Differentiation in a Tough Economic Climate

Here's some good advice on refining the scope of your target market, honing your message, perfecting your products, and engaging your customers in a positive and refreshing way. ...

... "If you can become known by a very narrow target market for doing something very specifically unique in a way that your customers adore, you will no longer compete on price and no longer live at the mercies of the ups and downs beyond your control. " ...

Via Escape from Cubicle Nation: Recession-proofing wisdom

CIO Perspective on Business Strategy

Financial industry CIO makes pitch for getting intimate with their customers and making the right investments by IT. He offers an interesting observation, that many CIOs are in a position to look across lines of business for areas of synergy or leverage in order to better enable their businesses strategies. ...

... "I'm able to bring a unique perspective by working with many businesses across the company. Our perspective can be invaluable in helping our business leaders develop their long-term strategies. " ...

Via Info Week: Priority for Customer Intimacy

Focus on Customer to Align With Business

Struggling to integrate IT into the business agenda? Consider focusing on the paying customers to improve their experience. This could better position IT as an enabler of business strategy. ...

... "by tackling customer-centric IT projects, CIOs can reshape their role as key corporate players and position themselves for greater enterprise responsibility by aligning with the major concern of their executive peers and bosses. " ...

Via CIO: 2008 State of the CIO

New CIO Role: Enhance Customer Experience

San Francisco Giants' CIO creates new role for himself. ...

... "Schlough's role, he says, is not to maintain operations but rather to help make the customer experience memorable. " ...

Via CIO: Customer Leadership From IT

Usability Project: Staples Web Presence

Staples employs design principles and user segmentation to drive usability makeover to its web presence --- seeing it through their customers' eyes. ...

... "the multichannel office supply merchant undertook its largest IT project ever in mid-2002 with the goal of improving its Web site's usability " ...

Via DM News: Staples IT Project

Digital Lifestyle: Cavs Lead The Way

Cavaliers push limit of paperless, digital customer experience for ticketing in sports events. Of course, some resistance is inevitable. ...

... "While some major league baseball teams have introduced electronic ticketing, the Cavaliers have taken it a step further, providing a completely paperless transaction. " ...

Via Yahoo! News: E-ticketing

Project Management Imperatives: Ten Keys to Success

Someone recently asked me what I felt the critical success factors were for any project (i.e. what were the top "must do's"). Although I can think of many more, here were what I felt were the top ten:

1) Get the roles right. (Insure accountability; use a RACI chart or Responsibility Matrix so roles are clearly defined. Insuring people understand their commitments up front will avoid problems later.)

2) Get the goals right. (Make sure all the key stakeholders agree on the goals. I've seen more projects go wrong for this reason than any other. Time spent here will pay dividends later.)

3) Get the current scope right. (I say "current scope," because change should be expected. Projects by default contain change because they are unique in nature. It's not whether you'll experience change, it's how you analyze the potential impacts and manage the approval of the change that counts. Agreed-upon and approved scope changes are perfectly acceptable, with one caveat: It's often wise to set a limit to the number of times scope can be changed for the current product release, and defer some changes to a subsequent release, else value gets delayed.).

4) Obtain commitment from the business, customers, and other stakeholders as to their part in the success of the project. (Many projects derail because the customer doesn't live up to their side of the bargain, doesn't understand their side of the bargain, or some other necessary constituent isn't cooperating for various reasons. Obtain the right commitment up front, starting with senior management.)

5) Determine the critical success factors and risks. (Critical success factors and risks go hand in hand. Many people ignore this or sweep it under the rug, and accept any related risks as a given. The critical success factors will identify related risks and help set expectations).

6) Set expectations. (This is frequently overlooked and is a key cause of failure. The sponsor, customers, and anyone impacted by the project must be given realistic expectations for what is needed from them, how long the project will take, how much it will cost, what the uncertainty factor is, what the available resources are, and anything else necessary to avoid surprises and/or an under-equipped effort.)

7) Beware of conflicting directives. (I call this the "Robocop Syndrome." In the film, Robocop, the titular robotic policeman goes on full tilt when he encounters directives that conflict with his primary directive. I see this happen often in organizations where a project sponsor demands something that is in conflict with other key stakeholders' wishes and/or top organizational directives. This could be covered under "goals" or "expectations," but it's so important that it warrants its own point. The project manager must head this off at the pass before the project goes down a rat hole it won't recover from.)

8) Plan Collaboratively. (The act of planning is not an isolated exercise. It's a collaborative exercise and should be done with the project core team and subject matter experts via some sort of facilitated brainstorming session---possibly with sticky labels on a wall.)

9) Beware of unilateral and granular "one-size-fits-all" solutions. (This is often ineffective, both as a project management methodology and a process implementation policy. Look at the big picture, and the potential variations. Keeping a framework high-level can allow for greatest flexibility and adaptability. Aim for principles over rules wherever possible. Use rules when safety is involved, regulatory requirements exist, or exact accuracy is needed---per Marcus Buckingham's guidelines from "First Break All the Rules.")

10) Don't let rank set you off course. (Often, a senior manager pulls rank and makes requests that are either detrimental, unwise, or in direct conflict with organizational goals. When this happens, see rules 6 and 7. It is the project manager's responsibility to set the right expectations, warn of potential risks, and head off potential conflicting directives at the pass.)

There it is. My list of "must do's." Project management isn't rocket science. In fact it's not a science at all. It's more of an art. Hopefully, the guidelines above can serve as a useful palette.

User Interface Projects: Increase Cycles of Learning

In supply chain management, the concept of faster turns translates into lower inventory and more responsive to customer needs. In user interface design, faster turns leads to more robust customer experience. However, the path there can challenging as user feedback guides the releases through each cycle. Netflix and Google are profiled. ...

... "Since only 1 in every 5 to 10 ideas work out, the strategy of constraining how quickly ideas must be proven allows us to try out more ideas faster, increasing our odds of success. " ...

Via User Interface Engineering: Link

The Customer Experience: Advancing the Brand If Done Right

Aspect launches interesting campaign that reemphasizes a focus on the customer experience at the call center, where strong opinions are formed about companies that rely on that channel for sales or service. With today's technology, the power has shifted to the consumer. ...

... "Independent research demonstrates that each unhappy customer will tell 13 to 15 people about their bad experience with a company – far more people than they will tell of a good experience. When factoring in the power and reach of the Internet, one bad experience could have a significant impact on a company's brand, and ultimately, the bottom line. Aspect Software has coined this age of the activist consumer that uses emerging web technologies -- blogs, chat rooms, and wikis -- to air both their praises and their grievances about their experiences with corporate brands, Power Shift 2.0. " ...

Via Aspect Software: Aspect Software Unveils Global Campaign to Address Phenomenon of Power Shift 2.0 ...

The Distributed PMO: Lessons From Strange Places

I've read two pieces of information lately that couldn't be more different, and yet they both got me thinking about the benefits of what I call a "distributed PMO."

First, as I mentioned last week, I had read about Ken Kizer's magnificent transformation of the formerly abysmal Veteran's Health Administration (a poorly run group of hospitals mired in government hierarchy and bureaucracy). He established an network of regional "hubs" (what he called Virtual Integrated Services Networks, or VISNs - pronounced "visions"). Each VISN was itself a network of partnerships, associations, alliances, hospitals, etc. that worked together for the good of the customer.

The VISNs had the benefits of standardized quality with local presence. Decision-making was moved from Washington HQ to the VISNs, who were closer to the action than Washington HQ could ever be.

The role of headquarters became one of support, guiding principles, consulting advise, information services, and change leadership. Headquarters drives behaviors that benefit the overall structure.

Forms and approvals were reduced to a bare minimum. A relentless focus on the customer/patient (one of my battle cries, as most of you know) now guides all decisions and research.

If this isn't a good model for a PMO, I don't know what is. If project managers and functional experts (each who rely on one another for success) operated in various "regions" and/or functions (close to the action), and the PMO's role were to provide (and I repeat from above) support, guiding principles, consulting advise, information services, and change leadership, more PMOs would become a valued and integrated part of their organization.

And if the focus were on reducing forms and bureaucracy, helping project teams be successful, and improving the customer experience (as opposed to an internal focus on merely schedule and budget metrics), PMOs might find themselves more popular as well.

Incidentally, this also happens to mirror the Toyota organizational model.

The idea of a distributed, integrated network isn't unique to business. It even happens in nature (here's where the strange part comes in). I was reading about a giant sea creature, larger than a blue whale, called a Giant Siphonophore (Praya sp.). The creature (yes, this is true, folks) runs 130 feet long and is actually made up of many other life forms, each having its own specialized role that works to service the whole entity, yet is unable to exist on its own. In other words, the Giant Siphonophore is a "colonial life form." As I read this, I was again reminded of the concept of a virtual, yet integrated network.

Yes, I actually make these odd connections, but ideas can come from anywhere. By the way, the creature can be seen in the IMAX film, The Living Sea (available on DVD). Here's more info on the colonial nature of the Giant Siphonophore and it mutually dependent parts. Food for thought.

Inverse of ITIL Compliance Described ...

Description of service desk that fits the "inverse of ITIL" performance capability. George Spafford shares experience of what not to do and what could be better. This poor level of service is pretty common, not just in IT service desks, but especially acute in retail businesses. Good customer service is a differentiator, and it is not hard to differentiate yourself in that space, given the overall poor performance in many industries. ...

... "From an ITIL perspective, the Service Desk (SD) function is a vital one. It should serve as the single point of contact with customers and users to collect and distribute information both reactively and proactively, plus it should own the incident tickets to make sure they are properly managed. " ...

Inverse of ITIL Compliance Described: Via Datamation: Customer Disservice

Innovation and Project Management - Part 3 of 3

This is a continuation of Part 2, and shows how Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation is living proof that innovation and project management are not mutually-exclusive, and in fact, must coexist for true success.

In Part 1, we talked about the Learning Personas described in Kelley's book (the Anthropologist, the Experimenter, and the Cross-Pollinator). In Part 2, we discussed the Organizing Personas (the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director). Now we'll examine the final batch of personas, The Building Personas. Again, these are all adapted from Tom Kelley's book, which offers much more details and many real-life stories to illustrate these personas in action (and no, I don't get commission).

The Building Personas

7) The Experience Architect – Designs the customer experience, beyond just the functionality of a product. Comes up with new and creative ways to awe the customer, yet with the same basic product functionality. An example is Cold Stone Creamery, which creates an entertaining experience where the server mixes ice cream with any number of desired toppings on a slab of cold stone. The servers even put on shows. [my added comment is that The Experience Architect can learn from observing others, even in other genres, and as such can gain from the “Cross-Pollinator” and “Anthropologist” personas.]

8) The Set Designer – Creates a fun and vibrant physical working environment that can spark creativity and collaboration. Allows employees great latitude in their personal work spaces. Avoids dull, repetitive spaces. Creates formal and informal public spaces where people can collaborate and brainstorm, with all the appropriate supplies and accommodations.

9) The Caregiver – Anticipates customer needs before, during, and after the engagement, and goes above and beyond normal expectations. Makes it easy for the customer to select the right services, provides useful and quick information when needed, insures easy accessibility by the customer, and builds lasting relationships with the customer.

10) The Storyteller – Builds internal morale and external awareness through compelling stories and case studies that reinforce key values or traits. Builds “corporate legends” that get passed around. Not “spin doctors,” the storytellers get their stories from first-hand accounts from customers or employees. Storytelling builds credibility, unleashes people’s emotions, helps teams bond, and generates lessons learned.

Well, that concludes my summary of Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, and its applicability to project management. As you can hopefully see, what project manager wouldn't benefit from these learning, organizing, and building personas that can lead to a better customer experience, a more satisfied team, and a memorable result?

Sure, we can (and should) still define the scope of the project, manage changes to the agreed-upon scope, and use project scheduling and budgeting techniques (we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater). But we can take our projects to the next level with a strong dose of innovation, and these personas are as good a way to do that as any.

Why Projects are Late; The Top Six Reasons

Here are the top six reasons why projects are late and what we can do about it...

1) Unrealistic Deadlines - As we've reported here before, this is one of the most frequently overlooked reasons for late projects---and unfortunately, often the last thing people look at.

Solution: It's imperative for a project manager to defend the right plan and not give in to pressure to sacrifice good principles. If necessary, negotiate to time-box the project into multiple phases.

2) Customer/Partner Availability - I've seen numerous project managers over the years talk about the challenges they face keeping a project on schedule when they're waiting on a customer or business partner to do testing or sign off on some deliverable.

Solution: Set milestones, monitor progress, and raise an issue if the lack of availability will cause a delay. If necessary, negotiate a new project baseline---which may be quite appropriate if the customer and/or steering team agrees that a delay is acceptable.

3) Resource Availability - There's nothing worse than putting together a reasonable schedule only to have your key resources pulled off into different directions, but it happens more often than we care to admit.

Solution: Try to obtain full commitment up front for your resources' time. Even so, unexpected conflicts will happen. Same as #2 above, set milestones, monitor progress, and raise an issue if needed. Again, negotiation may be necessary, which can result in getting your resources back or in setting a new project baseline to accommodate the new priorities.

4) Uncertainty - Especially in the IT field, uncertainty is a given. At any time, unexpected circumstances may cause project delays.

Solution: Use rolling wave scheduling, planning the whole project from a high level, but only the nearest 90-day horizon in detail. Try agile approaches as well, aiming for prototypes and frequent iterations. Ideally, pilot the project, and aim for vertical rollouts (one group at a time). Build contingency into your schedule for known risks. Most of all, manage stakeholder expectations.

5) Management Decision - Sometimes, management makes a conscious decision to delay a project, either for strategic needs, changes in priorities, or any number of reasons.

Solution: If the delay is a management or customer decision, a new project baseline should be saved, with current metrics based on that. Note that it's also important to keep the original baseline, as that offers a different set of measures (mostly around organizational alignment).

6) Poor Estimates - Sometimes a project is late simply because tasks were underestimated or omitted from the schedule. Although this is not always the cause of project delays (and rarely the only cause), it tends to be the first one people look at.

Solution: Build experience and capture historical data by project category and activity. If the data isn't categorized it won't be useful. Create and maintain checklists of items to consider. Build project schedule templates. The most frequently overlooked areas in IT are: training, data-loading, cutover preparation, system network testing, adequate QA testing, and documentation.

ITIL CRM Solution: Amdocs

Compucom leverages Amdocs ITIL-compliant CRM solution to provision services. ...

... "CompuCom Systems, Inc. has selected Amdocs CRM to help deliver support to its enterprise customer base. CompuCom Systems is a leading Information Technology (IT) managed services provider that offers IT outsourcing, application development, systems integration, and consulting, as well as the procurement and management of hardware and software. CompuCom provides outsourced 24-hour help desk support services to Fortune 1000 companies, as well as hardware and software repair services utilizing the company's 3,100 field service technicians. To deliver an enhanced customer experience, the company chose to partner with Amdocs. Amdocs has pioneered Integrated Customer Management (ICM) - a strategy designed to help service providers worldwide deliver a better customer experience by placing the customer at the center of everything a service provider does.

CompuCom is currently using several modules of the Amdocs CRM suite of products, including customer support, contract management and quality assurance, to manage the entire customer lifecycle from proactive remote device management through the delivery of onsite field services. Amdocs CRM consolidates all customer data onto a single, unified platform that can be integrated into existing back-office systems, allowing CompuCom to easily access customer information and increase response times to help desk requests. One of the main reasons CompuCom chose to adopt Amdocs CRM is that it is ITIL-compliant. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) represents a set of best practices around the support and delivery of IT services, including guidelines surrounding customer service and service management implementation, designed to align IT with business objectives. " ...

ITIL CRM Solution: Amdocs: Via Amdocs: Amdocs Expands Partnership with CompuCom Systems to Deliver an Enhanced Customer Experience to CompuCom's Enterprise Customers

Project Software: Hosted Solutions Require Network Monitoring and Optimization

The future of software is in the utility computing model, such as hosted applications. Matt Hamblen shares the experience of managing networks when leveraging a hosted architecture for project management software. ...

... "More than 250 Perini workers at the company's headquarters use project management software called Expedition, which is hosted by application services provider LoadSpring Solutions on servers accessed over T1 links in a WAN. " ...

Via Computerworld > Radio killed the internet star - until builder downgraded quality

Evaluating Project Tradeoffs: Some Guidelines for Success

Anyone familiar with PMI principles knows the triple contraint of time, cost, and scope, and the fact that it can be used when negotiating tradeoffs. You're probably also familiar with additional tradeoffs, such as quality/grade, risk, customer satisfaction (if that's even a variable), etc.

When negotiations come to a grinding halt, we also have some other proven tools to keep in our back pocket, including:

• Fast Tracking (doing some tasks in parallel that would usually be done sequentially, which of course should be used carefully since it can add risk)
• Crashing (loosely defined as analyzing alternatives to compress the duration for the least amount of additional cost, but typically interpreted as adding resources or forcing overtime, which carries risk and adds more cost than people realize)
• Time-boxing (reducing functionality for the first release and moving it to a future release)
• Problem solving (i.e. considering other approaches to solve the root problem)

In my experience, the two methods that work best by far are time-boxing and problem solving, usually in that order, and often in combination. I also find that time tends to be the most frequently stated hard constraint, with scope and even cost somewhat more flexible (although the requester rarely admits that).

Usually, scope is the most flexible (some argue over semantics of scope vs. features/functions, vs. deliverables vs. sphere of implementation, but I tend to lump it all under "scope").

And of course, when it comes to overarching priorities, I always fall back to my own tried and true "two-sentence principle", which I stated a few weeks ago:

Speed is more important than cost. And success (in whatever form that takes) is more important than speed.

In countless IT projects, these guidelines have served me well. I'd be curious about others experiences when making tradeoffs, especially in other industries.

IT Service Delivery Management: Excellence Model

Ah!, the sweet taste of ITSM IT services management ... Hershey's adopt Sun Micro's service excellence model to improve the delivery of business value. Sun has developed a portfolio of aligned IT services, called SunTone. ...

IT Service Delivery Management: Excellence Model: Via Sun Microsystems: The Hershey Company Continues To Use Sun Microsystems' SunTone Service Excellence Model to Improve IT Service Delivery Management ...

... "Sun Tone is part of Sun's integrated portfolio of aligned services that provide IT infrastructure planning, assessments, and resolution services for customer business issues. SunTone helps enterprises derive greater business value from IT, transforming IT from a support function to a provider of business-led services that create competitive advantage. SunTone Service Excellence Model provides guidance and a measurement system for Sun Tone users. The new SunTone Service Excellence Model 3.0 brings advancements in industry standard and regulatory compliance, major enhancements in security, greater manageability, and requirements for financial management.

By adopting the SunTone Service Excellence Model and consistently operating enterprise data center services in accordance with SunTone certification requirements, Hershey was able to improve service availability and operational efficiency. Hershey was also able to reduce the time and effort required to meet requirements for IT governance. Hershey's experience is representative of a current global market trend to adopt IT service management (ITSM) principles to improve IT governance, compliance, drive operational efficiencies and derive greater business value from IT. The SunTone Service Excellence Model covers all the elements involved in delivering IT services -- system architecture, operational processes, and human skills. " ...

The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) is a leading snack food company and the largest North American manufacturer of quality chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery products. With revenues of over $4 billion and more than 13,000 employees worldwide, The Hershey Company markets such well-known brands as Hershey's, Reese's, Hershey's Kisses, Kit Kat, Almond Joy, Mounds, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, and Mauna Loa, as well as innovative new products such as Take 5 and Hershey's Cookies.

Seamless Project Management System: Enables Accelerated Drug Development Process

Seamless Project Management System: Enables Accelerated Drug Development Process: Via Aptuit: Aptuit Vaults to Sector Leadership, Unveils New Global Management Team ...

Aptuit assembles leadership team, integrates acquisition(s), and builds foundation of project management process and system technology to accelerate the drug development lifecycle. ...

... "The new management team will guide Aptuit’s staff of nearly 2,000 people, a workforce composed of highly experienced professionals who will spearhead resources from seven global facilities that generated total revenues of over $200 million and served over 250 clients in the last year. Additionally, the management team will oversee the industry’s first seamless IT system that enables end-to-end customer-accessible project management and test data. " ...

Aptuit, Inc. is an emerging company focused on streamlining and supporting the drug development process for biotechnology and pharmaceutical innovators. The company was founded by a group of industry experts with extensive market experience who have a track record of building a similar, highly successful company through acquisitions and investment. Aptuit will provide a comprehensive suite of product development services and competencies to biotechnology companies and large, fully integrated pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Aptuit’s mission is to engineer a better drug development process, and is partnered with Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, one of the world’s largest private equity investors.

Advanced Software Project Estimation: Parametric Algorithms Knowledge Bases

Advanced Software Project Estimation: Parametric Algorithms Knowledge Bases: Galorath Incorporated: Booz Allen Hamilton Case Study ...

Galorath Inc offers advanced parametric techniques to software project estimation that leverage sophisticated knowledge bases ...

... "A similar approach is used to estimate software development costs. The first step is to gather information about the project, such as the software development process, the use of object oriented or structured analysis development methods, the staff experience levels, the software module sizes (lines of code or function point count), and the schedule and price constraints. Again, Booz Allen estimators work with software engineers to begin building the SEER-SEM model by characterizing the software system and its modules using various technical and programmatic parameters. " ...

SEER-PPMC enables project managers to use software project plans for accurate tracking and forecasting. Because it is fully integrated with SEER-SEM™, users can create and track project plans in a single, easy to understand environment. Included with the SEER-SEM Project Manager Edition bundle, PPMC expands the SEER functionality to provide a complete solution for project managers and decision makers. SEER-PPMC is currently available from Galorath Incorporated. For more than 25 years, engineers, project managers and cost estimators throughout the world have turned to Galorath Incorporated for the industry’s most comprehensive set of decision-support and process management tools. Combined with extensive consulting and support services, Galorath’s SEER estimation and analysis tools derive cost, schedule and staffing estimates by assessing the interaction and impact of product, organizational and even operational variables. This parametric methodology, coupled with the industry’s most comprehensive knowledge bases, creates a rapid and powerful view of the critical factors driving program decisions and success from early concepts through upgrade and maintenance phases.