How to run a successful IT project.

Defining what you want

Running a successful IT project is more than just purchasing a piece of software.  Buying the Solution is just the beginning, getting it to do what you want it to is the challenge.

So where do you start?  In our experience you will need to address the following questions:

1. What business problem/s are you trying to address/resolve/remove?
2. What impact on the business do you want this ‘change/s’ to have?
3. Do you have a budget in mind of how much you would like to spend?
4. Do you have the right mix of people with the relevant skill sets and time to dedicate to a project?

If you can generally say yes to the above then you have the makings of a project. 

The next step is to setup a team of people with the right skills and knowledge of how your business operates. Having the right mix allows you to cover every possible eventuality when selecting an appropriate technology solution.  You need a project manager who is business and technically savvy as well as the appropriate line managers and a technical architect.

One of the main reasons why IT projects fail is the lack of understanding of your needs between you and the IT supplier. If you follow the next few steps to get your specific requirements defined at an early stage.

Define your Requirements:

• Start reviewing your current working practices, in terms of people, process and technology, in the areas you have identified as needing change. This may involve creating process maps, running business function workshops, talking to your customers and your suppliers
• Identify the business ‘pain’ and the impact of that pain on your efficiency and cost
• Look for how to improve the efficiency of the process – what can you do to make an improvement, i.e. change the process, change the technology, change the workflow, change the skills of the people doing them?  This is a very important step
• Redesign the process to ensure it not only eliminates the business problem but also improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the process.
• Now you have identified what you want to do and why, the next step is to start thinking about the technology you could buy which would automate these new working practices
• Never fit your requirements to a technology, rather fit the technology to your requirements. You need to start thinking about allocating a budget to the project.  You can do this by reviewing how much systems cost, understanding what you need to do to make the appropriate changes and build in some contingency (well, it’s better to over budget then under budget!)
• Create a project plan and make sure your project team has time to do their tasks
• Put together a list of critical success criteria that the company requires to measure the projects success and communicate the project objectives and benefits to the whole organisation – let them all know what is going on and how it will benefit them – it helps the change management process.

You have now defined your business requirement, documented your new way of working, communicated it to the whole organisation, and put a project delivery team in place, each with a specific role and set of tasks. They have the time to do their tasks and everyone has agreed the measures of success. This is a key milestone in the project, get it right and the project will flow, get it wrong and the chance of success is limited…..

Finding a suitable technology and supplier

How do you go about articulating what you want in a language a supplier can understand?  Start by documenting a detailed technical specification.

A technical specification is a document that defines the functional, technical and user interface requirements at quite a detailed level.  I know that sounds pretty technical and I suppose to a certain degree it is, but its usefulness should never be underestimated.  Ideally you need someone on your project team who is technically aware as well as business savvy to relate business and technology.  If you don’t have this skill in-house we strongly recommend that you invest in getting outside help if necessary to help produce this specification.

Producing a technical specification involves:

• Documenting your new process flows, the workflow, the data flow, and the new data model
• Once you’ve created this document, pull from it a little bit of detail to create a Request for Information (RFI), i.e. a brief on what you want from a solution, This is normally a 2 to 3 page document which includes a small brief on your company, what you are looking to do from a business level and a high level overview of your requirements
• At this point it is also advisable to create an ITT (invitation to tender) that gives all of the details, i.e. technical specification, process flows, user interface requirements, and big picture. This document is critical for a later stage, i.e. when the shortlisted suppliers respond in detail to your requirements. It also allows you the flexibility to take your requirements to any supplier and get a fixed cost bid.

If you do all of the above, potential suppliers will understand exactly what you want and be able to respond to your tender with a much more focussed and detailed proposal. Next step is to start looking for suitable suppliers with a suitable technology.

How do you find a suitable supplier?

A common misgiving is that an off-the-shelf product is a ‘plug in and play’ solution – it rarely is, there is always a certain amount of customisation and configuration to do. Also, bespoke solutions are not always the more expensive option, depending on how you run your business it might turn out to be the only and most cost effective way, as you do really get a solution that meets your requirements.
Unfortunately, finding the right solution can be an onerous and time consuming task. However our sister company (IT Shortlist) takes that pain away from you.  They have access to over 800 of top UK suppliers and can easily identify several solutions which will meet you requirements.  Best of all this service is free.
Once IT-shortlist has identified a definitive shortlist of suppliers (usually around 6 but can be anything from 3-9), take them through a two stage selection exercise;

• IT-shortlist will organise your first round of meetings to let you see the best solutions available in the market today, this first meeting will be fairly brief and will allow you to see if the suppliers understand your high level requirements and explain to you how they might meet them
• It is important to consider the long term relationship between you and the supplier. You have to get on with each other as a sour relationship could have a detrimental impact should the solution ever break down.  Once you have met them all, reviewed their responses, played with their solution, it is now time to shortlist 3 of them.
• Send the 3 your ITT – make sure they have access to your project team who can address all of their questions while they respond.  Put together a selection criteria by which the suppliers will be evaluated. This usually includes the supplier’s; financial stability, the technologies they use, where have they implemented similar projects before and how well their solution meets your functional and technical requirements. What are the implementation costs, and the 5 year overall cost of ownership.  Review the SLA’s to make sure they provide the support your business needs.  We appreciate that this can be quite a difficult thing to do and manage so it may be worth getting expert help.
• Once you have received their responses, review and rate them against your selection criteria.  We also recommend that you ask them to present to your project team. Don’t ask them to present their proposal, rather give them 3 or 4 process areas and ask them to show you how their solutions will address them.  Consider how well the solution will deliver what you want it to so look beyond the style of presentation.

Hopefully, you will be able to select one supplier who you think has the solution that meets your requirements and has the approach that you could work with. They should now provide you with all of the contracts and commercials.  It is a good idea to have an expert to review them to make sure there are various warranties in place, e.g. ‘the supplier agrees to deliver a solution that meets the following requirements, if it fails to then the supplier agrees to do the following to rectify it…’ we are always surprised by how many companies sign contracts which do not mention that the supplier will deliver something that works!

You are now at the stage having chosen your preferred supplier to start the design, build and implementation stages….

Implementing the solution

While most software suppliers will do a competent job of matching their software to your technical specification, they may not possess the skills (and are not contractually obliged) to ensure that the software is used effectively (or used at all!). There are significant “transition” issues for which the supplier is not responsible.  These include ensuring that your staffs are trained and ready to switch to new ways of working on a given date, and finding a way to initialise the new system with a perfect understanding of how it works in your business.

You are now at the final stage of your project.  So far every stage has been important and this one is no different.  At this stage you will be paying for a solution that should do what you want it to do and in the way you want it to work.

This phase of work is usually split into 3 steps i.e. design, build and implementation.  Your chosen supplier will;

1.       Create a design document that details what they will deliver to you
2.       Configure the application to meet the design specifications
3.       Deliver the solution to you and wait to see if they need to make any changes to it prior to you signing it off and them getting paid in full
4.       Train people on how the application works but not on how the processes have changed.

The supplier is not responsible for ensuring that the system works in the manner in which you had envisaged, or that the data migrated is in the right format or that the new processes you have designed work. This is all down to you to manage.  Unfortunately many companies don’t realise this and therefore easily overlook the tasks they need to do to be ready for the new solution and in turn the project fails.

Design Step

It is the time for your project team to discuss and finalise their specific requirements in detail and to create the new process flows etc. so that when the ‘workshops’ happen with your supplier (they will insist on these as part of their process of creating a design specification – you should also insist on them doing it as it is the ‘contract’ of what they will deliver to you).

It is imperative that you get the design document right at this stage as changes further down the project will result in additional project time and cost.

In our experience, at this stage and when the end users see the application for the first time, they start thinking about what they specifically want from the new system and often start requesting certain functionality that might not be necessary or appropriate, or is impossible in the chosen solution. The change management aspect of the project begins here and the whole process needs to be facilitated to keep the main objectives of the project in focus. Having someone who understands the business as well as the technology helps immensely here.

A project governance structure needs to be put into place to run the project internally.  Your project manager will be responsible for producing the internal project plan against the supplier’s plan, defining all the tasks the internal team needs to carry out and by when. They communicate the plan to the team and manage the delivery of the tasks.  There will also be instances when the project manager will need to discuss ‘issues’ with the supplier and having someone who can talk at a technical level with the supplier’s developers is advantageous.

Build Step

The supplier will expect a single contact-point who can give them rapid and clear answers to questions that arise during the construction of the solution.  The contact needs to have both business process knowledge and technical requirements understanding to be able to liaise with the users and the supplier’s technical team.  You need to identify and/or train someone in your project team to fulfil this role.  It also gives you the skills to make sure the supplier is delivering what you have requested against your requirements

You need to put together a data migration plan.  This involves planning how to extract data from your existing systems given that the new processes and practices are going to be different in the new system.  It is normally necessary to make significant changes to data as it transfers between systems (and, often, to assemble data that is currently not collected at all) all done against a background of constantly changing information. It is recommended you seek advice on how to do this.

A supplier will test the solution to ensure that it meets their understanding of the specification.  If their understanding of the specification differs from you and your users the specification itself will not be completely correct.  You are advised to fully test the system before relying on and before you make the final payment to the supplier.  The project team will need to produce test scripts using the templates from the supplier (if they are available), setting up the testing environment, running the tests, identifying bugs or process issues, getting them resolved with the supplier’s developers.

Once you have completed all the tests and have decided that the solution does what you want it to do then you can make final payment to the supplier - not before then.

Implementation Step

A supplier will provide training in the use of their software.  But this only trains people on the mechanics of entering data.  Training in the use of the software needs to be given simultaneously with a description of changes in working practices.  These changes are often politically sensitive and have to be presented carefully.  A thorough training plan and training documentation need to be created so that every member of the client who will use the new solution is trained to the required level and has the supporting documentation to support it.

There are always problems that arise on the days before and after go-live.  Make sure you create a roll out plan that allows the solution to be implemented without causing any disruption to the business.  Once it has been implemented then your project team should be on hand to answer any questions/issues/problems/ the new end users have.  Having your own team on hand allows the adoption of the new solution to be smoother as the end users are more likely to listen to their colleagues.

You’re nearly there…. Remember what we mentioned in the first step? “measures of success” you should allow the new solution to run for a couple of weeks and have the project team on hand monitoring its performance.  If any of your objectives have not been delivered then a review of why they haven’t, can be carried out and a consultation with the supplier to make the appropriate changes  can take place.

Don’t be afraid to lead the supplier into running the project how you want it run and take control. Running your project as we have suggested is a good way of getting a return on your investment by improving your business in a more efficient and effective way.  Our approach allows you to ‘get what you paid for!”

We hope you found this article useful.  If you want any further information on how to run a successful IT project, contact us at info@it-pm.co.uk or call Asim Kazmi on 01787 282228