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.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Technical Manager
What is a Technical Manager?
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?.
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.
He is a well rounded individual with great Technical prowess as well as Management skills.
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.
What would a Technical Manager do in a P&C Insurance Policy or Claims System implementation?
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.
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.
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.
Roles and Responsibilities
So at a very high level the roles and responsibilities of a Technical Manager include,
- Help identify the correct standards, procedures, tools and techniques to be followed in a project so as to benchmark and track the project progress
- Help identify the correct resource pool based on their strengths and weaknesses for requirements, development, testing and QA etc
- Help identify the configuration and change management procedure and ensure adherence to the same.
- Help in properly guiding teams in requirements, design, development and testing phases.
- Help identify the risks and issues associated with a project and plans to mitigate or resolve them.
- Plans for code reviews, testing plans and strategies as per the project standards set
- Help in System, user, regression testing and post production support activities.
- Lastly, monitor and control the project financials, so the projects stays ontime and within budget and within scope.
What makes an effective Technical Manager?
To be an effective Technical Manager
1> Strong Technical skills
Make sure you know what you are talking about. Be knowledgable about the Technical aspects of your project.
- 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
2> Good communicator
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.
Stakeholders like the policy underwriters, Claims Representative, Financial executives, operations personnel etc.
Project Teams - Requirements, development, Testing, Infrastructure etc
This communication skill is a definite must because
- Internal development Teams will need to communicate with them about the development topics, milestones, issues faced, propose and discuss resolutions etc
- Stakeholders - To communicate the project risks and status items. To negotiate and get buy-ins on project topics etc
3> Good TeamPlayer
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.
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
All of this is not possible unless the project Team works together.
How to progress your career as a Technical Manager?
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.
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.....
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?.
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.
He is a well rounded individual with great Technical prowess as well as Management skills.
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.
What would a Technical Manager do in a P&C Insurance Policy or Claims System implementation?
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.
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.
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.
Roles and Responsibilities
So at a very high level the roles and responsibilities of a Technical Manager include,
- Help identify the correct standards, procedures, tools and techniques to be followed in a project so as to benchmark and track the project progress
- Help identify the correct resource pool based on their strengths and weaknesses for requirements, development, testing and QA etc
- Help identify the configuration and change management procedure and ensure adherence to the same.
- Help in properly guiding teams in requirements, design, development and testing phases.
- Help identify the risks and issues associated with a project and plans to mitigate or resolve them.
- Plans for code reviews, testing plans and strategies as per the project standards set
- Help in System, user, regression testing and post production support activities.
- Lastly, monitor and control the project financials, so the projects stays ontime and within budget and within scope.
What makes an effective Technical Manager?
To be an effective Technical Manager
1> Strong Technical skills
Make sure you know what you are talking about. Be knowledgable about the Technical aspects of your project.
- 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
2> Good communicator
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.
Stakeholders like the policy underwriters, Claims Representative, Financial executives, operations personnel etc.
Project Teams - Requirements, development, Testing, Infrastructure etc
This communication skill is a definite must because
- Internal development Teams will need to communicate with them about the development topics, milestones, issues faced, propose and discuss resolutions etc
- Stakeholders - To communicate the project risks and status items. To negotiate and get buy-ins on project topics etc
3> Good TeamPlayer
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.
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
All of this is not possible unless the project Team works together.
How to progress your career as a Technical Manager?
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.
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.....
Thursday, June 30, 2011
System Rollout - Training before implementation
Training needs
Here is a typical project scenario...
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.
Their feedback so far -
- System looks good, why would i need training?
- I know what i need and how to get there in the System.
- I will look for training needs as and when i require.
- 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.
These and some other similar responses is what we hear when we talk to busines users about training.
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.
There are some organizations who are fully and completely aware of the importance of training needs.
Training Advantages
Why do we need to get trained on the system
Similar understanding
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.
Change Management
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.
Benefit bottomline costs
Last and most important, Project success is dependant by the success of the implementation and the use of the application thereafter.
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.
It will also help strengthen and highlight the executive direction and perspective behind the implementation.
Training will thus improve the overall efficiency of the end users. This definitely will help to improve your bottomline benefits.
Training Objectives
What do we wish to attain from the training. The Objectives should be clear. Some examples
- It should address the training needs and issues faced by each and every user per the job functions.
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)
- Make sure that the training is scalable in terms of the organization size
.
- Ensure the trained colleagues understand and propagate 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
Plan and prepare
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.
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.
- Some users may not know the difference between backspace key on the computer vs the delete key
- Some users may understand bits and pieces of the application functionality, but not end to end
- Some users may be used to navigating through, by having worked on similar such applications in their prior jobs or past life
- Some users may just not want to change from System A to System B - reluctance to change
Hence there is a big component of change management that goes hand in hand with training
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.
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.
Training Methods
The various training options can be
Online training
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.
Hands on or classroom training with a fixed schedule
This is an instructor based training where people will sit and gain hands on experience of the module with instuctor guidance.
Learning using training material
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.
Training on the job
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.
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.
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
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.
Here is a typical project scenario...
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.
Their feedback so far -
- System looks good, why would i need training?
- I know what i need and how to get there in the System.
- I will look for training needs as and when i require.
- 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.
These and some other similar responses is what we hear when we talk to busines users about training.
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.
There are some organizations who are fully and completely aware of the importance of training needs.
Training Advantages
Why do we need to get trained on the system
Similar understanding
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.
Change Management
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.
Benefit bottomline costs
Last and most important, Project success is dependant by the success of the implementation and the use of the application thereafter.
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.
It will also help strengthen and highlight the executive direction and perspective behind the implementation.
Training will thus improve the overall efficiency of the end users. This definitely will help to improve your bottomline benefits.
Training Objectives
What do we wish to attain from the training. The Objectives should be clear. Some examples
- It should address the training needs and issues faced by each and every user per the job functions.
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)
- Make sure that the training is scalable in terms of the organization size
.
- Ensure the trained colleagues understand and propagate 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
Plan and prepare
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.
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.
- Some users may not know the difference between backspace key on the computer vs the delete key
- Some users may understand bits and pieces of the application functionality, but not end to end
- Some users may be used to navigating through, by having worked on similar such applications in their prior jobs or past life
- Some users may just not want to change from System A to System B - reluctance to change
Hence there is a big component of change management that goes hand in hand with training
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.
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.
Training Methods
The various training options can be
Online training
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.
Hands on or classroom training with a fixed schedule
This is an instructor based training where people will sit and gain hands on experience of the module with instuctor guidance.
Learning using training material
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.
Training on the job
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.
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.
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
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.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
IT Understanding by Business
What is Technology?
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.
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.
IT side of Business and its Advantages
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.
But the focus for this post is the Business side understanding of IT - Why do we need it? and how do we culminate it?
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.
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.
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.
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,
1> Not enough technical inclination
- 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.
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.
2> Know as you go attitude
- 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.
3> "Who needs this" attitude
- Mr. know-it-all attitude is another detrimental roadbock that delineates project progress faster than you can imagine.
Why does business need to understand IT?
1> Improve solution efficiency
- 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"
Now business has to know and understand
- If financials are stored in the same "Policy & Claims System" or are retrieved from a different system altogether
- Is a realtime integration possible between the financial system and customer portal
- If not, is a nightly batch an option? How long? when does the process run?
- What information is available in the financial system so the type of information to be retrieved can be designed and developed.
- 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.
2> Save costs and improve quality of output
- Business involvement in Technology will save lots of back and forth communications and confusions, unnecessary meetings between IT and business.
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
3> Functionality
- 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.
4> Advance knowldege
- 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
How to achieve this?
1> Explore and understand Technology and business
- Read articles related to technology and business. Be curious, try and understand the daily happenings in the IT world.
- Explore applications
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.
2> Ask Questions
- 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.
3> Training
- Finally training, nothing beats getting trained on the system that will be your source of "if not bread and butter then Jam and Honey"
- 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?
4> Organization Culture
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
IT side of Business and its Advantages
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.
But the focus for this post is the Business side understanding of IT - Why do we need it? and how do we culminate it?
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.
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.
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.
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,
1> Not enough technical inclination
- 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.
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.
2> Know as you go attitude
- 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.
3> "Who needs this" attitude
- Mr. know-it-all attitude is another detrimental roadbock that delineates project progress faster than you can imagine.
Why does business need to understand IT?
1> Improve solution efficiency
- 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"
Now business has to know and understand
- If financials are stored in the same "Policy & Claims System" or are retrieved from a different system altogether
- Is a realtime integration possible between the financial system and customer portal
- If not, is a nightly batch an option? How long? when does the process run?
- What information is available in the financial system so the type of information to be retrieved can be designed and developed.
- 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.
2> Save costs and improve quality of output
- Business involvement in Technology will save lots of back and forth communications and confusions, unnecessary meetings between IT and business.
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
3> Functionality
- 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.
4> Advance knowldege
- 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
How to achieve this?
1> Explore and understand Technology and business
- Read articles related to technology and business. Be curious, try and understand the daily happenings in the IT world.
- Explore applications
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.
2> Ask Questions
- 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.
3> Training
- Finally training, nothing beats getting trained on the system that will be your source of "if not bread and butter then Jam and Honey"
- 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?
4> Organization Culture
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Clean Data - Policy and Claims Systems
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.
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.
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.
What exactly is Bad data?
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.
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.
This is just one example of a potential data issue. There are multitude of other cases that are party to this bad data issue.
Why do we need good data?
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.
- First and foremost Policy, Billing and Claims processing
- Customer service
- Internal Organizational and statistical analysis
- Risk analysis
- Predictive analytics
- Reporting to 3rd party agencies
- State and federal regulatory and compliance reporting
- Sending data across systems to interchange information e.g ISO, DMV etc
Impacts
Impacts of bad quality data are
1> Coverage Denial
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)
2> Incorrect Reporting
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.
3> Claims Leakage
Claims may get incorrectly paid if policy, claims data is incorrect leading to leakage
4> Operational Efficiency
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.
5> Functional Impacts
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.
6> Third Party Impacts
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.
7> Statistical Impacts
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.
8> Conversion Issues
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.
Handling data Issues
All these and other such problems are surely avoidable or can be solved if steps are taken to resolve the issues identified.
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.
Usage of the ACORD Data Model
Many of the companies who go for system transformation or remodeling do so because
- 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
What exactly is Bad data?
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.
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.
This is just one example of a potential data issue. There are multitude of other cases that are party to this bad data issue.
Why do we need good data?
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.
- First and foremost Policy, Billing and Claims processing
- Customer service
- Internal Organizational and statistical analysis
- Risk analysis
- Predictive analytics
- Reporting to 3rd party agencies
- State and federal regulatory and compliance reporting
- Sending data across systems to interchange information e.g ISO, DMV etc
Impacts
Impacts of bad quality data are
1> Coverage Denial
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)
2> Incorrect Reporting
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.
3> Claims Leakage
Claims may get incorrectly paid if policy, claims data is incorrect leading to leakage
4> Operational Efficiency
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.
5> Functional Impacts
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.
6> Third Party Impacts
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.
7> Statistical Impacts
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.
8> Conversion Issues
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.
Handling data Issues
All these and other such problems are surely avoidable or can be solved if steps are taken to resolve the issues identified.
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.
Usage of the ACORD Data Model
Many of the companies who go for system transformation or remodeling do so because
- 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
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
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.
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.
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