'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.
Showing posts with label IT Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT Project. Show all posts
Monday, December 2, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
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
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
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
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
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
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Thought process Transformation
They say..If you show a dollar coin to an IT and Business Person both will look at it differently...
Business person will say "I wonder what is today's exchange rate?" and the IT person will say...""hhhmmm, this coin is shaped more like Alpha character "O" (Letter Oh) rather than numeric Zero"..(Not true...just made it up....but you get my point)....
IT developers and the business folks live and operate in 2 different worlds....unfortunately sometimes it is true...There should be steps taken by both sides to minimize this gap as much as possible...
Why?
A very basic necessity of working in today's world is to understand the business you are in and work towards supporting the business using your technology acumen and skills.
This is true, unless you work in a IT product based environment or somewhere else, where you may be working only to service your internal IT customers e.g. IT Infrastructure in a IT Company etc or you work alone on a marooned island manning a lighthouse switch.
Beyond that you have to work with the business.
This is required because Business is what drives Profits, Revenue and Sustainability to an Organization. Business has drivers like internal and external customers and partners, Competition, Compliance etc that decide and drive business and its exective decisions.
Coming from a Technology background, sometimes it becomes really difficult to think in terms of business, it is very easy to go back to the "Ones" and the "Zeros". During my initial IT Career days, being a consultant you have to wear the hat of an IT Developer cum Business Analyst, it becomes very difficult, to not think in terms of Tables and Columns and integrity data checks, rather in terms of Actors and Use cases, in front of the customer, who maybe as a Claims adjuster, is trying to explain how to send data to a glass vendor from the claim screen and wait for an amount estimate for damage repairs and then has to follow an escalation process so it gets approval if amount for repair was above the assigned claim adjuster's limit.
This really requires a major mindset change, a paradigm shift, if you may... wherein you get away from the developer mindset, where you in your own world do an efficient and scalable High level and low level designs and develop and unit test your own software to a Business person who tries to understand the people who run the business, their process and thinks of ways the technology can help them to make their work easier, better, faster and more efficient and smoother.
How?
The most important way to do this is, "to place yourself in the other person's shoes" and think the way he/she goes about the business day. This will help understand their painpoints and in turn help you to help them.
Certain steps that can be taken to overcome this chasm would be,
1> Get IT and Business aligned...In terms of Corporate Business goals and Objectives.
2> Companies to organize trainings, seminars for IT folk and business alike to make each side of the other side. For instance, hold workshops for business expaining them an IT lifecycle, what is a Functional document, high level designs, Integration, System Testing etc. Similarly for IT Folks, explain them the business processes and not just give them specs and expect the work to be done.
3> Have regular IT/Business meetings, maybe on a monthly/weekly basis where there will be general updates from both sides, Q&A to understand more and better
4> More involvement of IT Developers in Business meetings so they can understand the discussions and business painpoints and start thinking in terms of making those better.
Let me know your comments if you feel there are some points that can be added/modified to help you.
Business person will say "I wonder what is today's exchange rate?" and the IT person will say...""hhhmmm, this coin is shaped more like Alpha character "O" (Letter Oh) rather than numeric Zero"..(Not true...just made it up....but you get my point)....
IT developers and the business folks live and operate in 2 different worlds....unfortunately sometimes it is true...There should be steps taken by both sides to minimize this gap as much as possible...
Why?
A very basic necessity of working in today's world is to understand the business you are in and work towards supporting the business using your technology acumen and skills.
This is true, unless you work in a IT product based environment or somewhere else, where you may be working only to service your internal IT customers e.g. IT Infrastructure in a IT Company etc or you work alone on a marooned island manning a lighthouse switch.
Beyond that you have to work with the business.
This is required because Business is what drives Profits, Revenue and Sustainability to an Organization. Business has drivers like internal and external customers and partners, Competition, Compliance etc that decide and drive business and its exective decisions.
Coming from a Technology background, sometimes it becomes really difficult to think in terms of business, it is very easy to go back to the "Ones" and the "Zeros". During my initial IT Career days, being a consultant you have to wear the hat of an IT Developer cum Business Analyst, it becomes very difficult, to not think in terms of Tables and Columns and integrity data checks, rather in terms of Actors and Use cases, in front of the customer, who maybe as a Claims adjuster, is trying to explain how to send data to a glass vendor from the claim screen and wait for an amount estimate for damage repairs and then has to follow an escalation process so it gets approval if amount for repair was above the assigned claim adjuster's limit.
This really requires a major mindset change, a paradigm shift, if you may... wherein you get away from the developer mindset, where you in your own world do an efficient and scalable High level and low level designs and develop and unit test your own software to a Business person who tries to understand the people who run the business, their process and thinks of ways the technology can help them to make their work easier, better, faster and more efficient and smoother.
How?
The most important way to do this is, "to place yourself in the other person's shoes" and think the way he/she goes about the business day. This will help understand their painpoints and in turn help you to help them.
Certain steps that can be taken to overcome this chasm would be,
1> Get IT and Business aligned...In terms of Corporate Business goals and Objectives.
2> Companies to organize trainings, seminars for IT folk and business alike to make each side of the other side. For instance, hold workshops for business expaining them an IT lifecycle, what is a Functional document, high level designs, Integration, System Testing etc. Similarly for IT Folks, explain them the business processes and not just give them specs and expect the work to be done.
3> Have regular IT/Business meetings, maybe on a monthly/weekly basis where there will be general updates from both sides, Q&A to understand more and better
4> More involvement of IT Developers in Business meetings so they can understand the discussions and business painpoints and start thinking in terms of making those better.
Let me know your comments if you feel there are some points that can be added/modified to help you.
Friday, July 22, 2011
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.
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 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.
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.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Business Transformation
In Today's economy lots of Organizations, especially in the financial sector have an increased focus on their internal IT spend and leveraging their business processes and lesser focus on improving the external business aspect.
This has lead to a lot of Enterprise level business transformation projects. Essentially these initiatives are more or less related to identifying duplicate and/or redundant business processes, eliminating them or making use of latest technology tools to achieve organizational efficiencies.
In general, most Financial organizations (Insurance, banking etc) are a little slow to adapting such enterprise wide changes due to strict regulatory and compliance policies and their sheer organizational size, resource count that would be required to execute the changes and the overall Organization culture.
They get into transformation projects due to sheer Market competition pressures, regulatory requirements, directional change in executive management or changes in labor market etc.
What is Business Transformation?
The primary purpose or objective of any business is to provide and add 'value' to their customers in return of the price paid. 'Value' is measured in terms of financial gains or commodity, service provided etc. In order to provide more or better 'value', organizations strive to improve, build upon or modify their processes etc so as to attain their objectives. Especially in the current economy, many business and Industry vertical C-Level executives have shifted their attention to business transformation activities.
One of the best Transformation examples, i have seen in today's marketplace is the innovation giant - Apple. The way the company has transformed itself from the early MAC days into today's world leaders leading the tablet revolution.
Transformation Enablers:
Business Transformation is more related to aligning the Process, people, culture and Technology towards the company goals and objectives. These are the most important business enablers.
for e.g. In the Claims department of an insurance organization, there is a predefined workflow process by which the claims intake occurs. The organization takes in claims information by Fax, email, phone, mail etc and then it is directed to the system of record either as a file upload, manual load etc followed by rendering this information to the Customer service representatives online, so they can interact with customer efficiently, all this plays a very important role in the decision of whether a transformation in the process workflow is required or not.
All this determines the total amount of time taken to input, process the information right from intake to providing information to customers via the customer service portal.
Business transformation is a modern day technique sought by organizations to think about their business processes and outcomes so they can improve on their customer relations, customer service, improve upon operating efficiencies and essentially cut down on costs. The reason why organizations need a business transformation or an overhaul can be manifold.
For Instance, for large organizations, Processes are preset to meet business needs, this gets complemented by organizational culture, external factors like statutory policies, rules set by governing bodies also come into play and before the organization knows it each business unit, department has its own set of processes which are tuned and tweaked over time to run the business. No one has looked at the organization or enterprise level viewpoint and this ultimately leads to lots of inefficiencies mainly due to overall inefficient workflow processes, slower customer outcome.
To add to this, to stay competitive in today's marketplace and to better meet their customer needs, meet the regulatory requirements organizations have to improve on their efficiencies.
A Business Transformation project would essentially involve the following steps,
Objectives and Roadmap
Develop a high level roadmap right from understanding the business needs and objectives at the executive level. This helps define the overall financial objective, the organizational change management expectations from this initiative. Involvement of Top level executives is a very important factor for the success for any Transformation initiative.
The key transformation agents for any initiative are the Top CEOs, CIOs, Stakeholder like Business SMEs, Project Sponsors etc.
Feasibility
High level Feasibility study and planning
- This involves a feasibility study wrt resources, Technology, budget etc
Strategy Definition
Understand current state and future state of the process
- Which may lead to Process realignment or altogether process changes
Layout the goals as quantifiable and tangible statements as to what this initiative is suppsed to achieve. e.g.
- Financial goals - e.g. Increase the Net revenues at the end of next 2 years by 20%
- Customer service - e.g. Reduce Customer service operational time per customer from 15 mins to 7 mins with the same or better quality of service
- Change Management - e.g. Layout a 3 month plan to migrate the changes throughout the organization to all departments involved.
- Align organization metrics and KPIs with the Roadmap
Execution and Control
- The esential parts in any project are its execution and control strategies which ensure regular monitoring and data analysis.
This has lead to a lot of Enterprise level business transformation projects. Essentially these initiatives are more or less related to identifying duplicate and/or redundant business processes, eliminating them or making use of latest technology tools to achieve organizational efficiencies.
In general, most Financial organizations (Insurance, banking etc) are a little slow to adapting such enterprise wide changes due to strict regulatory and compliance policies and their sheer organizational size, resource count that would be required to execute the changes and the overall Organization culture.
They get into transformation projects due to sheer Market competition pressures, regulatory requirements, directional change in executive management or changes in labor market etc.
What is Business Transformation?
The primary purpose or objective of any business is to provide and add 'value' to their customers in return of the price paid. 'Value' is measured in terms of financial gains or commodity, service provided etc. In order to provide more or better 'value', organizations strive to improve, build upon or modify their processes etc so as to attain their objectives. Especially in the current economy, many business and Industry vertical C-Level executives have shifted their attention to business transformation activities.
One of the best Transformation examples, i have seen in today's marketplace is the innovation giant - Apple. The way the company has transformed itself from the early MAC days into today's world leaders leading the tablet revolution.
Transformation Enablers:
Business Transformation is more related to aligning the Process, people, culture and Technology towards the company goals and objectives. These are the most important business enablers.
for e.g. In the Claims department of an insurance organization, there is a predefined workflow process by which the claims intake occurs. The organization takes in claims information by Fax, email, phone, mail etc and then it is directed to the system of record either as a file upload, manual load etc followed by rendering this information to the Customer service representatives online, so they can interact with customer efficiently, all this plays a very important role in the decision of whether a transformation in the process workflow is required or not.
All this determines the total amount of time taken to input, process the information right from intake to providing information to customers via the customer service portal.
Business transformation is a modern day technique sought by organizations to think about their business processes and outcomes so they can improve on their customer relations, customer service, improve upon operating efficiencies and essentially cut down on costs. The reason why organizations need a business transformation or an overhaul can be manifold.
For Instance, for large organizations, Processes are preset to meet business needs, this gets complemented by organizational culture, external factors like statutory policies, rules set by governing bodies also come into play and before the organization knows it each business unit, department has its own set of processes which are tuned and tweaked over time to run the business. No one has looked at the organization or enterprise level viewpoint and this ultimately leads to lots of inefficiencies mainly due to overall inefficient workflow processes, slower customer outcome.
To add to this, to stay competitive in today's marketplace and to better meet their customer needs, meet the regulatory requirements organizations have to improve on their efficiencies.
A Business Transformation project would essentially involve the following steps,
Objectives and Roadmap
Develop a high level roadmap right from understanding the business needs and objectives at the executive level. This helps define the overall financial objective, the organizational change management expectations from this initiative. Involvement of Top level executives is a very important factor for the success for any Transformation initiative.
The key transformation agents for any initiative are the Top CEOs, CIOs, Stakeholder like Business SMEs, Project Sponsors etc.
Feasibility
High level Feasibility study and planning
- This involves a feasibility study wrt resources, Technology, budget etc
Strategy Definition
Understand current state and future state of the process
- Which may lead to Process realignment or altogether process changes
Layout the goals as quantifiable and tangible statements as to what this initiative is suppsed to achieve. e.g.
- Financial goals - e.g. Increase the Net revenues at the end of next 2 years by 20%
- Customer service - e.g. Reduce Customer service operational time per customer from 15 mins to 7 mins with the same or better quality of service
- Change Management - e.g. Layout a 3 month plan to migrate the changes throughout the organization to all departments involved.
- Align organization metrics and KPIs with the Roadmap
Execution and Control
- The esential parts in any project are its execution and control strategies which ensure regular monitoring and data analysis.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Soft Skills
You might ask - how and why is article related to Project Management.
Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth and not so far off till late 90s, it was thought that the Technical knowhow or the 'hard skills' was the only factor attributed a project's success. People who were pure Techo managers, sitting in one corner desk could solve the problems troubling planet earth.
But not any longer, the outlook has changed, C-level executives, mid managers etc have begun to realize that soft skills are also as important, infact soft skills are identified in today's world as also one the most important success criteria to execute a project.
What do you mean by soft skills -
Soft skills is an art - an art to communicate effectively. Effective meaning so that people will understand, listen and relate to what you are saying. For some people this trait is inborn. But for most, this has to be acquired by constant practice and learning.
This article is for those who, when surrounded by people, never fail to secretly salute a black spider that manages to find dark nooks and corners even in broad daylight.
For those - not so brave hearts, fear not - the art of soft skills can definitely be learned, cultivated and honed to the extent of becoming an expert.
One of the major issues wrt soft skills is, you do not know the importance of this trait till it hits you - like a deer hit by blazing lights of a running car,
The educational courses that teach management as a part of any curriculum talk about the technical aspects of Management, and prepare you with a Project Management framework but nothing prepares you for the soft skillset required.
Some may ask why do we need Soft skills to run a project? The reasons are many,
First and foremost is 'Objectives and expectations alignment'
- Projects deal with multiple stakeholders with varying skills, diverse personality types.
- Each stakeholder may have different understanding of the project.
- For influencing the work outcome either with stakeholders or even Team members, you will need strong leadership, communication and convincing skillset.
Everyone has to be aligned to a common goal, just like a army of ants carrying grains of food in a straight line to its storage area.
- At an individual level, i have personally seen many a talented people fail. Not because they did not have the Technical prowess, but because they only had Technical mastery.
No one wants to work with people, who may be so called masters of their Technology domain, but do not have the basic people skills. This is an attribute of a person's Emotional Quotient (EQ).
There is no magic formula to gain soft skills. The steps needed to achieve Soft skills could range from showing empathy and optimism towards your colleagues to extreme self-awareness in knowing what's going on around you and this is a constant learning process. You need to keep on practicing this day in and Day out.
As a person grows in his career, in order to reach higher echelons of success, it is much more important to be have soft skills competence than low level Technical knowhow.
In short, gaining Soft skills is like a fear factor game challenge where the contestant has to be on a running speedboat and has to climb the copter above using a low hanging rung of ladders in a limited timespan.
Standing on the speedboat and watching the copter above (The Project) is not enough, having excellent upper, lower body strength will not get the job done (Hard skills). But what will get you to the winners circle, is to reach out for the ladder and climbing it one rung at a time (Soft skills).
Baby steps:
You cannot climb Mt. Everest in one day (or maybe you can, but not in this case). There are certain steps that one can follow to achieve excellence in this personality skills
Join Public speaking groups:
1> e.g. Toastmasters Group: Toastmasters club is an excellent forum for personal development in terms of fear of public speaking, teaches you various traits required to be better listener and speaker. How to formulate your thoughts clearly and precisely.
One day at a time:
2> Start with meeting 1 person at a time. When you are meeting a person - even for project reasons, try to get to know the person, understand his background, his likes/dislikes, perspective on the project, what may be the pain points for him and how you can help resolve them? What does it mean by project success to him? Learn to be a good listener.
The person could be anyone from project sponsor to an end user-stakeholder to one of your internal development and testing Team members.
Professional Courses and Training:
3> Seek professional help. There are numerous training institutes and courses which delve on this particular subject. These courses will help you change the perspective and suggest ways and mean that will help you achieve your goals.
In Summary, be people centric and more extroverted than you are, start to get out of your comfort zone. We have to remember that a project is teamwork and a project is deemed successful or a failure only by the efforts of the individuals that make the Team. So encourage your Team members, have regular get together sessions, appreciate and acknowledge achievements, provide guidance and seek help, when and wherever required.
It is definitely time to come out of that dark cave and bask in the glorious sunlight.
Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth and not so far off till late 90s, it was thought that the Technical knowhow or the 'hard skills' was the only factor attributed a project's success. People who were pure Techo managers, sitting in one corner desk could solve the problems troubling planet earth.
But not any longer, the outlook has changed, C-level executives, mid managers etc have begun to realize that soft skills are also as important, infact soft skills are identified in today's world as also one the most important success criteria to execute a project.
What do you mean by soft skills -
Soft skills is an art - an art to communicate effectively. Effective meaning so that people will understand, listen and relate to what you are saying. For some people this trait is inborn. But for most, this has to be acquired by constant practice and learning.
This article is for those who, when surrounded by people, never fail to secretly salute a black spider that manages to find dark nooks and corners even in broad daylight.
For those - not so brave hearts, fear not - the art of soft skills can definitely be learned, cultivated and honed to the extent of becoming an expert.
One of the major issues wrt soft skills is, you do not know the importance of this trait till it hits you - like a deer hit by blazing lights of a running car,
The educational courses that teach management as a part of any curriculum talk about the technical aspects of Management, and prepare you with a Project Management framework but nothing prepares you for the soft skillset required.
Some may ask why do we need Soft skills to run a project? The reasons are many,
First and foremost is 'Objectives and expectations alignment'
- Projects deal with multiple stakeholders with varying skills, diverse personality types.
- Each stakeholder may have different understanding of the project.
- For influencing the work outcome either with stakeholders or even Team members, you will need strong leadership, communication and convincing skillset.
Everyone has to be aligned to a common goal, just like a army of ants carrying grains of food in a straight line to its storage area.
- At an individual level, i have personally seen many a talented people fail. Not because they did not have the Technical prowess, but because they only had Technical mastery.
No one wants to work with people, who may be so called masters of their Technology domain, but do not have the basic people skills. This is an attribute of a person's Emotional Quotient (EQ).
There is no magic formula to gain soft skills. The steps needed to achieve Soft skills could range from showing empathy and optimism towards your colleagues to extreme self-awareness in knowing what's going on around you and this is a constant learning process. You need to keep on practicing this day in and Day out.
As a person grows in his career, in order to reach higher echelons of success, it is much more important to be have soft skills competence than low level Technical knowhow.
In short, gaining Soft skills is like a fear factor game challenge where the contestant has to be on a running speedboat and has to climb the copter above using a low hanging rung of ladders in a limited timespan.
Standing on the speedboat and watching the copter above (The Project) is not enough, having excellent upper, lower body strength will not get the job done (Hard skills). But what will get you to the winners circle, is to reach out for the ladder and climbing it one rung at a time (Soft skills).
Baby steps:
You cannot climb Mt. Everest in one day (or maybe you can, but not in this case). There are certain steps that one can follow to achieve excellence in this personality skills
Join Public speaking groups:
1> e.g. Toastmasters Group: Toastmasters club is an excellent forum for personal development in terms of fear of public speaking, teaches you various traits required to be better listener and speaker. How to formulate your thoughts clearly and precisely.
One day at a time:
2> Start with meeting 1 person at a time. When you are meeting a person - even for project reasons, try to get to know the person, understand his background, his likes/dislikes, perspective on the project, what may be the pain points for him and how you can help resolve them? What does it mean by project success to him? Learn to be a good listener.
The person could be anyone from project sponsor to an end user-stakeholder to one of your internal development and testing Team members.
Professional Courses and Training:
3> Seek professional help. There are numerous training institutes and courses which delve on this particular subject. These courses will help you change the perspective and suggest ways and mean that will help you achieve your goals.
In Summary, be people centric and more extroverted than you are, start to get out of your comfort zone. We have to remember that a project is teamwork and a project is deemed successful or a failure only by the efforts of the individuals that make the Team. So encourage your Team members, have regular get together sessions, appreciate and acknowledge achievements, provide guidance and seek help, when and wherever required.
It is definitely time to come out of that dark cave and bask in the glorious sunlight.
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