact an IT project and their relationship to Property and Casualty related Policy, Billing and Claims Projects.
This blog also has posts about Insurance Concepts and insurance industry functioning and processesNilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-62343542498221343942013-12-02T17:26:00.002-05:002013-12-02T17:36:40.116-05:00When Things go wrong...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> 'Resurrection' is life....Well, hold on!....I am not being philosophical...atleast not at a level that i will start giving you dictums of wisdoms. But i can definitely share with you something that i am absolutely sure all of you must have faced and experienced ( or something similar) somewhere in your personal/professional life.<br />Somethings things go great and sometimes they don't...that's just life... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And when they dont, that is when it becomes a cause of concern. Be it a Project worth 1000s or millions of dollars or be it your pefectly planned weekend getaway gone awry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />So professionally, to manage these situations, we have this breed of specimen called 'Project Managers' - whose job is to ensure things stay on track. Project Managers ensure that the project are run and executed smoothly, Projects meet their set goals and objectives and we all achieve and even overachieve our targets.</span><br />
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<strong><u><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Examples of Awry</span></u></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Personal</strong><br />In our personal lives, say, we buy a house, we start to pay our mortgages diligently and then somewhere down the line, we miss a payment due to something unforeseen - a medical emergency, a job/family situation, mortgage plan changes etc, we start spiraling down the Rabbit hole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Professional</strong><br />Imagine a situation when you are on a project that is just not going the way as planned, the reports are all pointing that things have started to go wrong and it is time to raise the red flag....Hopefully you find this, before the Captain asks to abandon ship.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what do we do when things start spiraling the path it was not meant to be...a Project down on its knees... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Policy Admin implementation which kicked off with a much held fanfare and furore but suddenly somewhere down the way failed to keep up.<br />I have been a part of such a project which i will say, is a classic case study for this article. This project was a 3 year - multi Million dollar Enterprise level P&C Admin apps Setup project. It was a new organization entering P&C business that had engaged us for a policy, billing and claims solution setup....Successfully execution would have made the careers of many a people on the project, not to mention the benefits to the client, if it had met the roadmap timelines.<br /> Initially things went well as planned for a few months then we started missing deadlines, good resources were leaving the project, client was having 2nd thoughts on using us as successful partners. It came to such a point that our consulting Org was threatened with a liability lawsuit, as we had risked the client's plan of going live with its new programs and products in a new market that would have really given them a competitive edge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>How did we come out of this mess.</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>First Things First</strong><br />First we calmly took stock of where were on the project<br /> - We had all our key stakeholders, responsible parties together. Tried to understand and outline how and where things went wrong.<br />Once we know the 'what' and 'why's, we decide to focus our energies positively, be constructive and stay away from the blame game as it was not going to help anyone....we remained focused and started to work on 'how' to fix the problem. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Come up with a plan to go from point A to point B </strong><br /> We had regular meetings with the Stakeholders and finally arrived at a consensus on what needed to be done</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In your case, it may include things like,<br /><strong>Timeline changes</strong><br /> - Extending the project timeline</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Scope changes</strong><br /> - changing the work scope to fit the timeline </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Resourcing changes</strong><br /> - Lining up your A resources to get the job done, shuffling resources per competencies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Cost and budget changes</strong><br /> - Increase project budget</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Unthinkable option</strong><br /> - Dumping the project altogether. Sadly, this happens in many cases when you are on a time bound project and you completely miss it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once you have the plan ready, make sure to dot your Is and cross your Ts. Have an <strong>executive summary</strong> of your plan ready. This will serve you 2 purposes, you will need it to convince your project sponsors that you are taking the necessary steps to get on track and the funding should continue.<br />Also this presentation will also help curb the project level noise, if any. You can use the same presentation with maybe a little tweaks for removing your team fears on where the project is going. Proper communication within Team is absolutely essential.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later on, when things get back on track and project completes successfully(i am sure!...), remember to have a <strong>lessons learned</strong> session with the whole Team so we learn from our mistakes and future run is a lot smoother. <br />One of the major takeaway for our project case was, have regular status reports, meetings set that will highlight slippages right at the onset.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Summary</u></strong><br />So all in all, as they say...'stuff happens'...It is all about how do we separate the men from the boys and get our act together and make sure all of us march towards the common goal of a successful project implementation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Let me know if you all agree or have a different perspective, input on things based on your experiences.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-56961837982331088782013-03-13T13:28:00.001-04:002013-03-13T13:29:03.403-04:00Training, Coaching and Mentoring-II - Business Analysis<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hopefully the topic on Insurance was helpful...Today lets touch upon Business Analysis</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>Background</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Who is a Business Analyst</b>? Who activities does a Business Analyst perform?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In an IT based project, Business Analysts form the bridge between Business and IT. For Example, say we are implementing a Policy Administration System and have a Rate Structure Table that needs implemented, the business has been rating policies in Excel for past 20 years and now they want their Rates, Rating Factors, Discounts etc to be available in the Policy Admin Software so that when an Underwriter or Operations are processing a Quote for a Policy or Rating the policy for Renewals or some mid term endorsements, the UI properly allows them to rate the policy, just the way they have been doing it in the Excel form. Moreover the UI can also display log messages as to why a particular rating factor was applied, so that the Underwriter can view them and take corrective actions, if necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now this above is a Business scenario which a developer may not understand (Unless he has spent a few years in the Trenches and understands the business well, this is usually not the case)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This brings us to our Savior, the Hero - The Business Analyst. The Business Analyst is a person who not only understands the business, but also understands the IT aspect of it, which means he can ask the right questions to the End users and SMEs by holding workshops and then translate the Business requirements to High level design documents and specs that the Application Developers can comprehend and produce loads of software code that does what it is exactly supposed to...or so we hope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">For the requirement sessions or Gap analysis sessions as they are called, to proceed, the BAs are equipped with their quiver full of Use Cases. Use Cases are the documents that take a particular functionality and describe the application, System and user level interaction in that particular functionality using various scenarios. This helps clarify the various processes that business follows and sets the expectation from the business side as well as the IT side on how the future application to be implemented looks like.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Along with the getting the requirements on the functional scope, BAs are also involved in the business process mapping of the whole scene meaning for an insurance company that has been in business for say 30 long years, that has 12 regional offices and 200 adjusters, operators and underwriters that handle the day to day business. The Users are used to do the business in a certain way based on the IT application limitations, the business outlines and statutory and state mandated requirements set out. The job of the Business analysts here is to select a functional area, map the process using a process mapping application like Visio. For this, the BAs hold sessions/workshops with the business to understand their current process with the objective that how they can better the processes in the future. Help the organization in improving their bottom line. run the processes more efficiently so as to benefit the entities involved.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">To give an example of business process improvement, there was an Insurance company that used a pretty outdated software to quote an insurance policy to an insured, who was (say) calling in for the first time. For this, the agents sitting in their office with the insured would first send the policy information to the insurance company via fax. It would be received by an operator who would then load the data in the system and give out a quote to the agent via another fax. This would take up atleast 30-40 mins for getting just an insurance quote. you don't want to know how long it took to bind and issue the policy. Anyways, by mapping the process flow, the BAs were able to show the organization that implementing Internet based IT solution would not only resolve the timing issue it would also fix any bottlenecks related to data inconsistency or incorrect data entry thus saving the insurance company tons of money and a happy customer in return.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Coming along, the BAs also help in System Testing, Regression Testing, End user testing the final application after it gets developed. They also help the Testing Team to design and develop the Test cases and Test scenarios.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Business Analysts are a very Unique breed and they gain expertise by their specific overall background, business knowledge by executing various projects etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>PreRequisites</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now we come to what it take to be a BA. If you are already in the field, you can skip this. If you are trying to enter into the field of business analysis, this may give you some idea.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The first and foremost prerequisite to being a Business Analyst is to have a an eagerness to understand the business domain which can be anything from Insurance to Banking to Manufacturing. Choose an area of your liking and move ahead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The 2 main functions that a BA performs and would work towards his benefit if he has gained skills and knowledge in these areas</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">1> IT Process and Methodology </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> - i.e. Understand the IT Process lifecycle, the Inputs and deliverables for executing any project, using a specific Project Management Methodology</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">2> Business Knowledge</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> - Knowledge of the particular domain that you will be responsible for.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">After you have acquired the knowledge, it is important to have some exposure via some realtime project exposure, there are some online and classroom courses also available that give you some first hand exposure via case studies etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Let me know if you have any specific questions or viewpointd, i will be glad to answer and will try to guide and direct you in the proper direction</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Do let me know through your comments if you found the article helpful. </span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-71975824354796105902013-02-22T18:31:00.001-05:002013-02-22T18:31:40.662-05:00Training, Coaching and Mentoring-II - Insurance<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Continuing our Topic....Today we will touch upon "Insurance Basics"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Firstly, <strong>Who should read this?</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you are a beginner in the Insurance Industry or Insurance related field like IT, Business.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you are an IT Techie and are working in the Insurance domain for sometime now...this article is for you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you are someone who has a liking for insurance or are curious about the inner know-hows and basics</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">or someone who wants to have some valueadd to his knowledge and skills.....go ahead and read</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I came to the insurance industry quite by chance. For around 4 years since i graduated i had worked on C++ and Java assignments..all non-Insurance. Then i joined a company which specialized in Property and Casualty Insurance - Policy, Billing and Claims Administration Product development and Installation. I was the solutions architect for the product. I loved what i did there....This job Introduced me to the insurance industry and showed me how product functionality and performance considerations gave us Happy customers...and sometimes poor management and mis-alignment of objectives gives unhapy customers, but let's keep that for another article.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Coming to Insurance basics,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>Why do we need Insurance?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Insurance is a very thriving and an absolutely necessary industry which has borne the shocks of the failing economy. To think of it, be it an bear market or bull, everyone needs insurance, right from buying a home to a car or your personal health and life to insuring smaller electronic gadgets and devices...Insurance is everywhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Insurance is a form of risk management and mitigation technique wherein you pay the <strong>insurer </strong>a "<strong>Premium</strong>" to accept a portion or all of your associated "<strong>risk</strong>". And if god forbid, things do go wrong, as they sometimes do, you-The <strong>Insured</strong>, will file a "<strong>claim</strong>" and based on the Insurance premium you pay, the "<strong>coverages</strong>" that you have applicable on your "<strong>policy</strong>", the insurance company "<strong>Adjuster</strong>" will work with you and try to work with you on the "<strong>Actual Value</strong>" or the "<strong>Market value</strong>" based on the years of "<strong>Depreciation</strong>" of the Item that you are insured and are claiming for...with the objective of ensuring the "Insured" gets to the "same <strong>economic situation</strong>" as before. The Objective of Insurance is to cover the loss, so that insured bounces back to the same economic state as before the loss.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is as elementary as i can get to explain what is insurance to a Layman.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>Where did the Insurance concept come from?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Long time ago, when there were to TVs, planes or IPods....when traders and merchants took their goods to faraway places for trading, sometimes they lost the goods to weather conditions, pirates or some other Loss making situations and had to bear a loss. So they came up with rather ingenious ways to "self-Insure" their goods or mitigate their "Risk" or losses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The Merchants would get together and pool a set amount of money so as to compensate the trader who lost his goods or they would sometimes give extra amount of money to the lenders, from whom they bought goods as a means of insuring against losses in trade.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>What are the types of Insurance?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As i said, Insurance is applicable and available in all walks of life...right from Personal to commercial..within that at a very high level, you can dividie insurance into Life, General and Health. Within General you have personal, Commercial. Within that you have Property and Casualty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The area within <strong>Personal and Commercial </strong>at a High level would be,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Auto, General Liability, Property, Worker's Comp, Home Owners, Inland Marine, Specialty Lines etc. Each of these, as their names suggest cater to a specific area of Business. There are certain insurance companies that deal with certain specialities or some that do a mix. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There is also another interesting area within Insurance called <strong>Re-Insurance </strong>wherein, an Insurance Carriers (also called Ceding Company) reinsures part or all of his associated risk with another Company (Reinsurer). The Insurance agreements between them are of various types namely Facultative or Treaty reinsurance etc based on the risk selection criteria etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>What are the industry known and recognized certifications?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now that you have a basic background and knowledge about insurance, to gain more insight into your particular area of expertise, be it a specific Product like <strong>Guidewire</strong>, <strong>Pega</strong>, <strong>DuckCreek</strong>, <strong>Accenture </strong>etc related </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">to Policy, Billing and Claims Administration or you aim to become to Business SME for Policy, Billing or Claims...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Make sure you find a right mentor to lead you and guide you in the right direction. Take firm and steady steps towards your career goals and confidently rise the success ladder.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Let me know if you have any specific questions or doubts, i will be glad to help and will try to guide and direct you in the proper direction</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Do let me know through your comments if you found the article helpful. </span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-51780549587243432832013-02-12T11:52:00.000-05:002013-02-13T12:40:38.104-05:00Training, Coaching and Mentoring-I - The Basics<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<em><strong>Practice makes a man perfect</strong></em>"...But before practice comes - getting knowledge (or trained) in your area of choice....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To achieve excellence in any field you need to start with Training and Guidance,...followed by your Hardwork, dedication and gradual experience. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In today's competitive world, nothing comes easy....To gain an entry and make your mark in the favorite field, it has becoming increasingly difficult.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This article is for all those who are trying to enter the IT field or are looking to gain experience in their favorite area of work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In one of my projects, I had a colleague who was an excellent integration developer and a solutions architect, but somehow he felt his calling was being a business analyst. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Then there were those who were Insurance business domain experts and want to try their hand at Project Management, based on their leadership qualities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of my colleagues from India recently got married. His wife was from the IT background back home, but had stopped working for past few years. Now she wanted to restart her career. I sat with them to see where her skillsets and background would fit, so she could contribute her knowledge and grow professionally and personally as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />I gave them my two cents and that somehow led me thinking to this blog article and maybe a few subsequent few to follow. Bear in mind, i can only write about areas that i am know of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So coming back, here are the steps i advise to my friends who are planning a change in their area of expertise or planning to gain more exposure to their favorite area of work</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Analyze your interests - strengths and weakness</u></strong><br /> - Helps you gain insight on what you can do and need to work on. Builds your focus areas<br /> <br /><strong><u>Plan for the area of work</u></strong><br /> - Systematically find mentors or someone who can coach you, guide you and point you in the right direction<br /> <br /><strong><u>Gain systematic knowledge and exposure</u></strong><br /> - Gain knowledge, experience and real time exposure which is key.<br /> <br /><strong><u>Confidently march towards your dreams</u></strong><br /> - Last but not the least...go get'em tiger....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All the above steps are very important because once you have the requisite knowleldge and exposure, it helps boost your morale and confidence when you go for an interview. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are new to the IT Industry or going to enter a specialized Industry like IT for Insurance, it is always to your advantage to have some project background. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the next few posts i will try to give some guidelines on some specific areas of work like Project Management, Business Analysis, Insurance basics, Packaged solutions for Insurance etc..so keep reading..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also, please let me know your comments and feedback</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-40129645177488096902013-02-06T11:18:00.000-05:002013-02-06T11:18:08.624-05:00Project Management Styles<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yesterday my 4 year old son wanted candies for Dinner and i firmly gave him 'No Candies for Dinner' speech. It was a difficult task, i am sure you all will understand. He was, let us say, less willing to be onboard. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As all kids are, he tried all tricks in the book to get his point across. You of course know how this story goes...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone makes some or the other decisions everyday. Be it a life changing decision say, to get married or have kids or marginally life changing ones like where to take your better half for Dinner (Which now that i think of it can also be a major decision whether it a Four Star Restaurant or a roadside eatery). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everone has their own decision making styles that are inculcated in him/her based on their subconscious thought process, their upbringing, their own innate nature or how they have moulded themselves over the time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Today we will talk about some of these decision styles or when used in a <strong>Project Management Environment</strong>. <br />
These different styles are <strong>Authoritative</strong>, <strong>Experienced</strong>, <strong>Collaborative</strong>, <strong>Democratic </strong>and <strong>Laissez Faire</strong>.<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let us talk about each approch in detail and decide see which approach suits best in which situations</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Authoritative</u> </strong>- </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Authoritative Project Management style is when the Project Manager has a decision maker position and tries to coerce or enforce his decisions on the Team without understanding the project situation or team views and thoughts. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This decision making does not necessarily mean he has the experience to understand the situations and has taken a 360 view before coming to a conclusion. This merely means he is in a Authority position and people will listen to him just because of that.<br />This definitely can lead to many a problematic situations and i have heard enough horror stories where Authoritarian Project Managment has led the project aground because the decision makers were simply not ready to read the signs on the wall.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Long ago, I was a developer in an insurance application project where we had 20 people development team and the Client has enough experience in executing these type of projects. We were developing a policy application system for the client. Since the client had executed multiple projects of this type, he wanted to have a buy-in on some of the decisions wrt what development tools we used, how we did our code reviews and code check-ins to ensure quality, but our Project Manager at that time was jut not ready to listen and did what he thought was right, which led to situations where there was a lot of blame game played and ultimately the client ended up in not renewing the contract at the end of the term and our Executive leadership was left wondering what went wrong and why did we lose the Client.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Experienced</u></strong> - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An Experienced style of Project Management is when you have been there and done that. The project manager has been in the area of project management for a long term and knows how, when and where to execute projects. He knows the nuances, the ins and outs of the project. This is a leader that i would definitely like to follow - well, to an extent. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is definitely beneficial to the project and gives the team a sense of security when the project manager does and knows his job.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Collaboratative</u></strong> - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This Project Management style intersects with the next one wherein you as a project manager want to decide on something and will take the buy in of all your members as well as your stakeholders. Sometimes this is a win-in style as everyone who has a say will contribute to the decisions and once the team is involved this ensures their commitment and sincere dedication. This is less formal than the democratic style as you may not actually vote for a buyin. This works well for a large scale transformation type projects wherein you have multiple dispersed teams, areas that may be in multiple geographies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Democratic</u></strong> - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is similar to collaboration where is the project members take decisions as a team, but with everyone's buy in and voting. Here there is a risk that certain team members - the minority Team members may feel left out. So it is important for the project manager to get them onboarded on the decisions, actively and sincerely listen to their points and those team members get and stay involved. Because if those team members start to lose interest in the project and feel that they are not listened then that may not be beneficial to the project.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Laissez Faire</u></strong> - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last but not the least '<strong>Laissez Faire</strong>' - or i call it the '<strong>Cruise Control</strong>'. This is actually a very effective style of management but only works if the team has enough experience and expertise in executing these type of projects. Here the team is self monitored and self led and sort of runs the ship on cruise control. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Basically here the team has been in these situations that the project brings forth many a times. If a project manager decides to execute the project with this style based on team experience then it actually turns out to be a positive as team feels motivated that they have a say in the decisions and a feeling that they are running the project. But this can also negatively impact the project if the team is not experienced or less exerienced in handling these type of projects, they may run the project aground. So the project Manager has to carefully decide and choose looking at the all around situation with his Team.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So all in all, the project manager has to decide how to run a project based on the surrounding internal and external conditions and situations. Sometimes it will make sense to run a project with a particular style and sometimes use a mix of these Styles. You be the judge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do let me know your thoughts and comments on the above article</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-42008559634678057772013-01-03T13:20:00.002-05:002013-01-03T13:21:38.626-05:00Successful Project Definition<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember many years back i was on a fix schedule, T&M project with a large scope, it was a Mid Tier Company Claims System implementation and we had reached the project closedown phase and the end product had been finally delivered to the client followed by a month's warranty and post production support. The application was in Production for over a month and we, as vendors were all ready to wrap up. Then we got an email from the Client CEO saying they did not consider the project as closed as there were 3 functionalities not yet delivered, the service time was less than expected and the quality of the software delivered was sub par.<br />What went wrong here? Let's see...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Definition of Success</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone wants their project to be a success. But How do you define success? Is it when the developers have cleared their desks? Is it when the Deliverable is handed over to the Client? Is it when the Project End date is reached? Is it when the last Invoice is cleared? Is it when the product delivered meets defined quality standards and criteria? Or is it that the project was on time and within budget?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Project has multiple stakeholders. Fact of the matter is, everyone has a different definition of Success. Every stakeholder looks at the project from his/her point of view and thus defines success from their looking glass. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Project success definition has to be a collaborative effort. Both the client and the vendor have to have a common goal defined. At the very onset of the project, it is the responsibility of the Client Organization to have a clear and tangible vision of what defines project success for them. The definition should be in measurable and understandable terms i.e. in terms of KPIs, SLAs etc <br />e.g For a Policy and Claims Processing web application,<br />- 500 Concurrent users access the System at Peak load with zero down time<br />- Page load time should not be more than 2 secs at peak.<br />- System should be able to process Intake, Adjudication, Salvage and Subrogation and search functionality for a claim without any errors.<br />- Intake functionality processing should take no more than 30 seconds...and so on....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Collaboration</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once the success criteria are defined by the client, these should be discussed with the Implementation vendor. The vendor's job is to completely understand and analyze the success definition. He should prod and question the client for any issues or clarifications because ultimately he is the one, who has to deliver on those. If there are any client dependencies that would need to be satisfied for the project to be delivered those have to be implicitly added to the SoW so everyone is on the same terms e.g. Infrastructure requirements, software, Licenses, Third party vendor relationships etc. Once all criteria are mutually agreed upon, it should be an integral part of the SoW (Statement of work). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Success criteria is also important for defining project milestones. This helps the sponsor and executive team track the progress of the project. This helps the project Manager take corrective action in case there are some ups and downs in the project during execution phase. <br />Ensure that the signoff requirements, Team responsible for signoff are also defined.<br />Success at each stage of the project has to be shared with the Team so that they are aligned with the Progress and know that their contribution to the project is what makes the project a success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Relationship</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly there is a criteria that i think to be very essential for a project success and that is relationship. The type and level of relationship fostered between a client and a vendor defines success or atleast the perception of it. I have worked as a consultant with clients where i knew that the client could have been more rigid and firm when it came to finally signing off on a project, but because the client knew our work quality, dedication, efforts and the amount of energy we had spent in understanding the business, requirements and scope, he is also ready to let a few things slide off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So to summarize,<br />Define entry and exit criteria that would make a project a success<br />Have tracking mechanisms in place to make sure the criteria are reached<br />Keep all the stakeholders and Team members in the Loop during each phase of project.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the Key to a project success is <strong>meeting and exceeding client expectations</strong>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let me know if you all agree or if you hold a different view to this.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-55394869129066120952013-01-02T14:59:00.001-05:002013-01-02T14:59:34.840-05:00First Day<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well begun is half done...<br />You just completed a plush assignment or maybe its your first job....or maybe It is your new assignment on a new job whatever the case maybe, i am sure everyone in their career, has been there sometime. <br />Especially if you are in the consulting world like me, you will see a lot of "<strong>First Days on a project or in a new organization</strong>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My approach to this first day has changed a lot over time...here are some thoughts related to that....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Remember when we were beginning our life's journey as 3-4 year old, our parents held our hands and took us to a pre-school, Pre-K, Kindergarten, first grade etc....and then when we grow up, more experienced about schooling, we planned our first days to college, who do we meet there? What to wear?, How to walk, talk etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then comes the professional world...here again initially we are in the blank and need some hand holding, then we turn deft and know how to tread and where...I will try to give some tips and observations on what i have seen and experienced...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's say, you just finished a Job assignment and have landed another meaty assignment after aceing an interview.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Here's how and what you should plan for,<br />1> <strong><u>Background</u></strong><br />Nowadays every bit of information about a company is online, especially if it is a listed company. Try to gather as much about the company as you can. It is always good to know what business the company is in, who are the clients, overseas business, turnover, revenues and most importantly the competitors....This information gathering will help hone your <strong>thinking process </strong>towards understanding the company, the culture, the business, the steps taken at the C-Level etc.<br />Here again try to gather information about the company culture, the corporate goals and objectives etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This will help you even if you are not an employee of the company and are just going to work there as an external consultant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on the above and your area of skillset for which you are hired, prepare a <strong>2-3 minute elevator pitch </strong>about yourself. Not necesarily, say it out to every other person you meet on your first day (Unless you want to make it your last day too). Depending on the type of conversation or meeting you are having, be ready to use it in parts or whole as required.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Social Networking sites</u></strong>- LinkedIn etc<br />Social Networking can help you a lot here in terms of gaining useful perspectives from people who work at that organization, their view points about the organization, people performing different roles at the organization on how they view their peers, subordinates, C-Level executives and the business in general.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>Know your work area and domain</u></strong><br />You already are a master of your domain area because this is what is going to be your most useful weapon which will help you outshine your peers and help you in gaining trust within the organization. If there is a certain area of skill that you need to perform or something you know you are not too comfortable with, try working on it, polishing it, so you do it confidently when you need it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Unlearn</u></strong><br />This is very important. Every Organization has its own working Methodology and process and steps to execute a project. In IT, some may follow waterfall, Agile, RUP and some have flavors of their own. They have their own internal politics and work culture nuances that you may have been used to, and your brain may have been accustomed to think that it is right. But it may not be so.<br />So be ready to unlearn the old and accept the new, if need be. For this, make sure you watch, watch and watch, people around you...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> <strong><u>Communicate, Communicate and Communicate</u></strong><br />Last but not the least, when you in, be ready to communicate, talk to your peers, subordinates, bosses, customers, partners. Understand the roles that they perform and their viewpoints. This will help streamline your thought process and give you a 360 degree perspective on the business as a whole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once you are armed with the above, things should become fairly easy. Make sure you are pleasant and greet people you meet. Atleast give a smile, right from the person next to you in the elevator to the colleague who sits next to you. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />When you meet someone have a good erect posture, confident smile and a few lines to say to the other person. Give the other person a line or 2 about yourself and inquire about him/her asking about his job background general local information etc. These generally act as good ice breakers.<br />
If you are not comfortable, doing this...practice this a few times if front of the elevator...Remember your first day on the job is just as important as the job interviews...because this is when people (by way of human nature) will form an initial opinion about you, which if for any reason is a wrong one,it will be very difficult to reason and build a new one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As they say, Plan before execution....sooner than you think, you will be sitting amongst the best in the crowd and be accepted for your skills and expertise and the genuine person that you are.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please comment if you agree, if there is something you feel i missed here</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-73653025157999772092013-01-02T12:20:00.001-05:002013-01-02T12:41:20.879-05:00Thought process Transformation<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They say..If you show a dollar coin to an IT and Business Person both will look at it differently...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Business person will say "I wonder what is today's exchange rate?" and the IT person will say...""hhhmmm, this coin is shaped more like Alpha character "O" (Letter Oh) rather than numeric Zero"..(Not true...just made it up....but you get my point)....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">IT developers and the business folks live and operate in 2 different worlds....unfortunately sometimes it is true...There should be steps taken by both sides to minimize this gap as much as possible...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Why?</u></strong><br />A very basic necessity of working in today's world is to understand the business you are in and work towards supporting the business using your technology acumen and skills. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is true, unless you work in a IT product based environment or somewhere else, where you may be working only to service your internal IT customers e.g. IT Infrastructure in a IT Company etc or you work alone on a marooned island manning a lighthouse switch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beyond that you have to work with the business.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is required because Business is what drives Profits, Revenue and Sustainability to an Organization. Business has drivers like internal and external customers and partners, Competition, Compliance etc that decide and drive business and its exective decisions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coming from a Technology background, sometimes it becomes really difficult to think in terms of business, it is very easy to go back to the "Ones" and the "Zeros". During my initial IT Career days, being a consultant you have to wear the hat of an IT Developer cum Business Analyst, it becomes very difficult, to not think in terms of Tables and Columns and integrity data checks, rather in terms of Actors and Use cases, in front of the customer, who maybe as a Claims adjuster, is trying to explain how to send data to a glass vendor from the claim screen and wait for an amount estimate for damage repairs and then has to follow an escalation process so it gets approval if amount for repair was above the assigned claim adjuster's limit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This really requires a major mindset change, a paradigm shift, if you may... wherein you get away from the developer mindset, where you in your own world do an efficient and scalable High level and low level designs and develop and unit test your own software to a Business person who tries to understand the people who run the business, their process and thinks of ways the technology can help them to make their work easier, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">better, faster and more efficient and smoother.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>How?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most important way to do this is, "to place yourself in the other person's shoes" and think the way he/she goes about the business day. This will help understand their painpoints and in turn help you to help them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Certain steps that can be taken to overcome this chasm would be,<br />1> Get IT and Business aligned...In terms of Corporate Business goals and Objectives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> Companies to organize trainings, seminars for IT folk and business alike to make each side of the other side. For instance, hold workshops for business expaining them an IT lifecycle, what is a Functional document, high level designs, Integration, System Testing etc. Similarly for IT Folks, explain them the business processes and not just give them specs and expect the work to be done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Have regular IT/Business meetings, maybe on a monthly/weekly basis where there will be general updates from both sides, Q&A to understand more and better</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> More involvement of IT Developers in Business meetings so they can understand the discussions and business painpoints and start thinking in terms of making those better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let me know your comments if you feel there are some points that can be added/modified to help you.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-32133252448431378002012-07-27T09:40:00.001-04:002012-07-27T09:41:47.267-04:00Giving Feedback<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Who's and why's of Feedback?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a saying - '<strong>No Man is an Island</strong>', which means no one, absolutely no one can survive without others (On second thought, i take that back, i know a few people who do!!!). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We interact with people, we work, play, argue, fight etc.<br />So overall, in the personal and professional conundrum of life, people 'interact' with each other. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In our personal and professional dealings, there are times when we act or react in a certain way that is unacceptable to others - Alas, 'We cannot please everyone all the time'.<br />Always remember, every person follows some thought process and the golden rule is '<strong>Everyone of us does what he/she thinks is right, in that situation</strong>'. Be he/she the CEO of a Corporation or Super villian in a comic book.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So when we observe this sort of behavior in our Project Team, what do we do, how do we react as Project Managers? and most importantly, if we are ones on the receiving end, how do we take the feedback that others give us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let us take a real life situation that happened with me many years back. I was a rookie in a IT Large Firm and was working on a big multi million dollar Project. It was my first project right out of college. A large size manufacturing Company had hired our IT Vendor services to Automate one of their new plants. I was part of the development and installation team onsite with other 40 resources (Client and Vendors included) working dedicatedly on various aspects.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Then just a week before go live, my Project Manager had to go on a Personal leave for a Family emegency. I was the only available backup on that short notice. I was representing our Develpoment and Testing Groups now. Things were going fine with the dry runs, system tests etc till the day of go live.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the night of go live, we started our deployment, things were going by the book for the first few hours then suddenly all hell broke lose, hardware starting failing, drives, switches, programs were not working, networking issues developed. This being a commercial Manufacturing plant which was being controlled by our PLC (Programmable Logic controller) programs, all the Silos, drives and Switches started malfunctioning. It was also a continuous process plant and a break in the process would have meant raw materials losses worth millions and indirect impacts in terms of Go Live date delays, commited dates and other dependencies.<br />Everyone in the plant started to panic, right from the half asleep Janitor to the Top C-level executives. Since we were the service providers and i was the only highest sitting mark representing our corporation's totem pole, guess who received the flak for all this....me!!!...Yes, and that too in no soft words or even in private...you get the rough idea.....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Finally, the situation was salvaged and we started resolving the issues one by one and things started running fine again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After nearly 20 years that incident still gives me cold sweats, not so much the things that failed or the soup we were in, but the verbal lashings i got...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />What went wrong here? Absolutely everything....How could it have been handled...definitely in a more professional manner...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in our Day to day IT Projects, we come across similar situations about our Team members, colleagues etc who needs to be repriminded or think annual appraisal sessions of your team members.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>Feedback Process handling</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So coming to - How to handle this situation></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Approach 1</strong>><br />Plain and simple - Speak your mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Approach 2</strong>><br />Provide feedback with a little preparation and technique. I call it the 'AGES' approach.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It needs a little Homework. Follow the below 4 steps - <br />1> <strong>A - Assess</strong><br />Assess the Situation. Understand the problem</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>G - Good </strong><br />Quantify other positive contributions of the person in focus. Think what value he provides to the Team, project and the corporation in general.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>E - Empathize</strong><br />Empathize with the person and elaborate the negative impacts of his/her actions, understanding that he/she was not doing it on purpose.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>S - Solution</strong><br />Think about ways to help the person.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now let's analyze a Situation with the help of above 2 approaches<br />e.g. Situation is - We are in midst of an Agile project for which there are daily 9 AM Sprint meetings and all Team members are present except Mark. Mark is consistently late for the sprint stand-ups past few days.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Approach 1></strong><br />I approach Mark and reprimind him (Openly or in private). <br />'<strong>Mark, your behavior is unacceptable. You are always late for the stand ups. Make sure this does not happen again</strong>'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What happens during/after this? Mark immediately shuts off. He thinks of me as a rude, negative and inconsiderate person. This impacts his work, interactions with the Team and finally his work deliverable or the project as a whole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now this is not a very Leader like behavior. A Leader has to motivate and lead by guiding his team on the journey. Help them in their issues, understanding and Guiding them when and wherever possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So now let's try <strong>approach 2</strong>><br /><strong>A - Assess</strong><br />I analyze the situation and prepare my response. I focus on Mark's contributions and the current 'glitch' that is being observed for past few days. I also work out a few practical ways this can be resolved. Then i talk to Mark one on one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>G - Good</strong><br />'<strong>Listen Mark, I know the project is in full flow and i see you are working very hard - day and night and especially your work on the ISO webservice solution was extremely well received by the client and it had zero defects too</strong>'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>E - Empathize</strong><br />'<strong>To continue the same trend of success, we as a Team have to focus on the project. That is why the daily sprint attendance is important, so everyone can understand the current Project progress, work dependencies, issues, project announcements, if any</strong>'<br />'<strong>Now i understand everyone has a personal life and sometimes there are some things that have to take a priority</strong>'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>S - Solution</strong><br />'<strong>So if there is anything there i can do to help you here, like changing your Office timings for a while or there is something you want to share, let's talk about it</strong>'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which conversion do you think will have more impact.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So to summarize, to provide feeback, Keep your mind open, unbiased and clear, understand the situation or <strong>focus on the problem at hand not the person</strong>, understand the circumstances and behavior of the other person and help him/her resolve it positively. When you leave your feedback meeting, make sure neither one of you leaves with a bitter taste in his mouth, leave with a positie mark. After all, projects are a Team work.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-63787228638154329172012-06-27T14:54:00.001-04:002012-06-27T14:54:47.611-04:00IT NegotiationsThere are a very few natural born negotiators, the rest have to practice.....<br />
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Negotiations happen everyday and everywhere, in various forms all around us. Our day starts reasoning with the kids to make them drink a glass of Milk, negotiating the price of an antique showpiece you want, from a mom & pop Thrift shop. <br />
Even Professional negotiations follow the same rules as these day to day negotiations, maybe on a more detailed level.<br />
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Not everyone is an expert negotiator, but someone who has the skills and has been doing it with the right attitude & panache, actually does a lot of winning.<br />
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Nowadays IT projects consume a <strong>major chunk of an organization's revenue</strong>, sometimes upto 20-25 percent according to a recent study. Many companies are utilizing their hard earned revenues to solidify and streamline their IT Process and systems, so that they can reap the business benefits in times to come. For this reason it makes sense for both parties in an IT deal to be Negotiations savvy. Due to the fear of an unknown outcome, Negotiations are very much dreaded by IT and business folks alike. It is kept as a last minute activity and attacked head on when time comes - Something like a Deer staring at a racing car's Headlights and then you know how it goes. <br />
If proper time is spent on planning and executing negotiations, you will reap the benefits in times to come - in form of increased profits and revenues and successfully executed projects.<br />
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IT Negotiations occur at various levels - Marketing, Pre-Sales, Sales, Project Scoping, Resourcing, Contractual agreements in terms of Contract types, SLAs, Milestones and Commit dates etc<br />
Negotiations occur between various parties - IT Firms, Servicing companies, Clients (Insurance companies in my case), at various levels - project level between Team members, leads and resources, clients and vendors, suppliers and end users etc<br />
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Negotiation skills help,<br />
Achieve project goals and objectives<br />
Avoid unnecessary conflicts and arguments later in the project lifetime<br />
Build trust and priorities amongst the project teams<br />
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<strong><u>How to be a good negotiator</u></strong>?<br />
Practice, practice and some more practice.<br />
Good negotiation skills should be imbibed in your senses. Organizations usually have a cut out approach towards negotiation, something that defines their org culture, e.g. having negotiation planning meetings, specific negotiation templates and proceses etc. Overall, the negotiation Team's objectives and motives have to be aligned with the organizational agenda. The corporate direction could either be a Win All-Lose none (<strong>Aggressive</strong>), Win some-Lose Some (<strong>Moderate</strong>) or Win-win for both (<strong>Practical</strong>). It all depends on what strategic importance the deal has for the corporation.<br />
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On a personal level, an important skillset for a successful negotiator is <strong>soft skills</strong> - i.e. ability to have meaningful and engaging conversations. <strong>Conversations</strong> that lead the other party to reveal or atleast point to their interests and areas that will help you build focus and leverage. Something that will help develop relationships between with all parties involved. Remember here from a psychological perspective, everyone wants to win in life, be it negotiations or a free 5 day cruise to the Caribbean.<br />
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To cite an example - On one of the projects i was managing, we responsible for an Insurance Installation for a mid size P&C Carrier, the contract was signed based on initial high level estimation, but during the actual scoping and definition phase, the client wanted the everything under the sun to be included.<br />
After much efforts and involvement of many a c-level executives and a heavy level setting exercise, the client finally agreed on the scope which could be delivered in the duration of the project. The way the client agreed to the option was, if the client wanted 100 things to be done in the project duration and cost, the quality of the product would suffer, but to have the best quality installation within the project cost and timeline which will help the client achieve set their business goals, it was beneficial to both parties to cut scope and go live with 70 items which would have the best quality.<br />
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Negotiation Steps<br />
Every negotiation is a logical process, it has a beginning, the actual process and the end or specifically "<strong>Pre-Negotiation</strong>", "<strong>Negotiation</strong>" and "<strong>Closing</strong>". <br />
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<strong>Pre-Negotiation</strong> involves<br />
Establishing an objective, background preparation or doing your homework, (Always start with a 10000 ft view of what you want out of the negotiation and why you want it - i.e. laying the objectives, ground rules and favorable expected outcome and finally how you wil get there). <br />
This includes establishing a steering commitee, involving all related stakeholders, end users, everyone who will be impacted by the project or contract negotiation. Because doing this later in th`e game will not give you much wiggle room to try and resolve issues, incase an impacted party gets left out or finds something that may de-rail the whole deal. Preparing the RACI chart for all involved parties also helps as it clearly defines what is expected of each involved party. Laying down the negotiation rules and guidelines on rules of conduct during the negotiation path.<br />
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<strong>Negotiation</strong> includes <br />
Meeting on the set dates and having discussions per agenda and guidelines decided. This helps to have focused discussions and helps achieve the desired positions effectively. Also make sure the Teams meet internally on a regular basis afterwards, while negotiations are in progress so if team member needs to be aligned or steered or some points need to be given in or held against, can be avaluated and then comes<br />
Negotiation Planning should include contract break clauses, long term contract pricing policies and sharing the Total cost of ownership for a contract.<br />
The total breakdown of all fees sould be enforced in a contract, SLAs and other KPIs to evaluate the levels of service provided.<br />
<strong>Closure</strong> and Lessson learned (This is the most important step in every negotiation and is also the most missed one). If this is followed as a regular process, rather than a 1 time post negotiation activity or if done only for certain high profile negotiations it will miss its actual impact and utility.<br />
Lessons learned will actually help you learn and do course correction which may help save many a future negotiations. This may also help you lay foundations for setting an organization culture in terms of process and templates setup<br />
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Essentially for any negotiation to be successful you have to have the right set of people, tools and strategies, past experiences, thoughtful planning and documentation.Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-30374444409969114032011-09-30T11:21:00.000-04:002011-09-30T11:21:01.637-04:00Vendor Procurement and Management<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Family man, family problems....My wife and i have been working on finding a Nanny for our 3 year old for past few weeks....Let me say its not an easy task....you have to go through classifieds, talk to your network of friends, interview people for the position, negotiate terms, the whole nine yards...<br />This activity made me think about writing this article.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Working as an IT Manager, many a times we come across similar scenarios wherein the Client would want to go through a Vendor procurement Process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the Organization seeking Vendor Services as a "buyer".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are a few scenarios from my Insurance world, why a buyer would look for Vendor services,<br />1> <strong><u>Outsourcing Services</u></strong><br /> - An Insurance company say. wants to focus its attention on the Insurance Business and does not want to be sidetracked with IT Issues. So it would naturally want to partner with one or more IT Firms to run its business applications, maintain hardware, do application modifications to maintain and Competitive edge in its business domain.<br /><br />2> <strong><u>IT Consulting Services</u></strong><br />- An Insurance company in business for years and decades would have lots of in-house and Third party applications and services communicating with each other. Thus if the company wants to overhaul and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">upgrade its infrastructure, hardware or software systems for better and reliable performance and scalability, it has to procure services from Vendors who have handled similar Business Transformation Initiatives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>Technology Solutions</u></strong><br />- An Insurance Company wants to (say.) move away from its Legacy applications and march towards the latest and greatest state of the art application suite available in the market to better run its business.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are some of the reasons why the procurement manager would want follow proper Vendor Procurement guidelines. Failure to do so, may lead to problems and issues in the whole venture and many a times may lead to scrapping the whole deal either midway or towards the end of the project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are the <strong>top 3 reasons why Procurement process may fail</strong>,<br /> 1> No clear requirement specifications and hence no clear understanding of the exact scope of work.<br /><br /> 2> Carelessness in terms of contract clauses negotiations. No clear review of Vendor Contract terms and conditions.<br /><br /> 3> Unrealistic targets and deadlines promised and accepted by both parties during the procurement process.<br /><br /> A Vendor Procurement process just like any project life cycle has <strong>4 distinct phases</strong>, They are,<br /> 1> <strong><u>Requirement scope and Elaboration</u></strong><br /> - The Buyer has to elaborate on the exact requirements that will be shared with the Vendors and clearly defines why you are seeking the vendor services. These requirements may be Technical, functional etc as the case demands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There will be a team of Business analysts and Functional experts who will meet the necessary business users to gather the exact requirements and thus prepare the requirements specifications documentation.<br /><br /> 2> <strong><u>Vendor Selection</u></strong><br /> - The requirements specifications created are used to prepare an RFI (Request for Information), RFP (Request for Proposal) or RFQ (Request for Quotation) etc as the case may be. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The buyer Organization prepares a selected Vendor list and sends RFIs/RFP to them. The set of vendors must meet a predefined selection criteria set by the buyer organization. These prospective vendors will be someone, who already do similar service for the buyer organization or are in similar business as the work scope demands.<br /><br /> Before sending out the questionnairre to the Vendor make sure there is a confidentiality Non Disclosure agreement signed, as here the buyer may share some Business sensitive information with the potential vendors. It is necessary to safeguard the business information and Intellectual property from competition.<br /><br /> After this, if the vendors have some technical questions or need any clarifications, the buyer may arrange for a common Q&A session or they may request the vendor questions via email.The buyer sets a deadline for the questions and queries so they can be reviewed and answered. <br /> The prospective Vendors have to be aware of the milestone dates and the formal processes like routing the questions through the procurement Manager etc.<br /> The Procurement Manager is responsible for responding to the questions. The same information should be shared with all vendors, so that no one gets any unfair advantage in this process and in turn will also help the vendors understand the requirements better.<br /><br /> 3> <strong><u>Contracting and Contract Administration</u></strong><br /> After receiving responses from the Bidders or Vendors, the buyer has its own selection criteria to finalize the vendor for the job. This is usually based on some weightage program, Vendor rating system, Proposal evaluation technique or expert judgement etc.<br /> After the vendor selection is complete, then comes the contracting phase. In this phase, the contract agreement (this may also called as the Statement of work, Letter of Intent etc) that is sent by the vendor company has to be carefully read and scrutinized so that both parties agree to the terms and conditions in the contract and it is favorable to both parties. If there is any clarification, ambiguity in any of the points, seek clarification from the Vendor representative immediately. <br /><br />Contract Administration is a very important phase for successful execution of the Contract. During execution, there may be some changes required to the Project scope, milestone and deadlines approval processes set.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Contract should also be a project acceptance and completion criteria specified. e.g. For a new Policy System installation and enhancement project, the acceptance criteria specified should be in terms of service or scope delivery timeline (say 12 months) with (say) 2 Critical, 4 Medium and 6 low level bugs open. <br /> There should be software SLA specified in the contract.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There should also be processes set for change controls. This includes tools, techniques and activities that help to monitor the change control process and control the project scope and timeline.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> These contracts are generally prepared and reviewed by the legal departments with definite help and inputs from the procurement manager who forms the main coordinator. So make sure the contract is well understood by you - the Procurement Manager. It is detailed and elaborate. The contract has to specify the penalties to be imposed on the vendor in case of missed deadlines like any pricing credits or additional resource guarantee etc<br /> <br /> 4> <strong><u>Exit and Renewal criteria</u></strong><br /> The contract also has to specify the exit criteria for extreme cases like either party wants to exit out. e.g. If the buyer wants to default on a contract, there will be a penalty of (say) $500,000 and 2 months notice period and the entire knowledge base will become the Intellectual property of the Vendor Organization.<br /><br /> In case the buyer wants to extend the contract with the vendor, the renewal criteria also has to be specified. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e.g. Annual Maintenance contract for supporting Policy and Claims Administration system can be extended with IT vendor 'X' provided the application went live with max 2 open defects and specified timeline. This will have an elaborate pricing, resourcing and timelines specified.<br /> The service SLA for Annual Maintenance is response in 1 business day and solution within 2 business days for critical issues and 3 business days for regular issues.<br /><br />Thus Vendor procurement and Contract Management is a very important process for organizations that do business with external vendors. So proper knowledge of the process is an absolute must for both the Buyer and Vendor Organizations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-82473790963202129302011-09-26T15:49:00.004-04:002011-09-26T15:51:26.051-04:00Art of Negotiation<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Negotations - how can anyone live without it. Every day and in every walk of life, we use different negotiation forms on a personal and professional level.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kids negotiate with their parents on what they want to (or dont want to) watch/eat/play? (and somehow always win...hhmmm i wonder why?..)<br />We negotiate with our better halfs on whether we eat the leftover cold pizza for dinner or dine out (Guess who wins there?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At work, we negotiate with our bosses for better career roles, better projects, salary, promotion etc. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While on a project we negotiate the project deadlines, the workscope, experienced resources with skillsets matching the requirements etc etc. In a sales role, we negotiate with the prospects on the RFP Scope and costs. After bagging the project we negotiate with the client on Scope, timelines of the current project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well the point here is, Negotiations happen everywhere. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong><u>What is Negotiation?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Negotiation is a process where 2 or more parties get together and work towards a mutually acceptable solution to an issue in question.<br />This is also something that is closely associated to "<strong>Workplace Politics</strong>". Now generally the term politics is usually referenced or viewed in a negative sense, but it need not be the case. Politics is about talking, negotiating, convincing your Team, resources, stake holders to understand your point of view. For a person to really understand workplace politics, you have to invest your time into it. I mean really invest into it. <br />For this there are certain necessary steps that you have to take like,<br />You have to be really interested in people, their likes and wants, their concerns. This helps develop a level of trust and credibility between the 2 parties involved and this Trust is what makes it easier for the other party to understand you, accept you and your viewpoints</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this is not always an easy task to accomplish. But it is an art that can be learned, honed and sharpened with time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Pre-Steps to a Negotiation</u></strong><br />In any type of negotiations, there are certain guidelines to be followed. For e.g.,<br />1> Invest some time in genuinely understanding the other person or party. This may not always be possible but if you have a chance to do, please do it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> Do not deal any negotiation from an emotional angle. Always be ready to have alternatives, walk away solutions</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Think and work on alternatives that are Win-Win for both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> Always make sure you have the deal makers or the actual decision makers at the negotiation table</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Rules of Negotiation</u></strong><br />1> <strong>Listen, Listen, Listen</strong><br /> - When on the Negotiation table, Sincerely listen to understand the other party, their viewpoints and beliefs. Many a deals and arguments are lost because one party did not try to understand the other party.<br /> Always remember, when an person acts, (he may be right or wrong from your perspective) it is because he BELIEVES this is the right thing to do at that moment in time. So step in his/her shoes and things will be easier from that point on.<br /> <br />2> <strong>Do not take anything personally</strong><br /> - Negotiations can be stressful, tempers may rise and unwanted and harsh words may be thrown around. Try to keep your calm and focus on the situation rather than the person.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Focus on Relationships</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Always be empatic to the other person. Focus on strengthing relationship with the other party<br /> - Not all negotiations will end the way you want. In some cases you may get your way and in other cases, you may not. But always remember in the end, people matter more than the deal in hand so do not try to win any negotiation at the cost of losing people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>Backup plan</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And last but not the least, always remember to work out a back up plan if your current project negotiations fail.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Negotiation Types</u></strong><br />Any type of negotiation falls in either of these negotiation styles,<br />1> <strong>Accomodating</strong><br /> - This mostly leads to a Lose-Win situation in which first party is more emphatic to the other person's problems and issues and ultimately succumbs to a compromise. <br /> This happens more so, when first party is more concerned about preserving the relationships with the other party rather than the Negotiation in hand.<br /> e.g. Consider that you as a Project or account manager are siting at a negotiation table with your prospect and are discussing and finaling the project deal. You are leaning and advocating 'X' dollars per hour more than the Prospect But a savvy negotiator would give in wherever possible if there is a prospect of a better deal/s in the future.<br /> or <br /> You are in the last few weeks of developing your Policy and Billing System and now you are told about a new change that business wants to push in, since you want to be in the Good books of the business director and are also a non confrontational person, you may agree to the change (with the accepted risk of quality compromise, elongated Testing Cycle leading to extended timeline possibility) and log more work hours for your Team . <br /> This usually leads the compromising party feeling resentment and short changed</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>Avoiding</strong><br /> - This is a more of a Lose-Lose situation where the first party may try to move away from any contradictions and issues that exist in the negotiation. This may seem as a skillful act by the other party but is actually not. As in the end, both parties tend to lose if the actual issues and problems are simply swept under the carpet.<br /> Consider that on your Policy System implementation project, you want to integrate to a Third party medical Bill review system but the system vendor does have a good delivery record. When you are discussing budgeting and Vendor procurement for this integration with your Business Sponsors and avoid talking about the issues with Vendor performance and delivery, you tend to lose on a larger scale. Becuase when you are actually implementing the project that is when the actual realtime problems will hit you head on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Collaborating</strong><br /> - This negotiation style leads to more of a Win-win situation than other Negotiation tactics for the simple reason being, both parties are willing to collaborate and understand each other's problems and come up with a middle ground<br /> Consider that in your Claims Implementation project, you are developing a Legal evaluation solution in the application, but the business requires this functionality be linked to another third party application which actually feeds overnight to a (say) reporting data warehouse.<br /> You as a project manager understand that, the Legal Evaluation functionality is required in the application for the business to complete their claims entry and processing workflow, but at the same time the business Team understands that you cannot complete the third party system integration in this short time frame without compromising on quality. So you both adjust your scope to implement the UI functionality in the shorter term, but not the integration atleast for the current release and then commit a later release date for the integratin piece of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>Competing</strong><br /> - This leads to a Win-Lose situation wherein the first party negotiator looks at the negotiation as a 'Must Win' game and will try any all creative tactics to win at the game. In this type of behavior the first party negotiator tends to lose on the relationship aspect with the other party as the other party may feel short changed later in the whole deal and may not want to do business with you ever again.<br /> <br /> e.g. In your Policy System implementation project, the client wants to implement the endorsement functionality before project release, but you do not want to give in, in any case and will come up with 'n' reasons and workarounds to 'NOT' do the change. In the end, you may win this negotiation, but lose your relationship with the Business Owner or jeopardise future long term deals with the Client,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> <strong>Compromising</strong><br /> - This Negotiation style again may lead to a Lose-Win Situation because the first party wants to close to deal as soon as possible and not look at other possible alternatives and solutions. This may serve to the other party's advantage at the best.<br /> Consider an example where you are working on a Client contract bid and are negotiating the proposal with the Client Business Manager. The Client does not agree to the implementation approach and may want to cut corners by shortening the Testing phase, now based on this concern, the first party instead of trying to come up with some creative alternatives, will begin to lean and then agree towards corner cutting and closing the deal which may not benefit your project and organization as a whole in the long term.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Negotiation Tactics</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People who are skillful negotiators or have sufficient street smarts will use various negotiation tactics. Inept or unskilled people may not recognise these. Here are some such techniques used, <br />1> <strong>Playing Good Guy-Bad Guy</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- There are 2 guys on one side of the table and one of them will be pro-deal and other one will be anti-deal guy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>Competitor Threat</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- Negotiators may try to squeeze benefits from the other party by throwing other cometitor names in the mix.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Delay </strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- Skillful negotiators will try to delay and lengthen the negotiation process by using unnecessary questions, viewpoints and delays thrown in the whole mix. The whole purpose of doing so is to tire you out mentally and emotionally so you will agree to the other party's demands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>Not enough Authority </strong><br />- Skilled negotiators never impress on the other party that they are the decision makers and will always leave some wiggle room to think over things. That is why always make sure you have the right decision making people at the negotiation table</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> <strong>Low balling </strong><br />- Skilled negotiators will always try to low ball a deal and will offer you something that is much below the actual deal price (Although this may not always be true). So make sure you do your homework about the deal in question, the market position etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Negotiation always happen between people (You do not negotiate with a robot, atleast not yet in the real world). This means each party/person will come with his own bag and baggage of emotions, goals and objectives etc. It is therefore mandatory and beneficial to come to a negotiation with a clear mind. Your attitude and perception sets the tone on the Negotiation table (atleast partially, if not completely). Please comment on whether you agree to these points or you feel there is anything else to add here.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-20196215170000305772011-09-01T10:34:00.000-04:002011-09-01T10:40:41.453-04:00Project Estimation basics<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What is Project Estimation?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Last weekend, my wife and I along with our three year old went for a movie. As it was not a kid flick, my son had zero interest in watching the movie. So he starts with his version of the "20 Questions" game. All questions go towards "When do we go home?" and i gave him some creative answers like "As soon as all the bad guys in the movie are caught"..."As soon as this song ends" (Indian Movie) and so on and so forth.....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is what is estimation is all about. To arrive at an estimate means to use "Calculated Approximation methods using inputs available to assist in a planning objective"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Preparing IT Project estimates is usually not a one man job (of course that depends on the size of the project), there may be several people involved in preparing a project estimate, right from Project Manager to Business analysts, Development Team, Testers, QA, Infrastructure resources to Project sponsors and End users. Everyone has a say and a stake in making sure the project estimates are to the mark or nearabouts.<br />
As we all know a project has multiple phases...Initiation, planning, development, testing, deployment etc. The projects estimates have to account for each and every one of this phases along with areas that are not phase dependant e.g. Project Management, Vendor procurement, Software licensing, hardware and infrastructure etc items.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Why do we need estimations? Benefits</u></strong><br />
There is no downside in preparing a project estimate but the advantages are manifold. Project estimation is more of a science than an Art. Projects are usually undertakings that cost time and money. To avoid slippages and failures due to any of these known/unknown factors, the projects have to be properly estimated and controlled. <br />
As both overestimation and underestimation pose a problem to a project. Overestimation will cause the project to get over budget or even cancelled and Underestimation may caue resource, scope, quality and timing issues, again may lead to Project failures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what is the need to estimate a project...several reasons<br />
1> To get approval for the project so sponsors get an idea how much the project will cost - ballpark, */-10% etc, resource, time requirements</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> To streamline, monitor and guide project costs, resources when project is in progress</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> To determine project success or failure based on final project costs vs estimation</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Estimation Process</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Estimation Process</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are 3 processes one can use to do project estimation<br />
1> <strong>Analogous Estimation</strong><br />
This estimation process makes use of knowledge base from similarly executed projects and prepares project estimates based on those.<br />
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2> <strong>Expert opinion</strong><br />
This process makes use of experience of people/projects from prior similarly executed projects. <br />
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3> <strong>Activity breakdown estimation</strong><br />
This process makes use of breaking down the project into multiple Tasks and activities and estimation is done based on these individual tasks and activities</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Estimation Techniques</u></strong><br />
There are quite a few techniques that can be employed to estimate a project<br />
1> <strong>Three Point estimation</strong><br />
This is my favourite project estimation technique (I call it the BMW technique - Best, Most likely, Worst case) wherein we use statistical data and information and come up with Best case, Most likely and Worst case estimates</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To prepare these estimates, we use the Activity breakdown process. This means the Project is broken down into multiple tasks and estimates are prepared for each of the individual tasks and then added up together. <br />
Estimates are prepared for the foll 3 scenarios - Best Case (B), Most Likely (M) and Worst case (W).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on this we come up with,<br />
A> Standard deviation value, SD = (W - B)/6</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> B> Weighted Average, E = (B + 4M + W)/6</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>Base and Contingency Estimation</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a very simple and straight forward estimation technique but not that accurate, wherein we prepare estimates for the best case and worst case scenarios. But this does not give you a similar confidence level as obtained by the prior method as it is more scientific.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>How does it work?</strong>To calculate the base value assume that the project is executed in the minimal time duration possible and estimates are prepared based on that. To calculate the contingency (or Risk) values (which generally ranges from 10-50% of base estimate) list down all the project risks in a risk register and use that for preparing your project estimates. <br />
These two values are then summed up to prepare the final Base and contingency estimate.<br />
Note that for calculating the contingency value, user can also prepare an actual list of expected risks and issues instead of assuming a fixed percentage of the base. This gives a more nearer number for the risk value.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also as mentioned earlier, along with the <strong>Project task level estimates </strong>we have to make sure we account for the <strong>non technical areas </strong>as well, like,<br />
i> Infrastructure and Hardware costs<br />
ii> Vendor costs<br />
iii> Training costs<br />
iv> Project Management<br />
v> Business Analysis<br />
vi> Testing Costs<br />
vii> Quality Analysis etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Ball park or Order of Magnitude estimation</strong><br />
Here the estimates calculated are usually two to three times that of the actual estimates.<br />
To perform an order of magnitude estimation, break the project into multiple tasks and activities and then score them on basis of Complexity and Amount of work effort involved.<br />
Based on this weighing factors prepare estimates in terms of resources and Time. For e.g. a Task with medium complexity and small size would need (say) 2 resources for 2 weeks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Summary</strong><br />
Like i said above, project estimation is a Science more than an Art. Always use your prior experience and expertise of others who have been involved in similar projects to come up with a more real to life estimation. Make sure you give sufficient weightage to the risks and issues involved in estimating a project. <br />
Also ensure that you review your estimates at the end of the project to see where you went wrong or what can be done better in the future.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hope this article will help you in better estimating your projects. Please let me know your thoughts and comments.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-48216276091181201472011-08-29T10:03:00.000-04:002011-08-29T10:03:05.979-04:00Advantages of Cost Benefit Analysis<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My son, like all 3 year olds is an avid chocolate and Candy lover. Today his attention at the supermarket was transfixed on a huge chocolate Mousse cake. I did not have the heart to blurt out an outright 'NO', so i put on my health conscious hat and tried to explain him, how chocolate is more harmful for him (as compared to momentary sweet savory pleasure gained after eating a piece of the yummy treat). A single serving has atleast 500 calories plus bad cholesterol, fats, Carbs, sodium etc - he looked at me like i was speaking Martian. This was followed by loud bawling and hands flailing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>I reminded him of my last dentist's visit where i had my tooth extracted and he had to see me in pain.</div><div>Cutting to the chase, end result of all this, i ended up buying the Cake + a Vanilla chocolate ice cream cone...go figure...</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was my version of a failed Cost Benefit Analysis discussion with a 3 year old.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now on a serious note,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div><strong>What is Cost Benefit Analysis?</strong></div><div>Cost Benefit analysis is a technique we make use of in our professional life as well as personal life.</div><div>Learning to perform a proper CBA is a very important skillset that will benefit any and every project manager in his lifetime career.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technically Cost Benefit analysis is a financial process of analyzing a particular product or activity (Let's call this a 'change') where all the factors impacting the anticipated costs incurred and the expected benefits to produce the end result are expressed and evaluated as a common monetary denominator.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>One thing to bear in mind is, all the possible cost and benefit factors, external and internal that go on to produce or complete the project (or 'change') has to be laid out in Monetary terms, so that we compare apples to apples. </div><div>These factors are then presented before the executive board or the decision making committee so they can decide whether to go ahead with the venture or project or simply scrap the deal.</div><div>Thus CBA as is the popular acronym, is a widely accepted technique where the costs incurred in doing a change are substracted from the benefits associated.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several factors that have to be considered when coming up with a CBA on a change</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div><strong>1> Tangible vs Intangible factors</strong><strong></strong></div><strong></strong><div>All factors have to be analyzed - tangible as well as intangible ones.</div><div>Costs and Benefits that are measurable can be easily used in the analysis, but measuring costs and benefits associated with intangible factors forms the biggest challenge in these type of activities and it is to be performed subjectively. Mainly it is you, the project manager (along with the other stakeholders) who has to live with that costs and benefits decision for the duration of the project and you should be convinced about it yourself before trying to convince the stakeholders committee.</div><div>e.g. In a new Vendor Procurement project, the intangible cost and benefit examples are - ramp up time of the new vendor resources, leading to productivity loss and advantages of more efficient business functioning due to employing a new vendor agency.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>2> Time</strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Some benefits and costs are incurred over time.</div><div>For e.g. Consider the CBA performed for buying new computers for an entire Customer service department for an Insurance Organization. This will include Cost of buying, service and maintenance costs that occur over time. Similarly benefits can also occur over time. In the same example say. Initial few months of computer usage will be seen as training and onboarding with no productivity and as the use, acceptance and familiarity with the tool increases the productivity (or benefits) will also increase over time</div></span><div> </div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Steps to perform a Cost Benefit Analysis</strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>1> First the user should have an extremely well rounded or a 360 degree view of the change to be implemented.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> Lay down all the tangible costs that will be incurred or expected to be incurred now or over a period of time if we go ahead with the change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>e.g. Fixed costs like equipment cost, Software and License fees, Training costs, Maintenance fees, Travel costs, Employee Salaries, supplier and vendor expenses etc</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Lay down all the intable costs that will be incurred or expected to be incurred now or over a period of time. Subjectively analyze these and assign a monetary value </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>e.g. Production Downtime when implementing a system change, employee productivity loss when transitioning to a new software tool etc</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> Similarly lay down all the tangible and intangible benefits as we did for the costs by coming up with a financial number for it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> Substract the potential costs from the anticipated benefits and complete your CBA.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Performing a Cost benefit analysis gives you a well rounded view of implementing the change. It gives a good perspective as to does it make sense to implement the change or not. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>So in all, this process is very similar to the Pros or Cons analysis that we normally do in our personal life as well when we want to take any important decision and this analysis definitely helps clear the picture about the process.</div><div>Hope this article covers the important aspects of the topic. If you have any view or comments that are different than above or want to add any points to it do feel free to write your comments.</div></span><div> </div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>e.g of a Cost Benefit analysis</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><div> </div></strong><div>An Insurance Organization wants their claims department to interface to ISO ClaimSearch. So the Project Sponsoring committee has asked the department Business Lead to perform a complete Cost Benefit analysis, so they can decide does it make sense to go ahead with the project or not</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Duration of Project - 3 Months</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div><strong><u>Costs</u></strong><strong></strong></div><strong><div>Tangibles</div></strong><ul><li>2 Full Time BA Cost</li>
</ul></span><ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2 Full Time Developer Cost</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1 Full Time Tester Cost - (say) 50%</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1 Business SME involved - (say) 30%</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1 Training Lead - (say) 30%</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ISO Account setup/Reporting Licensing costs</span></li>
</ul><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Intangibles</strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong></strong><ul><li>Total loss of Productivity in training resources</li>
</ul></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Benefits</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u></u><div>Tangible</div></strong><ul><li>Costs to manually use ISO Site</li>
</ul></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Intangible</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><ul><li>Claim operator time saved due to automatic reporting</li>
<li>3 Operators - 30% time savings</li>
</ul><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Final decision - </strong></span>Benefits - Costs </div></span><div> </div>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-14949522825222952292011-08-11T07:01:00.000-04:002011-08-11T07:01:12.826-04:00IT Spend in Insurance<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gone are the times when Insurance companies viewed IT as a mere tool with no direct benefits from its implementation and usage. IT was looked upon as a MIS functionary - i.e. statistical and executive reporting toolbox with no potential and direct cost benefits to the business.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fastforward to current times, despite the economic downturn all over the world, according to a recent study more than 50% of the insurance organizations are expected to revive their IT budgets. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After all companies that have a surplus balance have to make sure that money is well spent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are numerous reasons that leads organizations to improve their IT Infrastructure, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Systems and processes</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong><u>IT Industry Business expertise</u></strong><br />
Looking at the technological advances today, Insurance companies (or any other industry for that matter) have to compete and excel in the business arena.<br />
There are so many IT vendors, application and solution providers who provide a wide range of applications and support that not only ease the way Insurance companies do business but also add to the overall bottomline. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This has only become possible for the IT Vendors becuase of their number of years of consulting and hands on experience in the Insurance domain, understanding and working on the customers business model, closely watching their pain points and business naunces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Enterprise solutioning advantage</u></strong><br />
IT has become a very important function of Corporate strategy and solutioning, even though IT does not always have a tangible impact on business benefits, be it Policy, Billing or Claims Administration or overall Operations, Customer service, Underwriting, Adjusting, Claims Investigation or Financials like Payments, reserving, Quotations etc. IT is still one of the major functionary that can make a difference for a company to have an edge over its competitors.<br />
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3> <strong><u>Cost Benefits</u></strong><br />
In today's times cost of IT hardware, Software, Infrastructure and resource costs due to Competition, offshoring and Application managed services, hosting solutions and consulting solutions - has really made the entire realm very exciting thus helping your business in all ways possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Cutting edge Soulutions</u></strong><br />
With the number of IT solution vendors, service integrators, consultants in the market and the level and maturity of IT solutions based on the number of years of experience input, the solutions are really cutting edge in the sense they address all of end user and customer needs, they are very user centric and friendly and at the same highly customizable and scalable.<br />
For instance a legacy Policy administration system that has been installed and developed 15 years ago compared to a current state of the art Policy administration System solution developed using Java, .NET technology solutions, using web services architecture having plugins, integrations, web service calls to enterprise level authentications, third party integrations like CLUE Reporting, ISO, Glass estimation solutions, Comparative rating engines etc. All of this at a very competitive rate too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">No prizes in guessing which solution wins hands down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lot of CIOs and IT senior exectives are now turning their attention to better front end processing and more competive software solutions that can be easily integrated to their current what i call the "Spaghetti IT architecture" and infrastructure and also provide much improved software benefits in the long run.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what are the areas where companies are spending money on,<br />
1> <strong><u>Data Warehousing applications </u></strong>- <br />
Data warehousing is like the pulse of Insurance business. The data analysis reports indicate the financial health of a business and are indicative of times to come. They also prompt for corrective actions that can be taken by exectuves if and when required.<br />
Data Warehousing spend is on Predictive analytic solutions, Data mining and Business intelligence solutions</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Business Applications and Solutions</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If Data Warehouse is the Pulse of a business then the applications that run the business is the blood and lifeline.<br />
The better, functionally rich, efficient and powerful the applications that help you process your business, the more ease for you to do your business.<br />
Increase spend for better applications and application management that would give companies a competitive edge allowing the Company to shift their focus on more important matters like running their core business competitively rather than worry about IT applications crashes, bugs and poor performances. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This requires increase budgets for more application development resources, better and more powerful infrastructure. More money spent on IT solutions like cutting edge Policy, Billing and Claims solutions, enterprise level CRM solutions which would help improve customer-carrier relationships etc</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another important factor that helps reap better IT benefits are business level process changes to better suit the business needs and aligning the features and functionality supported by a Product software with the business. <br />
For example, i have worked for numerous organizations that would follow the traditional manual triaging and assignment of claims even though the daily average of new and reassigned claims volume was around 200. By making use of application generated diaries and automated assignment triggers, the organizations saved atleast 20% of their processing time due to the automated workflow solutions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In today's world insurance companies can reduce their operational costs and processing costs using IT methods and in turn achieve better efficient operations and hence more profits.<br />
Let me know if you have any special comments on this or have seen some other aspects that are not covered in this post.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-76227189853139082482011-08-01T11:12:00.000-04:002011-08-01T11:12:34.431-04:00Technology and Claims Fraud<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think of the science fiction movie - 'The Minority Report'. The movie concept is, certain humans with Extra Sensory Perception (called 'precogs'), prophesise about crimes that will be commited in the future and Police detective jump in action to arrest the criminals and thus prevent the future crime.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>This is the theme of our post today.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Typical scenario in today's Insurance Organization - </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>A fraud case is being investigated, an Insured has filed a claim for rear ending other vehicle. But it was detected by the diligent Insurance adjuster that this is a dubious claim. </div><div>How did he do this? He made use of software tools and techniques and found a similar trend of the insured's past claims. </div></span><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>The savvy adjuster has saved the insurance company possibly thousands of dollars just by detecting 1 fraud case. Think of the big picture - how careful investigation and early fraud prevention and detection techniques can save Insurance companies hundreds of millions of dollars.</div></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Advnatages of early Fraud Detection</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Following are the reasons why an insurance organization would detect or prevent fraud cases</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> To reduce overall claims and associated policy costs</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> Guard against future adverse risk selection</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Optimal and accurate product pricing due to saved costs</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> Pass the profits and revenue saved, to Shareholders and insured (via reduced premiums or dividends)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Insurance Organizations have always been hit by fraud claims and in the current economic scenario, they are trying their best to identify these fraud cases and thereby minimize their losses. Today literally tens of billions of dollars are lost by insurance companies due to fraud claims or due to over inflated claims.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div> </div></span><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Structured and organized Data is something that can help curb or prevent these fraud cases by providing uniform and superior claims information. There are several tools and software available in the market that will allow insurance companies to identify and reduce these fraud cases.</span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When an insurance company pays for a claim, it involves Indemnity payments and expenses (Legal + Claims Handling + Other). All this is paid on basis of its earned premiums and income from investments.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>For e.g. If an Insurance company has an earned premium of $100 and pays out $80, it has a loss ratio of 80%. The rest of the 20% accounts for Administrative expenses, operating costs, profits etc for the Organization.</div><div>So logically if an organization eliminates or even reduces these fraud payments and associated expenses like legal costs, investigation costs etc, that would add to the profits of the organization.</div></span><div> </div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Tools and resources to achive this</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Normally organizations have experienced Underwriters, Adjusters, SIU departments that carefully scrutinize and help to identify and avoid dishonest claims and thereby save company money. They also make use of Third party investigators who specilize in handling and investigating certain types of Fraud cases.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Now these type of cases are not Line of Business specific and thus occur in every line of business (Auto, GL, Property, Workers Comp etc).</div><div></div></span><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u></u></strong></span> </div><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Fraud Indicators and Claim Ranking</u></strong></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Based on the company experiences + the historical claims data collected + analyzing fraud claims from various third party agencies, Insurance organization can come up with their own Predictive analytics solutions or make use readymade tools available in the marketplace which help analyze the data and come up with scoring models that help reduce the total claims outcome.</div></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
e.g. There are few red flags identified on a claim, the predictive analytics tool applies these to the claim and assigns it a claim rank or score. </span><div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These claims with a high score are then passed on to an investigator for further inquiry. </span></span></div><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Red flags examples (but not necessarily fraud cases) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>1> Insured uses several different mailboxes for addresses.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> There are multiple claims filed by this insured and there is a specific pattern to the type of claims filed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Insured has medical bills which are overinflated</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> Insured is on a medical disability leave and wins the National Marathon championship</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> Insured has a claim on property much above the actual cost of damage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6> Insured has filed a theft claim for a high value and secured property like an antique picture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7> Multiple Claims for same occurrence filed with different insurers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>ISO ClaimSearch</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>There are some third party organizations like ISO ClaimsSearch which diligently collect P&C Insurance Claims data of hundreds and millions of Insureds. Insurance companies in turn make use of ISO ClaimSearch for a fee to research prior claims history of their insureds, identify claim trends and pattern. The Insurance companies then, will feed their Insurance data to ISO ClaimSearch so as to strengthen the ISO database.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The key to identifying and eliminating fraud is collaborated data - data that is clean, organized and structured. The more structured data that organizations have access to, the more these companies can use their experiences to analyze the data and make some meaningful reports out of this information anfd thus help eliminate fraud. So collecting and analyzing this data becomes the key to investigating this data. </span><br />
<div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How do companies get good and clean data - </span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By improving on their claims processes</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having Data Models that are well structured</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having strong Business rules and validations in place that identify every entry point into the system</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technology and process improvements are the key to good and clean data which will help in better analysis</span></li>
</ul><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Predictive analytics</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Predictive analytics consists of data analysis techniques and methods which help to develop predictive models used for trend forecasting. These tools typically assign a predictive score which is very similar to an individual's credit score obtained from various credit bureaus. The credit bureaus also similarly look at various criteria for a consumer (viz Income, credit history, balances, loan etc) and come up with a credit score for that individual.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Process</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div><strong>Data Mining and Analysis</strong></div><div>Data is first mined from various data sources within an organization along with the relationships between the data elements. This data is then analyzed with the help of various Predictive models this helps an organization in achieving its fraud curbing objectives.</div><div>The data that is obtained is analyzed for identifying trends and relationships which may point to some wrong doing.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can companies do to move towards Predictive analytics?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>1> Have consistent and structured data</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> Latest tools and technology</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> Budget and preparation throughout organization for implementation and have process changes for clean data entry points</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Above post highlights the importance of having organized and structured data. The advantages are manifold, in all domain verticals and not just insurance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>Predictive analytics helps insurance companies identify potential fraud needle claims in all of its millions of claims haystack. In any case, all these are crime preventive and minimizing techniques.</div></span><div> </div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Any other points you feel that should have been covered or added here please feel free to comment on those below.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-33568061800365835382011-07-22T19:17:00.005-04:002011-07-23T17:56:46.162-04:00Project Management Tools<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several tools available in the market for various aspects of Project Management. I am sure there must be quite a few that you must have also used in your career span.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This post attempts to touch upon a few which have had a long standing reputation and manage to get the job done. Please comment on any ones that you use but do not see in the list below and your view points on why you use them or should be used over any others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Several of these tools available in the market are sold on a per User/Project or Organization level licenses. There are some tools that are open sources. Some of the tools are used based on personal user preferences or are simply organizational choices. <br />
Most or all of these are available as a web version for easy information sharing across teams and facilitate collaboration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If i were to select a Project Management tool my decision would be based on the following objectives, The tool/s should be<br />
1> <strong><u>Cost effective</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Rich functionally</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>Good Support and Customer service</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Intuitive and scalable</u></strong></span><br />
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<strong><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></u></strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Listed below are a few Project Management tools by their areas of application</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Application LifeCycle Management</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Application lifecycle consists to right from Project initiation, planning, execution, control and closure. The tool that serves most or all of these functional areas and has minimal need of other products integrations and plug ins and even if it does, can be easily integrated to the other product (e.g. Project Management tool integrating with a HR System or an accounting system etc)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several tools that are available for total Project life cycle management and are mostly used at the program level along with project level. They effectively support areas of projec planning, documentation, QA & Testing tracking, communications, scheduling, time tracking, resource management, content and issues management etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>TeamForge Collabnet </strong>is one such complete application management tool that i have used which allows Collaborate development of multiple projects in areas such as <br />
Testing, QA activities, issues and Tasks tracking etc. This is a web based tool which is extremely flexible in terms of environments support, other tools and processes to be integrated in a project.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Project planning and Scheduling</u></strong></span><br />
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<strong>Microsoft Project </strong>is a Planning, Scheduling and Tracking tool which i am sure everyone is familiar with and has used at some point or another of their career. The reason for its popularity and wide use is its simplicity of use and functionally rich and user friendly Interface.<br />
This tool allows you to manage and monitor multi million dollar large projects to small initiatives ranging in a thousand dollars. Though on smaller projects i always prefer to use Excel rather than MS Project. As they say, why use a cannon to kill a mosquito.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MS Project allows you to plot scheduling and tracking graphs, charts, so you can run executive and Management reports and monitor your project progress and take corrective actions wherever necessary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The only issue i have seen with MS Project is backward compatibility wrt files by older versions of MS Project</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Time Tracking</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>WorkTime </strong>is a PC Productivity and project work time tracking tool. This tool provides various options and categories under which you can track your time. The best part of this tool is that it allows you to create reports which give you an exact picture of the time statistics you logged. Users will be able to successfully slice and dice the data by activities, tasks and projects.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Defects and Issue Tracking</u></strong></span><br />
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There are several Defects, issues and bug tracking tools available in the market. I am sure you also must have used quite a few in your projects so far. <br />
I found <strong>JIRA </strong>very helpful and user friendly.<br />
JIRA is an Issues and a Bug tracking Software. It is a very customizable, friendly and easy to use tool. JIRA offers a number of Plug-Ins for Time tracking plus Project Management.<br />
Licensing cost and pricing are not too heavy. It is definitely a scalable and very secured system to use. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another tool which is definitely a strong contender to JIRA is <strong>ClearQuest </strong>from IBM Rational. It has all the features that JIRA provides. One strong advantage of IBM Clearquest is its very Intuitive user friendly UI</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Conference and Messaging</u></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Microsoft Sharepoint </strong>is another easy publishing and sharing tool that allows the entire staff/Team to update, upload and download documents on the fly with features such as check ins and checkouts to prevent accidental delete of files. There is also a version and user tracking history maintained to audit who changed a document when and why.<br />
This tool also does a lot more than just content management. Sharepoint will allow you to share workspaces, dashboards and portals across Projects and Teams internal and external via MySites thus help in project and cross project communication and collaboration. It also allows you to search internal Documents and message other employees for communications through a central portal system.</span><br />
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<strong>ActiveCollab </strong>is another project collaboration tool used for Content and Document Management across projects. This tool allows communication and coordination across multiple Teams and persons like Microsoft sharepoint. This tool can be used across multiple projects and has very Intuitive UI, is easy to use and provides value for the money.<br />
The only disadvantage i would like to point out is, this product is no longer free as it once was.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are other tools in the market like <strong>GoPlan </strong>and <strong>Basecamp </strong>which are also very similar functionally to ActiveCollab and one tool may win over the other on some subtle points.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Costing and Pricing</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u></u></strong><br />
<strong>WinCost </strong>is a Cost and billing tracking tool that allows you to enter and track cost and pricing details on a project. This beauty of this tool is it provides realtime reports and statistics on the cost effectiveness of a project. It has a vast library of accounting rich fetures that will help you enter your accounting details.<br />
This tool will allow you to do write offs, reconciliations and other accounting adjustments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again, this is in no way an exhaustive or a very up to date list. It is something i have pulled together based on what i have used over time or have seen some of my colleagues use to manage their projects.<br />
If you have some other tool suggestions that others may benefit, please feel free to comment below.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-57662756839581360272011-07-08T10:59:00.000-04:002011-07-08T10:59:47.061-04:00First Time Project Manager - Steps to execute a project successfully<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You have been appointed as a Project Manager on a very prestigious project and you want to make sure you do everything right, so there are no goof ups. At the same time you also feel that big churn in your stomach that says 'What if i get it wrong.....' </span><br />
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This article will try to address those concerns and talk about a few logical steps that can ensure you success not only for this project but for the next ones that come your way....It is as they say, well begun is half done. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Prerequisites</u></strong><br />
For any project to be successful, the onus lies on the Project Manager, he being the main coordinator, leader and the manager of the project. <br />
Some projects succeed by the grace of god, but we will obviously not talk about that. We are talking about what steps a project Manager has to follow in order to succeed. Certain pre-requisites that need to be taken care of, by the project manager are,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong><u>Confidence</u></strong><br />
As a Project manager you have to have confidence in yourself, in your mannerisms and the work you do. Your attitude should be confident. Confidence goes a long way - it helps builds trust in the other party about you as a person and the work and skills that you bring to the table.<br />
One uinversal truth is Confidence grows with experience. The more projects you handle, the more confident you are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Knowledge</u></strong><br />
Be extremely knowledgable about your subject, of the project ins and outs, about project management as a methodology and its concepts. Know about the dependencies of the 5 cornerstones of any project - Customer, Quality, cost, resources and scope. Know about the Project Phases - Initiation, Planning, Execution and control and closure. Know about all the process steps involved in each phase.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>Tools and Templates</u></strong><br />
Be armed with the tools and techniques that will help you execute the project successfully. <br />
For instance - MS Project for Project planning. Templates for Risk Management, Communication Management, Issue resoultion, Status reporting Templates, budgeting and estimation templates etc. Know about tools like Sharepoint for Content management, Visio, MS Office etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Organization</u></strong><br />
Be aware of the organization that you will be working with, the org hiearchy, their business model, the culture, stakeholders, people, the management methodology used etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Steps for project success</u></strong><br />
1> <strong><u>Preparation</u></strong><br />
Make sure you have taken care of the prerequisites identified above. Right at the beginning of the project try to gather as much information as you can. Let the information be incomplete, but add it to your knowledge base.<br />
Make sure you identify and set meetings with the project sponsors and stakeholders. Understand the project objectives and goals that they have in mind, understand their expectations from you, the team and the project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plan and understand the high level Project Scope, Cost, Timelines, Resources needs (If identified). <br />
For example, If resource needs are not yet identified, then discuss those in details wrt skillset and specialities, years of experience, time lines required, Interview the resources and understand their expectations and needs. <br />
Discuss how the project can be beneficial for them. what new technology, skillsets and knowledge that they can gain from the project and If they have any issues wrt timelines, work areas, identify and try to match them with project needs where you can. Plan for regular outings, meetings, get togethers with the Team so that they get to know each other better.<br />
Check whether the organization has its own project execution methodology and ensure that your project complies to the standards and procedures set. Have your set of document templates ready that will need to be used in the project.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do similar plannings with your stakeholders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Project Kick off</u></strong><br />
Once all the above is done. Prepare your high level Project plan/Project charter. Here identify all the items related to Project timelines and scope, risks plan, communication plan, resource hierarchy - roles and responsibilities etc. The Project phases and milestones, processes related to acceptance criteria and sign offs that are all agreed upon by all parties.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prepare an agenda for the kick off meeting (Preferrably a PPT and share it with the entire Team before hand)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keep the Kickoff Meeting to the point. Discuss agenda items, introductions and identify the project objectives and expectations right at the beginning. <br />
Have question and answers session at the end and identify, if there are any take away, action items identified</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>Project Planning and requirements gathering</u></strong><br />
Now that the kick off meetings are done and all the stakeholders are on the same page wrt the high level plan, start planning for the requirements phase. Prepare the agenda, End user attendees, expectations from each role. <br />
Start planning and mapping out the project risks right from the beginning of the project. Meet with your Team regularly (based on the communication plan) and update your risk plan and project plan accordingly.<br />
After the requirement sessions are done, prepare the requirements documents, Gap analysis documents. Work with the Develpoment Team and prepare the design docs</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Communications</u></strong><br />
When everything else is going on, make sure you have a regular frequency meetings with your Team, the stakeholders, PMO so they get regular updates on project progress. You also need the buyins, responses to any issues that may need some intervention.<br />
Have one on one meetings with your stakeholders to get a feel on their view of project progress. It may happen that you feel the project is on target and everything is good. But the stakeholders may have some issues.<br />
For instance: You are working on a Insurance Policy Systems ID Card Bar coding project and you feel you are in line with the timelines identified. But the Stakeholders and end users may not necessarily be in the same happy state as you. They may have concerns wrt QA, final end user, Vendor (DMV) testing etc. <br />
It always helps to have a one on one with your stakeholders to get their perspective on the project progress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> <strong><u>Development and Testing</u></strong><br />
Make sure you have regular meetings with your Development and Testing Teams. Work with them if they have any concerns.<br />
e.g. a certain Policy integration project, requires a third party spell check software and will also need an upgrade to the application server. This can only be known to you as a project manager if you meet your Team regularly and then meet with the necessary parties like PMO or Infrastructure groups, QA and testing and see how they can help resolve this in a timely manner.<br />
Keep the executive board in loop on any issues such as these so they can help you in escalations and timely responses.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6> <strong><u>Closure</u></strong><br />
The development and testing phases Are complete. You have had enough of Dry runs, End user testing, System, regression tests and defect resolution sessions, the project is finally ready for deployment.<br />
Make sure all the acceptance crteria are met and signed off and have also identified the post production support plan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few weeks/days after deployment have a session with your Teams and prepare a lessons learned doc to identify the problems you faced during the projects and what could be done in a better manner the next time around, so the future Teams gain from your knowledge. <br />
Make sure all equipment, material, documentation is completed and returned to the PMO or the IT Group after completion</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In all, these are just some high level steps that you will need in any and every projects. Some projects may not go into great level of detail in all these steps, but it definitely helps to know these steps as it will help streamline your thought process and help you achieve success.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do let me know your comments and feedback, if you liked the article and any points that you feel need mention or anything that you do or would do differently than what is identified here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-75607016499553222932011-07-04T07:46:00.000-04:002011-07-04T07:46:13.386-04:00Technical Manager<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What is a Technical Manager</u></strong>?<br />
I often see Managers branded as a Technical Manager or a People Manager or a Coordinator or a Business Manager.So what exactly is a Technical Manager?.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Technical Manager is usually a person who has worked in the Technical Domain and is a master of his skillset, knows his stuff like the back of his hand. <br />
He is a well rounded individual with great Technical prowess as well as Management skills.<br />
Focus of his Job profile includes Technical aspects of Project execution i.e. he acts as a liaison between the business teams and the development, QA and testing groups. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What would a Technical Manager do in a P&C Insurance Policy or Claims System implementation?<br />
The Business Analysts have interacted with business and documented the requirements, now it is the job of the Technical Manager to understand and translate these requirements to proper design documents, Identify risks and mitigation strategies, Test plans, test cases and scenarios with the help of the requirements, development and Testing Teams. He is wholly responsible for the design, execution, control and monitoring phases of the project.<br />
There is also the people aspect i.e. resource management, stakeholder management activities that require strong communication and soft skills. A Technical manager has to have these qualities to translate technical issues and topics to non technical stakeholders and get their buy-ins. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This point needs a mention here as Technical people are known to be less 'people friendly' and are more aligned towards a silo-work or are lone rangers as that, because that is how they must have worked during their pure hands on development days, the Technical Manager role requires you to be someone more than just a Technical expert.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Roles and Responsibilities</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So at a very high level the roles and responsibilities of a Technical Manager include,<br />
- Help identify the correct standards, procedures, tools and techniques to be followed in a project so as to benchmark and track the project progress<br />
- Help identify the correct resource pool based on their strengths and weaknesses for requirements, development, testing and QA etc<br />
- Help identify the configuration and change management procedure and ensure adherence to the same.<br />
- Help in properly guiding teams in requirements, design, development and testing phases.<br />
- Help identify the risks and issues associated with a project and plans to mitigate or resolve them.<br />
- Plans for code reviews, testing plans and strategies as per the project standards set<br />
- Help in System, user, regression testing and post production support activities.<br />
- Lastly, monitor and control the project financials, so the projects stays ontime and within budget and within scope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What makes an effective Technical Manager?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be an effective Technical Manager<br />
1> <strong>Strong Technical skills</strong><br />
Make sure you know what you are talking about. Be knowledgable about the Technical aspects of your project.<br />
- Your Team members will respect you either for your Authority (which will not last long if you do not have the command over your Technical skills) or they will respect you for your 'Skills and Technical' knowledge - make your choice<br />
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2> <strong>Good communicator</strong><br />
Like i said before, your Technical development and Tech guru background will only get you so far. To progress to the next level, go up the career chain, you MUST have this one skill. As a Manager you will have to interact with different folks. e.g.<br />
<strong>Stakeholders </strong>like the policy underwriters, Claims Representative, Financial executives, operations personnel etc.<br />
<strong>Project Teams</strong> - Requirements, development, Testing, Infrastructure etc</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This communication skill is a definite must because<br />
- Internal development Teams will need to communicate with them about the development topics, milestones, issues faced, propose and discuss resolutions etc<br />
- Stakeholders - To communicate the project risks and status items. To negotiate and get buy-ins on project topics etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Good TeamPlayer</strong><br />
A project is as successful as the Team. So first and foremost, the project Manager has to ensure he has selected an effective team. The team is on mark with their deliverables and development and testing schedules. In case of any issues - personal and professional, you will have to work with the team to iron the issues out. A Project Manager has to be a strong influencer for his Project Team, there has to be a level of trust and understanding between the two. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technically make sure the team follow the project standards and guidelines. Ensure that there are sufficient rewards and recognition, reviews and appraisals occur throughout the project. Ensure that there are some morale boosting activities like Team building workshops, team gettogethers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of this is not possible unless the project Team works together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>How to progress your career as a Technical Manager</u></strong>?<br />
Some of you may have got to this position as a part of career growth path or some may have been taken this option as an alternative job path. Whatever the case may be, make sure you perform your job sincerely and effectively.<br />
All of the above points, not only help you be successful in your project, but they will also help you be a better Project Manager in the long run....What do you think? Let me know your thoughts and comments.....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-91315926536839277202011-06-30T08:15:00.000-04:002011-06-30T11:14:19.847-04:00System Rollout - Training before implementation<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Training needs</u></strong><br />
Here is a typical project scenario...<br />
Project development is done. Your policy and claims systems are fully configured, tested and are nearing deployment. The Client Organization has spent lots of money in developing the system. The Early business testing event that was sponsored for the end users, business users, agents, adjusters etc made them feel comfortable with the application and its features. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their feedback so far - <br />
- System looks good, why would i need training? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- I know what i need and how to get there in the System. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- I will look for training needs as and when i require.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- I don't think its worth the time and money to train other people especially after receiving good feedback from this focus business testing group.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These and some other similar responses is what we hear when we talk to busines users about training. <br />
Of course, this is not the case everywhere, some users know the system better than others, some know all the quirks and work aorunds that exist in the system,but overall, somewhere at the bottom of their heart this is the common feeling with most of the business users.<br />
There are some organizations who are fully and completely aware of the importance of training needs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Training Advantages</u></strong><br />
Why do we need to get trained on the system<br />
<strong>Similar understanding</strong><br />
When the project implementation team lays out the project roadmap, it plans for requirements, design, development, testing and implementation phases. It is equally important to have a training milestone in place, with the objective that all users are on the same page wrt system usage, understanding the attributes and functional quirks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Change Management</strong><br />
Training forms a very important component of change management. It helps cultivate the importance of the implementation at the grass root levels and helps bring a feeling of oneness within the organization by addressing the issues, problems faced and the solutions proposed therein.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Benefit bottomline costs</strong><br />
Last and most important, Project success is dependant by the success of the implementation and the use of the application thereafter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the system implementation involves improvements to the business process and operational activities then training will help increase this awareness, bring a common understanding of the whole process. <br />
It will also help strengthen and highlight the executive direction and perspective behind the implementation. <br />
Training will thus improve the overall efficiency of the end users. This definitely will help to improve your bottomline benefits.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Training Objectives</u></strong> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What do we wish to attain from the training. The Objectives should be clear. Some examples<br />
- It should <strong>address the training needs </strong>and issues faced by each and every user per the job functions. <br />
To absorb and implement the functionality useful for your day to day operations (e.g. corresponding using System activities/dairies/notes rather than communicating via other time consuming and disconnect methods like hard copies, emails - which are outside the system)<br />
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- Make sure that the training is <strong>scalable </strong>in terms of the organization size<br />
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- Ensure the trained colleagues <strong>understand and propagate </strong>the platform and application features to their peers and try to answer their queries. If a question cannot be answered by them, let it be directed to members of the training cell or to the right personnel<br />
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<strong><u>Plan and prepare </u></strong><br />
There is no one size fit all solution here. For example, for a policy implementation you will need separate training modules for customer service, operations, underwriters, managers and supervisors so that each group can perform their job functions efficiently and effectively.<br />
Along with having a separate training module, the training should be such that it meets requirements for candidates for all levels of understanding. e.g. <br />
- Some users may not know the difference between backspace key on the computer vs the delete key<br />
- Some users may understand bits and pieces of the application functionality, but not end to end<br />
- Some users may be used to navigating through, by having worked on similar such applications in their prior jobs or past life<br />
- Some users may just not want to change from System A to System B - reluctance to change</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence there is a big component of change management that goes hand in hand with training</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before preparing your training material have one on one sessions with each groups of users as identified above and understand their specific training needs and requirements. Come up with a script that actually answers their questions.<br />
The training sessions once done should be followed by a brief Q&A or if it is online have an assessment at the end to make sure the general understanding and the average grasp of training by the audience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Training Methods</u></strong><br />
The various training options can be<br />
<strong>Online training</strong><br />
This is an online computer based training. It serves as a self paced learning module where the trainee will study the application features as and how they find time and at their own pace and speed.<br />
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<strong>Hands on </strong>or classroom training with a fixed schedule<br />
This is an instructor based training where people will sit and gain hands on experience of the module with instuctor guidance.<br />
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<strong>Learning using training material </strong><br />
This is also a self paced training where training material is shared with the attendees. This includes material explaining the system and usually followed by step by step screenshots.<br />
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<strong>Training on the job </strong><br />
i.e. Having the person work as a shadow or apprentice/intern and gets mentored or guided by a senior member on the job. The trainee will face real life scenarios and will use the application to work those.<br />
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Make sure you as the training lead or instructor has done a dry run using a sufficient number of people and ironed out all the difficulties and issues present. After all the planning, prepare a proper training schedule, have a concise and clear agenda and propagate it to the attendees as required.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Organizations can benefit by having a well planned training scheduled. Resources who get trained using the methods identified above, not only help themselves by making their jobs easier, faster and error free, inturn they also help improve the organization bottomline who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in developing the system<br />
So in all to ensure that your project actually hits a homerun after implementation, it is necessary to have a proper training module near the end of the project.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-12263719460291476352011-06-28T09:46:00.000-04:002011-06-30T11:14:47.359-04:00IT Understanding by Business<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What is Technology?</u></strong><br />
The dictionary meaning of Technology is "Applying skills and knowledge towards use of Tools and Techniques to serve a purpose". In the Insurance domain, IT Technology is the use of Computers and its associated tools and techniques so as to solve a business issue or serve a business purpose. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's say an organization goes for the latest and greatest Policy and Claims administration system investing millions of dollars to phase out their rigid and inflexible legacy Policy administration application. They have hired tens, if not hundreds of IT workers who must work with business and try to get the job done by understanding the business objectives and painpoints and resolve them by using the IT solutions based on the functionality supported by the product and use of their own years of experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>IT side of Business and its Advantages</u></strong><br />
To achieve this and similar objectives, it is very important for business to be aware and be abreast of the IT world, to understand the IT jargon that goes on today. Parallely IT also has to understand the business processes, their jargons and painpoints and try to bridge the gap that exists between the two so as to make the job easier. <br />
But the focus for this post is the Business side understanding of IT - Why do we need it? and how do we culminate it?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a lot of technology areas that are closely associated with business and having a fair understanding definitely helps and makes your job easier as a Business analyst. For e.g. in the Insurance world, understanding XMLs for sending data across applications, configuring policy, claims and billing applications for user administration, organizational setup, permissions and access, rating rules configuration etc are all areas that are closely associated to the day to day working of the business folks. Lots of Policy, Claims, CRM applications nowadays have a business rules configuration engine which will allow business users to setup business rules without the intervention of Technical group and will thus save cost and time to rollout. The output will also be of a better quality due to the involvement of business who will ensure all day to day and boundary scenarios are well tested.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Knowledge of IT would definitely give business users a good perspective on how things progress from requirements to design to development to testing before making it to the floors. They would be able to better understand the estimates provided by development, cross question and correct the estimates to more real world numbers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometime business people get intimidated and lost in the technical jargon. So it definitely helps to know the tech talk so both Technical and business folks are on the same page. Business definitely stands to gain if they understand the nuances of the functional and technical features of the application along with knowing the tools of usage just as IT would gain if it understands the day to day business process of the applications they work on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Business should be and nowadays is getting more and more technology savvy. The Gap between Technology and Business is reducing.faster than an ice cream cone in a hot afternoon. There exists a set of business SMEs who not only understand their busines but also the Technology aspect to an extent, but they may not get the whole picture due to various reasons,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong><u>Not enough technical inclination</u></strong><br />
- There is a set of business users who have got so used to their own way of doing things that they do not want to change. For example - Some people are so used to use to the abacus for doing calculations that they do not want to switch over to using the latest calculator. Agreed, Abacus has its advantages, but certainly calculator gives you more features and does it faster and with rapid scalability and flexibility.<br />
For e.g. Calculating Rates and premium in an excel though worked as a solution in the old ages, in the new world we have application features that will do the calculations for you or using a desk calendar for policy premium, insured letter reminders rather than using the latest automatic activity and diary reminders that the applications provide out of the box.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Know as you go attitude</u></strong><br />
- I will learn about it when i get there. Procastination is another reason that many smart and intelligent business people do not use their knowledge in understanding IT which otherwise would serve as a great benefit, not just to that individual but also to the organization as a whole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong><u>"Who needs this" attitude</u></strong><br />
- Mr. know-it-all attitude is another detrimental roadbock that delineates project progress faster than you can imagine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Why does business need to understand IT?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u></u></strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong>Improve solution efficiency</strong><br />
- To efficiently and colaboratively work on Projects. It is necessary for IT and business to understand each other and make sure information does not get lost in translation. e.g. Business says, "Customer service should have the latest billing and payments information so that they can effectively communicate with customers"<br />
Now business has to know and understand<br />
- If financials are stored in the same "Policy & Claims System" or are retrieved from a different system altogether<br />
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- Is a realtime integration possible between the financial system and customer portal<br />
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- If not, is a nightly batch an option? How long? when does the process run?<br />
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- What information is available in the financial system so the type of information to be retrieved can be designed and developed.<br />
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- Last but not the least, design and develop a solution that is technically feasible, scalable, flexible and is intuitive to customers, business and the end operations teams alike.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>Save costs and improve quality of output</strong><br />
- Business involvement in Technology will save lots of back and forth communications and confusions, unnecessary meetings between IT and business. <br />
This will also improve the final quality of output due to the clear requirements and also final real scenario and boundary testing done by business<br />
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3> <strong>Functionality</strong><br />
- The more business understands about technology, the easier they will be able to put their ideas across and inturn will be able to develop and suggest solutions that are more closer to the real needs and are also technically feasible.<br />
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4> <strong>Advance knowldege</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong> </strong>- Doing all of the above will not help the project and overall organization, but will also help and develop your individual skillsets and improve and expand your area of knowledge. Thus it will help you be more competitive and assist in reaching your career goals</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>How to achieve this?</u></strong><br />
1> <strong>Explore and understand Technology and business</strong><br />
- Read articles related to technology and business. Be curious, try and understand the daily happenings in the IT world.<br />
- <strong>Explore applications</strong><br />
The applications that you work on, spend sometime to understand the fine points, nuances, the small functional quirks that they provide and try to build on that. This will help you not only understand the application's current capabilities but will also help you improvise on them so you can build a better product.<br />
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2> <strong>Ask Questions</strong><br />
- Ask questions when something is not clear or does not make sense why it is happening. Find a mentor who has a role similar to yours or is from the IT domain. So he/she can explain and resolve your doubts.<br />
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3> <strong>Training</strong><br />
- Finally training, nothing beats getting trained on the system that will be your source of "if not bread and butter then Jam and Honey"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - If possible, undergo training where you can learn all about Business analyst responsibilities and profile, What does it take to be a successful BA and a technologist?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>Organization Culture</strong><br />
- IT understanding of business depends strongly upon on the organization culture, the methodologies that are followed for executing a project. How much intearaction and collboration exists between IT and business departments.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- Organizations should also focus on mentoring business folks and having something like a buddy system in place so business and IT work in an aligned fashion.<br />
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Doing all this is definitely beneficial to the organization and will help build a stronger and a knowledgable workforce who will help curb the overall organization costs and help in successful project implementations.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-80255795110029728592011-06-23T11:02:00.000-04:002011-06-30T11:15:11.637-04:00Clean Data - Policy and Claims Systems<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This post is a slight deviation from our usual Project Management topics. Many of the projects that i have been are severely haunted by data issues.<br />
Data is the heart and soul of any business. Everyone needs data that is clean, consistent, reliable and secured. Quality and Utility of data improves as and how we add volumes of proper and relevant information. </span><br />
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Insurance carriers like any other industry are often plagued with bad, inconsistent or non reliable data which may have happened due to various factors like application shortcomings, poor system and/or data model design, End user competence levels, user application knowhow etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What exactly is Bad data?</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Data which is not normalized, inconsistent and thus non reliable is bad data. To give you a simple example, Same information can be represented in multitude of ways e.g. Contacts information stored in the system can be saved based on individual user's preferences.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e.g. Doctor identifier can be stored in system as "Doctor", "Dr", "Dr.", "Doc" etc. So if we need to run a report on all doctors in Systems or if we need to convert this data, we need some logic to handle care this inconsistency.<br />
This is just one example of a potential data issue. There are multitude of other cases that are party to this bad data issue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Why do we need good data?</u></strong><br />
Like we said earlier, an application is a bare body skeleton without data. Data is used for various purposes by insurance organizations for e.g. <br />
- First and foremost Policy, Billing and Claims processing<br />
- Customer service<br />
- Internal Organizational and statistical analysis<br />
- Risk analysis<br />
- Predictive analytics<br />
- Reporting to 3rd party agencies<br />
- State and federal regulatory and compliance reporting<br />
- Sending data across systems to interchange information e.g ISO, DMV etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Impacts</u></strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Impacts of bad quality data are</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong>Coverage Denial</strong><br />
Insureds may be incorrectly denied coverage, if policy number, date of loss, cancellation, reinstatement, renewal, coverage etc data is incorrectly entered or not entered when it should (No Mandatory checks in the System)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong>Incorrect Reporting</strong><br />
Incorrect data may cause claims to be incorrectly reported to 3rd party agencies which may lead to potential issues for the insureds and the carrier alike.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3> <strong>Claims Leakage</strong><br />
Claims may get incorrectly paid if policy, claims data is incorrect leading to leakage</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong>Operational Efficiency</strong><br />
Severely impacts the organizational efficiency of Intake and operations groups e.g Claims System forces Intake to capture claims story as long winded notes rather than structured data. Consequently when Customer service or executive Management when references this claim file has to read through pages of data to get a gist of the claim or even report some status to the customer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5> <strong>Functional Impacts</strong><br />
Data logic errors, poor system designs and incorrectly written business rules can cause problems for eg today's claims and policy systems use address standardizations or postal address lookups based on the address data entered in the system. If there is no uniformity in the city, street, zip entered throughout the system, then good luck with doing a proximity search when looking for a company prefered low cost Auto Bodyshop within 5 miles of your home location.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6> <strong>Third Party Impacts</strong><br />
There have been cases where an insured's policy was not recognized by DMV and have caused insured problems when he was stopped during a routine traffic check.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7> <strong>Statistical Impacts</strong><br />
Internal actuary and management level executives do a business health check and future policy rate predictions to be competitive based on the Loss ratios, premiums, outstanding payments etc. Sometimes incorrect or poorly designed data structure prevent this. This impacts the organizational data quality and process effectiveness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">8> <strong>Conversion Issues</strong><br />
When an old application is retired and data is moved to a new and better system, bad data is the worst possible issue that development and business Team have to tackle. In this case, each scenario has to be correctly identified and workaround have to be reached and agreed in order for the data conversion to proceed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Handling data Issues</u></strong><br />
All these and other such problems are surely avoidable or can be solved if steps are taken to resolve the issues identified. <br />
The first and foremost thing that has to happen in this case is proper and effective investment in the area of technology, leverage business knowledge and expertise and finally effective data management to reach the end goal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Usage of the ACORD Data Model</strong><br />
Many of the companies who go for system transformation or remodeling do so because<br />
- Many who move away from legacy system need to understand the power and importance of good data. For this it is important to have a consistent and a normalized Claims, policy and billing data structure. There is a generic data structure that is proposed by ACORD<br />
It makes more sense to effectively leverage new technology for data interchange, data setup and storage e.g buying a leading top of the market claims system rather than investing in legacy system short term fixes that offer no long term gains, are fairly costly and therefore a bad investment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make sure you have your key stakeholders involvement. Their go ahead, business vision and knowhow is extremely important to guarantee success in your project ventures.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-22523204813897774472011-06-21T09:05:00.000-04:002011-06-30T11:15:36.370-04:00Project Management - Best Practices<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is the need for Best practices in any line or discipline of work? We can always continue to do things the way we have been doing and not look for ways to excel, simplify and innovate. But do you think this approach will take you far and guarantee long term success...i think not...For this reason we have to follow some best practices in what we do....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Best practices are a step towards project success and away from failures....There are a multitude of reasons why projects may fail. Following are the 5 key areas that are the root cause of any project failure - Customer satisfaction, Project scope, costs, Project resources and Time allocation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are certain finer points that differentiate a Good project Manager from...well, a Project Manager. Whether you are a first time Project Manager or someone who lives and breathes projects 24 hours a day, it is always beneficial to be a part of that distinct group.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Again, these are some ideas that i have found useful based on my past experiences. You may have your own set of principles that you can follow. But the bottom line here is, have some underlying guidelines that will succinctly identify you from the other bees in a swarm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u><br />
Plan and prepare</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They say you should never stop learning. Learning, inquisitiveness, curiosity is what distinguishes a successful person from others.<br />
Before starting out on a project learn what you can about the project. Make sure you have a good enough background on the Company, department and the Project in general. Identify the key stakeholders, their view points and ideas - Hold meetings to do this. Some organizations have a predefined project execution and management methodology they want you to follow. In some cases, you have the flexibility to decide on what methodology suits best.<br />
All this will not only help you in managing your Project, but will also help develop more confidence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Just the right documentation</u></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you progress, you will find that all projects are not created equal. There may be some projects, organizations where it makes sense and is probably the organization culture to have truck loads of documentation which ultimately no one reads or if someone needs some information, rather than sifting through the whole lot of information and wasting time, is better off asking someone who already worked on this project or perhaps pave his/her own way. <br />
Other projects may prefer less documentation due to reasons like - Project relevance, Management methodology, project scope, timelines etc</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So identify the documentation needs based on your project and follow them as the case may be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Communication</u></strong><br />
Communication is the key for project execution. A Project Manager who is a hands on person and does not focus on Communication is surely destined for failure. You definitely have to hone, sharpen and continuously develop your communication skills. Have all channels of communication open - Phone, email, face-to-face. Communicate top down, bottom up, sideways when on a project.<br />
Importantly focus on your "<strong>soft skills</strong>", this is the area which which has the potential to build or break your career as a Project Manager.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - Have a pre determined and defined communication protocol set and make sure you follow it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - Have regular meetings with stakeholders and all other parties involved in the project. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - Have regular Team meetings to get as much feedback from them as possible. Understand their concerns, bottlenecks, help to remove any obstacles in their path.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - Discuss one on one with customers on a regular basis to gauge their satisfaction level. Is there anything you think we can do better? Is there something that you feel needs to be changed? Do you have confidence in our delivery approach etc?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> - Have one on one meetings with your executives, understand their concerns and perpectives on project progress and delivery on a regular basis. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> - Reporting more to senior management is better than reporting less.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Regular updating your project plans, risk and issues plan</u></strong> <br />
A good project manager never shies away from risk and issue management. It is an ongoing activity throughout the life of the project. Keep your eyes and ears open for risks associated to your project cost, schedule, scope, resources and quality.<br />
Work on and assign your day to day issues to your team members, track and manage the status by frequent reporting. Work with the Team to help them resolve the issues. Update your risk, communication and project plan on a regular basis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are just some of the obvious things that are important in managing a project. Following these will make you more confident in leading and executing your project. All this does not guarantee a project's success but will atleast give you enough confidence that you have covered your bases.<br />
I am sure you must be having a lot more tricks up your sleeve based on your own experiences that ensure your project successes.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-1529418959654883392011-06-18T16:46:00.000-04:002011-06-18T16:47:38.420-04:00Organizational Change Management - Policy and Claims Systems replacement<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They say about habits - When you take "H" out of a habit, "a bit" remains,<br />
If then take "A" out, still "bit" remains,<br />
If you then take "B" out, still "it" remains - habits are hardwired. <br />
If you teach a person to do something a certain way, no matter what are the repercussions, he will continue to do things the old way. I have seen this happen at several of my claims system implementations where people were asked (say), not to follow a long winded process to input claims, rather use the structured application process for this which was quick and easy, but people were hesitant to do that for multiple reasons. This brings us to our topic for today - "Change" and "Change Management".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Insurance Transformation projects (or any large projects for that matter) as such are pretty complex, with lots of factors in play such as - multiple systems to integrate, legacy data dependencies and statutory requirements and restrictions, business and competitive pressures etc. For all the Policy and Claims transformation projects that i have been, there is always and will be a need for change management. <br />
For a multi million dollar project, involving hundreds of people, impacting hundreds even thousands of people in the insurance organizations, you cannot afford to ignore change, you have to make sure this change happens effectively and smoothly throughout the organization. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>What is Change Management?</u></strong><br />
Change management is simply transitioning from current state to future state and addressing the problems that come along the way. The most important aspect in change management in 'Awareness'. This one factor changes the game altogether, An aware and trained organization accepts and adapts to change more easily than one that is not. Change Management is not just user training, but it also requires changing and shaping user attitudes and perceptions towards the change overall. Change Management begins from the time you start your project planning. First you have to identify the correct stakeholders, their roles in the organizations, how they can help shape and translate the change throughout the organization, followed by training needs, pilot roll out, issue resolution etc all goes hand in hand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are some factors that should definitely be considered for Change Management.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Perform a Organizational readiness study</u></strong><br />
Study the overall organizational perception towards the change, are they people open to change?, are they defensive?, subdued? not concerned?, worried? etc. Have a plan to address each of these areas by either one on one sessions or having regular meetings and get togethers to sort doubts. Remember it is very important that you have the buy in from your people on the change and they are not just 'sold' on the change..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Stakeholder study</u></strong><br />
As i mentioned earlier, after identifying individual stakeholders, perform an individual stakeholder study so as to understand their viewpoints and then produce a focused training material. There should be a detailed issue resolution process spelled out for the pre deployment and post deployment stage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Develop your own change leaders</u></strong><br />
Executive and higher Managment cannot reach each and every person in the organization to explain the need to change. The organization has to identify, develop and nurture the right change torch bearers. I say, the 'right ones' because the change champion has to be very clear on what is changing and why. How is it going to benefit the organization in the long run. <br />
These ideas have to be translated to all levels in organization, so that all involved are engaged and are a part of the whole change movement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If they see any concerns, they should try to address those and if they cannot, bring it out to the top management.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Highlight the organizational directive</u></strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u><br />
</u></strong>It is not enough for you as a project manager to provide your version of the change, but you have to focus on the overall organization objective and group direction. For instance in the Insurance world, organization direction is not to use the old excel sheets method to calcuate the reserve estimates or calculating policy rates, but use the application reserve setup, rating worksheets etc. Do not use notes to capture the claims history, but use the data fields and elements to create and develop the claim file story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Visual Training, Support and Learning</u></strong><br />
Sometimes as i mentioned above, it becomes very important to visually depict a particular paradigm shift (like showing the 200 MPH bullet train to travel from point 'A' to point 'B' rather than using the 70 MPH subway or in my world, using the highly structured and organized new policy and claims administration systems vs the old rigid legacy system with only notepad functionality).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u>Plan, plan and plan</u></strong><br />
Each organization has different dynamics at play in terms of different organizational structures, different executive priorities and politics. So this means you need a unique plan for your organization. A plan that is well though of, has bench marking and change tracking templates, regular communication meetings and bulletin board updates scheduled, undergoing a few levels of pilot testings and dry run implementations definitely helps.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Organizations that down play or underestimate the importance of change management, do so just because there is not enough awareness of the Change Management factors or the impending implications if it is not implemented or implemented incorrectly. It is the job of the C Level executives, Project Managers, Business executives to make sure that any implementation has minimal disruptions during the change imlementations and the change leaders are there to support the end user needs. The business is happy with the change and ultimately realise the application really does help them do their jobs better.</span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5818125694792997156.post-63644703249782311882011-06-14T12:06:00.000-04:002011-06-14T12:06:45.973-04:00Remote Project Management<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We all know that Project success is dependant upon constant communication, interactions and coordinations between all parties so that project is successfully executed and all risks and issues are identified and therefore addressed, mitigated in a timely and correct manner. <br />
Project Manager is one of the most integral part of a project who can make all the difference between a project success and failure based on his constant Team interactions, coordinations and negotiation skills. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Project Manager taken out of the loop even for a few days, leave alone working remotely, can cause lots of issues and problems. Client communications, risks identification, coordination activities everything will get impacted.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He is like an orchestra conductor who makes sure that musicians play the right music according to the plan and the orchestra is conducted harmoniously and synchronously.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have been on projects where i had to manage my Teams remotely i.e. the project was being executed from multiple geographies - Development was from India. The Business users were in the mid west and i was on the east coast. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So how is all </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this possible if the project manager or the Teams involved are not co-located?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, why would anyone want to manage a project remotely. There are numerous advantages of doing so.<br />
1> <strong><u>Cost effectiveness</u></strong><br />
- In today's world most organizations are focusing on cost budgeting, resource optimizations and operational efficiencies, while also maintaining the organizational business level needs<br />
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2> <strong><u>More flexibility </u></strong> <br />
- In terms of work hours, resource schedules and timings. Resources when working remotely have more control over their time and schedules and are therefore more efficient.<br />
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3> <strong><u>More Effective </u></strong><br />
- By using well proven communication tools and techniques for project coordination, reporting and follow ups etc</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are a few logical and proactive steps that will ensure your project is a success even though you are working remotely. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can be achieved by following 4 simple guidelines</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1> <strong><u>Communication Plan</u></strong><br />
Have a clearly defined laid out weekly, monthly communication plan for stakeholder, team meetings. Have the Agenda clearly defined for these meeting so time is not wasted in going through unnecessary details.<br />
- Communication, communication, communication...this point cannot be stressed enough. When the project manager is remote, it is all the more necessary for the Team to be in sync and on the same page with the PM on every aspect and detail of the project. This can be achieved by having regular frequency meetings with the Team.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2> <strong><u>Remote access tools</u></strong><br />
Make sure you make use of remote sharing tools, voice and video conferencing facilities where applicable and possible.<br />
- There are a lot of tools available in the market today that can help you manage a project remotely and successfully. Tools like Video conferencing, Remote desktop sharing etc helps you have face to face conversations, share desktop sessions with Teams and have meaningful and productive interactions.<br />
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3> <strong><u>Meeting Frequency</u></strong><br />
Increase the frequency of communication with your team. Plan more get togethers and Team outings. Increase frequency of your customer calls<br />
- Being remote makes it all the more important to maintain and develop a healthy team rapport. For this, i will suggest, have frequent site visits to meet the teams, have lunches, outings together with the Team. The Team should not look at the project manager as a daily 9 PM - Channel 7 News broadcaster, but a project facilitator, Team Leader and motivator.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4> <strong><u>Management Reporting</u></strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><u><br />
</u></strong></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Increase the frequency of your executive management reporting<br />
- Make no mistake here, out of sight is not out of mind, especially for the project sponsors and the C Level executives who are paying for the project. Make sure you have regular detailed and elaborate reporting. Let them know, build their confidence that even though you are remote you are aware and on top of things and issues.<br />
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All these steps will ensure not only project success but will also fetch you the brownie points of being an effective and proactive leader who can confidently get the job done remotely or not.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span>Nilesh Asharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00718773766340874165noreply@blogger.com0