Project success post_implementation & management

1 Project success © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities.
Project success is only the
beginning…
Manage your post implementation phase
Christian Rodericks, PMP
PMI-SOC - October 2006

Agenda
• Introduction
• Subject
• Key message/objective
• PMI framework
• Scope of success
• Challenges
• Key success factors
• Closure checklist
• Questions

Introduction
Christian Rodericks, PMP
• Christian is a Manager in the Enterprise Risk Practice. He has over 10
years of project management and enterprise architecture experience;
including ERP systems, integration technologies and custom
application development. Christian’s main focus has been in the
Financial and Technology Industries, and since joining Deloitte,
Christian has provided project advisory services to clients undergoing
large complex system implementations. Christian remains a hands-on
technologist with a deep understanding of many current and legacy
system development technologies. Christian’s academic background
includes a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of
Waterloo and he is a PMI Certified Project Management Professional
(PMP).

Think about your project experience…
• Think about the projects you’ve managed and been involved in over
the years.
• In how many of those projects, were you actively involved with in the
post-implementation phase?
• What was done to enable the project product to be fully transitioned
into the business?

If we think of climbing a mountain as a
project, then what would be our project
go-live date/deliverable?
We probably think of reaching the top of the
mountain as our project deliverable.

Key message
• I believe that it is critical to have proper project management in any
post-implementation phase in order to maximize the value and
acceptance levels from the stakeholders.
• Think about the benefits we could deliver to our stakeholders if we
were to manage our projects beyond go-live until the project was fully
transitioned into the business.

What does PMI say?
• As part of the Integration Management and Procurement Management
areas, PMI provides the following two procedures to be performed in
order to close out an entire project or project phase:
– Administrative closure
– Contract closure
• These procedures will definitely guide us in project closeout.
• The benefit of these procedures is that we can use them to help
transition the project to the business and realize true project success.

Where’s the scope
of success?

Scope of success
• Often a project is considered not to be successful, whilst the project
manager has done a great job.
Initiating Planning Execution Go-live Post-imp Closure
Scope of project
management success
Scope of project
success
Project manager Stakeholders/business user

So what are the challenges?
• We focus on go-live.
• We have less experience in post implementation.
• We need to understand more about the business.
• We trade off long term benefits for short term gains.

Heavy focus on “go-live”
• External/internal pressures to get the project into live mode.
• Project Managers know that there’s a post-implementation phase and
many understand what it takes to run an effective and efficient
transition from the project into the business.
• Pressures from the business community and executive sponsor to
realize value and ROI place enormous demands on the project
manager to deliver a go-live.

Heavy focus on “go-live” (Continued)
• The reality is that large IT projects can often times run over budget,
time and either increase or decrease in scope.
• The business community and executive sponsor’s tolerance levels
shrink within every missed milestone or proposal to delay the go-live,
resulting in:
– Cancelled projects, or
– Added pressure to commit to a “do or die go-live date”

Less experience in post implementation-transition
• As project managers, we have less experience in post-implementation:
– We think of delivering the project through a successful go-live and spend less
time in transitioning the project product to the business

Understanding the business
• Project managers need to understand the business.
• Not all project managers understand or visualize how the product of
the project will run in a departmental/steady state point of view:
– This is why it is essential to include the right business people up front
– In addition, IT will also be involved to access the likelihood of delivering on
those demands
– Be cautious of the business compromises or early acceptances of concepts
presented by IT. They can often be misunderstood by the business, increasing
the risk not meeting their needs
• Running the project to build the system was easy compared to running
the business - the project manager may not have ability to actually
work with the system they implemented and hence want to stay in
their comfort zone and focus on the project only.

Managing the project in the present day
• With aggressive go-live commitments, the project is racing
against time.
• Sometimes, the executive sponsor places more pressure by selecting
a go-live date for the project manager, forcing the project manager
to plan and work backwards from that date to meet the go-live.
• To add complexity, budgets are often frozen.
• We need to help sponsors to understand that on time, on budget is
of no value if the business requirements are not met.
• In many cases, deferred functionality is approved…with unknown
impacts in post-implementation.
• Focus on managing the priorities for your role as a project manager.

Project manager’s big challenge
• “If you’re deeply involved in solving technical problems, who’s
managing the project?”
A big challenge!
• 20% Technical
• 80% Human relations
and management
• 80% Technical
• 20% Human relations
and management
Balance
Project
manager
Technical
specialist
Role
change

So what are the key success factors?
• We need the right project team.
• We need to think beyond go-live.
• We need to understand more about the business.
• We need departmental experience.
• We need to educate our sponsors/stakeholders.

Project team is vital
• Our project team needs to include representatives from business
user community.
• Our project team needs to help translate business requirements to the
technical team members.
• If you can find them, recruit project team members who have
business and technical knowledge.
• Keep the project team intact, as a support structure during the
warranty period.

Think beyond go-live…convince them!
• Like it or not, its how they’ll measure our performance and ability to
deliver:
– We could deliver a project product that technically meets many project
objectives, but due to various reasons, the business user does not accept it
• We can mitigate this by:
– Verifying that our project aligns to company objectives
– Acquiring budget/time approval for post implementation up front
– Acquiring the right team committed up front and keep that team!
– Identifying the real impacts of deferred functionality
– Developing our plan to include a proper transition into production

Know the business
• Before we can persuade the stakeholders about their business, we
need to know it.
• Spend time with the business people to understand the real need
behind the project product.
• Understand the risks/issues within the existing business environment.
• Understand the impacts of the gaps.
• Understand the benefits that the project product will bring to the
business environment.

Will departmental experience help?
• We need to develop some departmental experience to help transition
the results of projects into steady state:
– Departmental experience in the industry of the project that your managing
helps with the understanding process of the business needs
– Increases creditability with the business, IT and the project team
– Increases ability to challenge timelines
– Improves communications with all levels
– Leverages lessons learned and history from other projects

Educate our sponsors
• We need to help sponsors see the project complete at the end of the
post-implementation phase, not at go-live.
• Educate sponsors & stakeholders to consider this role.

Upon closure
• When we finally get to the project closure, we want to verify key
activities:
– Has all remaining work been transitioned?
– Has staff performance been reviewed?
– Have all issues been closed?
– Have all action items been closed?
– Have all change requests been filed?
– Has all product documentation been received?
– Has the stakeholder agreed to the transition levels?

Upon closure (Continued)
• When we finally get to the project closure, we want to verify key
activities: (Continued)
– Does the stakeholder recognise that all work has been completed?
– Have all financial books been closed?
– Has a project review been conducted and documented?
– Have stakeholder comments been gathered?
– Have contracts been closed-out?
– Have all formal approvals been received?

When do we start?
• Plan to manage the post-implementation in your next project.

Contacts
Bruno Melo
416-601-5926
brmelo@deloitte.ca

Member of
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
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