When Things go wrong...

   '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.
Somethings things go great and sometimes they don't...that's just life... 
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.

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.

Examples of Awry
Personal
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.

Professional
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.
So what do we do when things start spiraling the path it was not meant to be...a Project down on its knees...
A Policy Admin implementation which kicked off with a much held fanfare and furore but suddenly somewhere down the way failed to keep up.
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.
 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.

How did we come out of this mess.
First Things First
First we calmly took stock of where were on the project
   - We had all our key stakeholders, responsible parties together. Tried to understand and outline how and where things went wrong.
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.

Come up with a plan to go from point A to point B  
   We had regular meetings with the Stakeholders and finally arrived at a consensus on what needed to be done
In your case, it may include things like,
Timeline changes
 - Extending the project timeline
Scope changes
 - changing the work scope to fit the timeline
Resourcing changes
 - Lining up your A resources to get the job done, shuffling resources per competencies
Cost and budget changes
 - Increase project budget
Unthinkable option
 - Dumping the project altogether. Sadly, this happens in many cases when you are on a time bound project and you completely miss it.

Once you have the plan ready, make sure to dot your Is and cross your Ts. Have an executive summary 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.
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.
Later on, when things get back on track and project completes successfully(i am sure!...), remember to have a lessons learned session with the whole Team so we learn from our mistakes and future run is a lot smoother.  
One of the major takeaway for our project case was, have regular status reports, meetings set that will highlight slippages right at the onset.
 
Summary
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.

Let me know if you all agree or have a different perspective, input on things based on your experiences.

Training, Coaching and Mentoring-I - The Basics

"Practice makes a man perfect"...But before practice comes - getting knowledge (or trained) in your area of choice....
To achieve excellence in any field you need to start with Training and Guidance,...followed by your Hardwork, dedication and gradual experience.
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.

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.

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.
Then there were those who were Insurance business domain experts and want to try their hand at Project Management, based on their leadership qualities.

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.

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.

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
Analyze your interests - strengths and weakness
  - Helps you gain insight on what you can do and need to work on. Builds your  focus areas
 
Plan for the area of work
  - Systematically find mentors or someone who can coach you, guide you and point you in the right direction
 
Gain systematic knowledge and exposure
  - Gain knowledge, experience and real time exposure which is key.
 
Confidently march towards your dreams
  - Last but not the least...go get'em tiger....

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.
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.
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..

Also, please let me know your comments and feedback

Project Management Styles

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.
As all kids are, he tried all tricks in the book to get his point across. You of course know how this story goes...

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).
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.

Today we will talk about some of these decision styles or when used in a Project Management Environment.
These different styles are Authoritative, Experienced, Collaborative, Democratic and Laissez Faire.
Let us talk about each approch in detail and decide see which approach suits best in which situations.

Authoritative -
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.
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.
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.

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.

  Experienced -
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.
It is definitely beneficial to the project and gives the team a sense of security when the project manager does and knows his job.

Collaboratative -
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.

Democratic -
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.

Laissez Faire -
Last but not the least 'Laissez Faire' - or i call it the 'Cruise Control'. 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.
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.

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.

Do let me know your thoughts and comments on the above article

Successful Project Definition

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.
What went wrong here? Let's see...

Definition of Success
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?
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.
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
e.g For a Policy and Claims Processing web application,
- 500 Concurrent users access the System at Peak load with zero down time
- Page load time should not be more than 2 secs at peak.
- System should be able to process Intake, Adjudication, Salvage and Subrogation and search functionality for a claim without any errors.
- Intake functionality processing should take no more than 30 seconds...and so on....

Collaboration
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).
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.
Ensure that the signoff requirements, Team responsible for signoff are also defined.
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.

Relationship
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.

So to summarize,
Define entry and exit criteria that would make a project a success
Have tracking mechanisms in place to make sure the criteria are reached
Keep all the stakeholders and Team members in the Loop during each phase of project.

So the Key to a project success is meeting and exceeding client expectations.
Let me know if you all agree or if you hold a different view to this.

Vendor Procurement and Management

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...
This activity made me think about writing this article.

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.
For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the Organization seeking Vendor Services as a "buyer".

Here are a few scenarios from my Insurance world, why a buyer would look for Vendor services,
1> Outsourcing Services
 - 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.

2> IT Consulting Services
- 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 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.

3> Technology Solutions
- 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.
 
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.
Here are the top 3 reasons why Procurement process may fail,
 1> No clear requirement specifications and hence no clear understanding of the exact scope of work.

 2> Carelessness in terms of contract clauses negotiations. No clear review of Vendor Contract terms and conditions.

 3> Unrealistic targets and deadlines promised and accepted by both parties during the procurement process.

 A Vendor Procurement process just like any project life cycle has 4 distinct phases, They are,
 1> Requirement scope and Elaboration
 - 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.
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.

 2> Vendor Selection
 - 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.
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.

 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.

 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.
 The prospective Vendors have to be aware of the milestone dates and the formal processes like routing the questions through the procurement Manager etc.
 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.

 3> Contracting and Contract Administration
 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.
 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.

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.

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.
 There should be software SLA specified in the contract.

 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.

 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
 
 4> Exit and Renewal criteria
 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.

 In case the buyer wants to extend the contract with the vendor, the renewal criteria also has to be specified.
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.
 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.

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.

Art of Negotiation

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.
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?..)
We negotiate with our better halfs on whether we eat the leftover cold pizza for dinner or dine out (Guess who wins there?)
At work, we negotiate with our bosses for better career roles, better projects, salary, promotion etc.
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.
Well the point here is, Negotiations happen everywhere.

What is Negotiation?
Negotiation is a process where 2 or more parties get together and work towards a mutually acceptable solution to an issue in question.
This is also something that is closely associated to "Workplace Politics". 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.
For this there are certain necessary steps that you have to take like,
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
But this is not always an easy task to accomplish. But it is an art that can be learned, honed and sharpened with time.

Pre-Steps to a Negotiation
In any type of negotiations, there are certain guidelines to be followed. For e.g.,
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.

2> Do not deal any negotiation from an emotional angle. Always be ready to have alternatives, walk away solutions

3> Think and work on alternatives that are Win-Win for both.

4> Always make sure you have the deal makers or the actual decision makers at the negotiation table

Rules of Negotiation
1> Listen, Listen, Listen
  - 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.
  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.
 
2> Do not take anything personally
  - 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.

3> Focus on Relationships
Always be empatic to the other person. Focus on strengthing relationship with the other party
  - 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.

4> Backup plan
And last but not the least, always remember to work out a back up plan if your current project negotiations fail.

Negotiation Types
Any type of negotiation falls in either of these negotiation styles,
1> Accomodating
   - 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.
   This happens more so, when first party is more concerned about preserving the relationships with the other party rather than the Negotiation in hand.
 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.
   or
   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 .
   This usually leads the compromising party feeling resentment and short changed

2> Avoiding
   - 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.
   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.

3> Collaborating
   - 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
   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.
   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.

4> Competing
   - 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.
  
   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,

5> Compromising
   - 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.
   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.

Negotiation Tactics
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,
1> Playing Good Guy-Bad Guy
- 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.

2> Competitor Threat
- Negotiators may try to squeeze benefits from the other party by throwing other cometitor names in the mix.

3> Delay
- 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.

4> Not enough Authority
- 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

5> Low balling
- 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

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.

Project Estimation basics

What is Project Estimation?
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.....

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"

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.
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.

Why do we need estimations? Benefits
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.
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.

So what is the need to estimate a project...several reasons
1> To get approval for the project so sponsors get an idea how much the project will cost - ballpark, */-10% etc, resource, time requirements
2> To streamline, monitor and guide project costs, resources when project is in progress
3> To determine project success or failure based on final project costs vs estimation
Estimation Process
Estimation Process
There are 3 processes one can use to do project estimation
1> Analogous Estimation
   This estimation process makes use of knowledge base from similarly executed projects and prepares project estimates based on those.
  
2> Expert opinion
   This process makes use of experience of people/projects from prior similarly executed projects.
  
3> Activity breakdown estimation
   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

Estimation Techniques
There are quite a few techniques that can be employed to estimate a project
1> Three Point estimation
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
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.
Estimates are prepared for the foll 3 scenarios - Best Case (B), Most Likely (M) and Worst case (W).
Based on this we come up with,
      A> Standard deviation value, SD = (W - B)/6

      B> Weighted Average, E = (B + 4M + W)/6

2> Base and Contingency Estimation
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.

How does it work?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.
These two values are then summed up to prepare the final Base and contingency estimate.
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.
Also as mentioned earlier, along with the Project task level estimates we have to make sure we account for the non technical areas as well, like,
i> Infrastructure and Hardware costs
ii> Vendor costs
iii> Training costs
iv> Project Management
v> Business Analysis
vi> Testing Costs
vii> Quality Analysis etc

3> Ball park or Order of Magnitude estimation
Here the estimates calculated are usually two to three times that of the actual estimates.
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.
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.

Summary
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.
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.
Hope this article will help you in better estimating your projects. Please let me know your thoughts and comments.

Advantages of Cost Benefit Analysis

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.

I reminded him of my last dentist's visit where i had my tooth extracted and he had to see me in pain.

Cutting to the chase, end result of all this, i ended up buying the Cake + a Vanilla chocolate ice cream cone...go figure...

 

This was my version of a failed Cost Benefit Analysis discussion with a 3 year old.

Now on a serious note,

What is Cost Benefit Analysis?

Cost Benefit analysis is a technique we make use of in our professional life as well as personal life.

Learning to perform a proper CBA is a very important skillset that will benefit any and every project manager in his lifetime career.

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

There are several factors that have to be considered when coming up with a CBA on a change

1> Tangible vs Intangible factors

All factors have to be analyzed - tangible as well as intangible ones.

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.

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.

 

2> Time

Some benefits and costs are incurred over time.

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

 

Steps to perform a Cost Benefit Analysis

1> First the user should have an extremely well rounded or a 360 degree view of the change to be implemented.

  

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.

e.g. Fixed costs like equipment cost, Software and License fees, Training costs, Maintenance fees, Travel costs, Employee Salaries, supplier and vendor expenses etc

 

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

e.g. Production Downtime when implementing a system change, employee productivity loss when transitioning to a new software tool etc

 

 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.

5> Substract the potential costs from the anticipated benefits and complete your CBA.
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.

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.

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.

 

e.g of a Cost Benefit analysis

 

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

 

Duration of Project - 3 Months

Costs

Tangibles

• 2 Full Time BA Cost

• 2 Full Time Developer Cost
• 1 Full Time Tester Cost - (say) 50%
• 1 Business SME involved - (say) 30%
• 1 Training Lead - (say) 30%
• ISO Account setup/Reporting Licensing costs

Intangibles

• Total loss of Productivity in training resources

 

Benefits

Tangible

• Costs to manually use ISO Site

 

Intangible

• Claim operator time saved due to automatic reporting
• 3 Operators - 30% time savings

Final decision - Benefits - Costs 

 

Project Management Tools

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.
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.

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.
Most or all of these are available as a web version for easy information sharing across teams and facilitate collaboration.

If i were to select a Project Management tool my decision would be based on the following objectives, The tool/s should be
1> Cost effective

2> Rich functionally

3> Good Support and Customer service

4> Intuitive and scalable

Listed below are a few Project Management tools by their areas of application

 Application LifeCycle Management

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)

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.

TeamForge Collabnet is one such complete application management tool that i have used which allows Collaborate development of multiple projects in areas such as 
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.

Project planning and Scheduling

Microsoft Project 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.
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.
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.
The only issue i have seen with MS Project is backward compatibility wrt files by older versions of MS Project

Time Tracking

WorkTime 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.

Defects and Issue Tracking

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.
I found JIRA very helpful and user friendly.
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.
Licensing cost and pricing are not too heavy. It is definitely a scalable and very secured system to use. 
Another tool which is definitely a strong contender to JIRA is ClearQuest from IBM Rational. It has all the features that JIRA provides. One strong advantage of IBM Clearquest is its very Intuitive user friendly UI


Conference and Messaging

Microsoft Sharepoint 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.
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.

ActiveCollab 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.
The only disadvantage i would like to point out is, this product is no longer free as it once was.
There are other tools in the market like GoPlan and Basecamp which are also very similar functionally to ActiveCollab and one tool may win over the other on some subtle points.

Costing and Pricing

WinCost 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.
This tool will allow you to do write offs, reconciliations and other accounting adjustments.

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.
If you have some other tool suggestions that others may benefit, please feel free to comment below.

First Time Project Manager - Steps to execute a project successfully

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.....'

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.

Prerequisites
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.
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,
1> Confidence
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.
One uinversal truth is Confidence grows with experience. The more projects you handle, the more confident you are.

2> Knowledge
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.

3> Tools and Templates
Be armed with the tools and techniques that will help you execute the project successfully.
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.

4> Organization
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.

Steps for project success
1> Preparation
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.
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.
Plan and understand the high level Project Scope, Cost, Timelines, Resources needs (If identified).
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.
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.
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.
Do similar plannings with your stakeholders.

2> Project Kick off
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.
Prepare an agenda for the kick off meeting (Preferrably a PPT and share it with the entire Team before hand)
Keep the Kickoff Meeting to the point. Discuss agenda items, introductions and identify the project objectives and expectations right at the beginning.
Have question and answers session at the end and identify, if there are any take away, action items identified

3> Project Planning and requirements gathering
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.
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.
After the requirement sessions are done, prepare the requirements documents, Gap analysis documents. Work with the Develpoment Team and prepare the design docs

4> Communications
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.
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.
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.
It always helps to have a one on one with your stakeholders to get their perspective on the project progress.

5> Development and Testing
Make sure you have regular meetings with your Development and Testing Teams. Work with them if they have any concerns.
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.
Keep the executive board in loop on any issues such as these so they can help you in escalations and timely responses.

6> Closure
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.
Make sure all the acceptance crteria are met and signed off and have also identified the post production support plan.
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.
Make sure all equipment, material, documentation is completed and returned to the PMO or the IT Group after completion

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.

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.

Project Management - Best Practices

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....

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.

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.

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.

Plan and prepare
They say you should never stop learning. Learning, inquisitiveness, curiosity is what distinguishes a successful person from others.
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.
All this will not only help you in managing your Project, but will also help develop more confidence.

Just the right documentation
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.
Other projects may prefer less documentation due to reasons like - Project relevance, Management methodology, project scope, timelines etc
So identify the documentation needs based on your project and follow them as the case may be.

Communication
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.
Importantly focus on your "soft skills", this is the area which which has the potential to build or break your career as a Project Manager.
 - Have a pre determined and defined communication protocol set and make sure you follow it.
 - Have regular meetings with stakeholders and all other parties involved in the project.
 - 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.
 - 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?
 - Have one on one meetings with your executives, understand their concerns and perpectives on project progress and delivery on a regular basis.
 - Reporting more to senior management is better than reporting less.

Regular updating your project plans, risk and issues plan
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.
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.

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.
I am sure you must be having a lot more tricks up your sleeve based on your own experiences that ensure your project successes.

Organizational Change Management - Policy and Claims Systems replacement

They say about habits - When you take "H" out of a habit, "a bit" remains,
If then take "A" out, still "bit" remains,
If you then take "B" out, still "it" remains  - habits are hardwired.
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".
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.
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.

What is Change Management?
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.

There are some factors that should definitely be considered for Change Management.

Perform a Organizational readiness study
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..

Stakeholder study
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.

Develop your own change leaders
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.
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.
If they see any concerns, they should try to address those and if they cannot, bring it out to the top management.

Highlight the organizational directive
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.

Visual Training, Support and Learning
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).

Plan, plan and plan
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.

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.

Remote Project Management

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.
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.
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.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.

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. So how is all this possible if the project manager or the Teams involved are not co-located?
First of all, why would anyone want to manage a project remotely. There are numerous advantages of doing so.
1> Cost effectiveness
  - In today's world most organizations are focusing on cost budgeting, resource optimizations and operational efficiencies, while also maintaining the organizational business level needs
  .
2> More flexibility 
  - 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.
 
3> More Effective
  - By using well proven communication tools and techniques for project coordination, reporting and follow ups etc

Here are a few logical and proactive steps that will ensure your project is a success even though you are working remotely. This can be achieved by following 4 simple guidelines

1> Communication Plan
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.
    - 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.

2> Remote access tools
Make sure you make use of remote sharing tools, voice and video conferencing facilities where applicable and possible.
    - 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.
   
3> Meeting Frequency
Increase the frequency of communication with your team. Plan more get togethers and Team outings. Increase frequency of your customer calls
    - 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.

4> Management Reporting
Increase the frequency of your executive management reporting
    - 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.
   
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.