[PDF]IT Management: Projects, Programs and Business Change

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T Management

rejects, programs and business change
►avid McKean



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David McKean



IT Management

Projects, programs and business change



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IT Management: Projects, programs and business change
© 201 2 David McKean & bookboon.com
ISBN 978-87-403-0173-1



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change



Contents



Contents



About the author and IT Leaders



An introduction to IT projects, programmes & change



2 Project success guidelines 1 - Get off to a good start

2.1 Choose good projects (be careful what you ask for)

2.2 Choose the right time to start

2.3 Choose a good team

2.4 Be clear on what is being delivered

2.5 Create a high level architecture



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3 Project success guidelines 2 - Managing project progress

3.1 Develop strong project management skills

3.2 Make them sweat the small stuff

3.3 Keep a high level overview for yourself

3.4 Tips for managing costs, contracts and suppliers

3.5 Set up good project governance



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change



Contents



3.6 Communicate clearly to all parties

3.7 Keep measuring value (SPRINT)

3.8 The art of managing project portfolios



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4 Project success guidelines 3 - Closing the project

4.1 Get ready early for the "go-live"

4.2 Make the change "irreversible"



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5 Risk Management - 5 things to know

5.1 The basic calculation - Problems vs. Risks?

5.2 The Risk Register

5.3 Assumption based risk analysis

5.4 A smart way of visualizing risk profiles

5.5 Quality based costing and Monte Carlo



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6 Change leadership

6.1 The special role that IT managers play in business change

6.2 Success guidelines for business change

6.3 The emotional side of (business) change (DREC)

6.4 The importance of a good team



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change



Contents



7


Outline of the top project frameworks


7.1


International standards


7.2


PRINCE2


7.3


Project Management Institute


7.4


Agile Development


8


In conclusion


8.1


Take time to reflect


8.2


Staying ahead



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change About the author and IT Leaders

About the author and IT Leaders

David McKean is a former CIO, having worked for several multi-national companies around the world,
including AT&T ventures in Asia, UPC Nederland in Holland and Cable &Wireless in the UK. He is
now the managing director of IT Leaders Ltd, a leading provider of IT management training. He has
worked alongside some of the top IT leaders in the business and shared experiences with countless IT
managers and CIO's from around the world.

IT Leaders runs public and in-house courses, as well as providing distance learning and blended
programmes. Public courses are run regularly in the UK and internationally, and are accredited by the
Institute of Leadership and Management. Delegates include IT managers from all companies world-
wide of every size and industry. Our clients include Accenture, Allen & Overy, Alstom, Amey, Barclays,
Boeing, BT, Capita, Debenhams, DHL, HP, HSBC, John Laing, Philips, Rothschild, Royal Bank of Canada
and Siemens.

The IT Leaders programme looks at 8 key IT leadership skills, including organizational politics for IT
managers, leading IT teams, business and IT strategy, technology innovation, crisis leadership, business
change leadership, senior level influencing and corporate leadership. The IT business management
programme topics include IT to business alignment, business relationship management, communications
skills for IT managers, operational excellence and managing IT teams. The IT commercial management
programme is run jointly with Mayer Brown, a leading provider of legal services in IT sourcing market.
Topics include IT sourcing frameworks, creating a sourcing strategy, key contractual considerations for
IT managers, service level agreements, negotiation strategy, negotiation skills, vendor assessment and
finance for IT managers. The blended and distance learning programmes are available world-wide and
are based on the 10 management skills model developed by IT Leaders. Courses are live and interactive,
using on-line seminars, e-learning and assignments backed by a comprehensive course guide and
mentoring from the course leader.

IT Leaders also runs a vibrant network of IT Managers, available to former delegates and all other IT
managers for a small annual subscription. The network group is vendor independent and meets three
times a year. There is also a Linkedln IT Leaders network which is open to IT managers from all disciplines.
The best way to join is to connect to the author David McKean and request an invitation to the network.

I would like to express my particular thanks to the expertise of key contributors - Iain Begg for guidelines
for successful project delivery (www.imb-consulting.co.uk), Keith Baxter of DeRisk on risk management
(kbaxter@de-risk.com) and VersionOne for their summary of agile methods (www.versionone.com). I
would also like to thank Mark, Wes, John, Peter and Stephen for their case stories.



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change About the author and IT Leaders

This book is based on the experiences of our delegates and additional interviews with CIO s of several
leading organizations. If you have any comments or IT management guidance that you would like to be
considered for future editions, please feel free to email me at david.mckean@itleaders.co.uk

You can also purchase David McKeans printed book IT Management: Managing People 1 on Amazon.



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change



An introduction to IT projects, programmes & change



1 An introduction to IT projects,
programmes & change

This book is the third of four in our IT management series. It covers the management of IT projects,
programmes and business change leadership. Other books in the series cover IT management skills
for managing people (book 1), IT strategy & innovation (book 2) and IT business, operational and
commercial excellence (book 4). The outline of the books in the series is shown in table 1 below.



Book 1 - Managing people

Managing yourself

Managing IT teams

Business relationship management

Working with senior execs


Book 2 - IT strategy and technology innovation

Business strategy

IT strategy

Technology innovation

Communicating and governance of IT strategy


Book 3 - Managing IT projects & leading change

Project & programme management

Project portfolio management

Guidelines for project & programme excellence

Risk management

The role of IT managers in leading business change


Book 4 - Business management & operational performance

IT to business alignment
A model for IT governance
Models for operational excellence
Crisis management & leadership
Technology sourcing & negotiation
Finance for IT managers



Table 1



In putting together this series of books, I asked IT managers what they want to know to do their job
better? This book presents guidelines and best practice from our own experience, feedback from course
delegates and clients, guidelines from our on-line IT managers network and interviews with CIO s and
other senior technology leaders.

To be clear from the outset, let us define what is meant by projects, programmes, portfolio management
and change leadership and which areas we are planning to cover:

Project management - A project tends to be linear and temporary, addressing the implementation of one
new component and therefore. Because this book is aimed at more senior managers, it offers guidelines for
those managers who might be looking after a team of project managers. We also look at project portfolio
management, the art of managing progress on a series of projects run by several project managers



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change



An introduction to IT projects, programmes & change



Programme management - In contrast, programme management tends to be the implementation of
a larger change, usually requiring the co-ordination of several related sub-projects to deliver a final
result. Senior managers may well be running one programme and overseeing the delivery of smaller
sub-projects into an integrated whole. We look at some of the important techniques for managing these
larger scale programmes.

The following diagram shows the relation between projects, programmes, portfolio management and
business as usual (BAU).



Benefits
Realisation



Programme
iManagemerrt



Project
Management



Strategic objectives
and targets



Develops expectations of ■■



Strategic Benefits



Delivers&bitity to achieve . . .



Programme



Delivers results to.



Project A


Project B



Project C



Project D



Workstream
A1



Workstream
A2



E



| initia tes [Con tinuai \lmpro ve men 1 1 Projects



Business As Usual




Project E



>



Portfolio
Management



Business change leadership - This is the art of ensuring that a large project or programme is fully
accepted and adopted by the organization. It is concerned with the people side of implementing a (usually
major) business programme. It recognizes that such business programmes may substantially change the
way that individual employees do their work and that this can cause significant anxiety and resistance.

This book is intended to act as a guide for managers who are involved in any or all of the above activities.
Since most IT managers have experience in running projects, this books presents insights experience and
guidelines to make your projects, programmes and change initiatives more successful. Nonetheless, if this
is a new area for you, chapter 7 gives some background on two of the best known project frameworks.



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change Project success guidelines 1 - Get off to a good start

2 Project success guidelines 1 -
Get off to a good start

Our first set of guidelines focus on the selection of projects themselves and setting a strong foundation
for successful project delivery.

2.1 Choose good projects (be careful what you ask for)

Most business cases that go before the project review committee seem to be really great ideas at the time,
only to lose their shine after only a few weeks. And yet, most of the reasons that projects go off the rails
are entirely predictable at the beginning of the project.

All the more reason to make sure that the project approval decisions are correct. If you are fortunate to
be part of the project review process, you should be asking some very tough questions at the outset - and
not in a few weeks time when things aren't going so well. In summary, you should be asking questions
in four key areas (see section 3.8 on project portfolio management for more detail), in particular:

1. Strategic priorities - if you think that your organization is going to review or change its
strategic priorities and that this in turn will materially affect the need for this project, the
best advice is to put it on hold

2. The business case - experience tells us that this is the area where most projects are wrongly
assessed. Make sure you are really clear on the benefits, remembering that some benefits
(e.g. direct cost savings) are more easily attainable and more valuable than others (e.g.
revenue projections)

3. The ease of project delivery - the resources for the project should be properly sized, taking
into account the experience of the project team and allowing for a project contingency
(either an allowance in delaying the delivery date, or budget over-run). Additional care
should be taken at project approval time, if adding such a contingency severely reduces the
value of the project. This might be the case for a product launch that must be done in time
for a critical date such as a major bank holiday. In addition, the project must meet the needs
of the customers, and be supported by the business employees, users and stakeholders alike

4. Endurability - ask questions around how long the project will deliver value. In particular,
ask if there are new technologies on the horizon that could deliver more value for a fraction
of the cost



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IT Management:

Projects, programs and business change Project success guidelines 1 - Get off to a good start

2.2 Choose the right time to start

IT's role in a business project or programme is to deliver functionality for business users. And hence
the business users must be ready for it. Whilst IT managers should be on the lookout for warning signs
- key sponsors not turning up to project meetings or users not attending training sessions, for example.
Speak to key users and sponsors to understand their attitude to the change. They should be seeing the
change as highly positive, an opportunity rather than a burden or a threat. If there are any concerns
in this regard, raise it at the Project Board and consider postponing the project until the time is right.

Dieter's story
Background

I was working for a telecommunications operator in Germany. It had been known to some time that this operating
unit was having problems. It frequently appeared on the national news amid stories of poor network quality and very
low customer satisfaction. A new management team was brought in to turn things round.

What happened

The management team was led by a very charismatic figure, an ex-special services officer. Every Wednesday
afternoon, the management team of eight senior managers met to discuss progress. The meetings were tough, but
the chief executive led things forward through a mix of determination and a raw sense of humour.

One afternoon, however, the mood was very different. It transpired that a gunman had gone into one of our sales
outlets and put his gun to the head of one of the employees. At first we assumed that this was a crazed drug addict.
A sales outlet seemed an odd place to choose, though, as we didn't have much cash on the premises. It turned out
that this person was in fact one of our customers. He had become so incensed with the level of service we provided
that he had been trying for six months to end his contract.

The company was so incompetent that it was unable to carry out this simple task, continuing to send bills and
threatening letters for a service that the customer hadn't asked for and didn't want. So frustrated and angry had he
become, that the only way he could think of to get the undivided attention of our organisation was to hold us up at
gunpoint.

Lessons learnt

I remember being very shocked at the time, but it did give us a very real sense of what we were doing to our
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