centene, flowserve, and shaw Industries: relationships , collaboration, and project success
managed care provider centene has just finished deploying a new financial system. CiO donpeoplesoft modules as well as finnancial planning and reporting software from hyperion, was completed "very quickly" in 12 mounths and on budget.
imholz believes the project was successful for a number of reasons, including that the company implemented proven technology and hired a systems intergrator to help who was experienced with peoplesoft. most importantly, imholz says the project was successful because of "good teaming between the IT organization, the finance organization and the systems intergration resources."
in other words, much of the project's success came down to people skills.
the comnstructive relationship between IT and finnance and in particular, between imholz and centene's cfo, william scheffel ultimately kept the project on track when the going got tough
and it did get tough.
for example, at one point, the project team was having trouble setting up the technical environment needed to deploy a hyperion module that a third-party was going to host. the diffculties that IT encountered put the project's schedule at risk, say imholz.
had the relationship betwwen IT and finance been acrimonious, the organizations would have pointed fingers at each other a counterproductive move that would have further delayed the project. Instead, say imholz, they worked togerher to recover the lost time and keep the implementation on schedule.
"we could have lamed each other and told each other we can't help," says the cio. "but there's no value in doing that. It delays getting to the solution. If IT or finnance tried
to recover the schedule alone it wouldn't have happened.; we had to do it togerher."
good relatyionships between IT and business partners,project managers and IT staff, and project managers andstakeholders keep IT projects on teack, say IT leaders and project management experts.
Bad relationships, however, are a leaders cause of project failure
faced with mounting operational and regulatory pressures, linda jojo, flowserve’s cio, knew it was time to simplify the company’s entire IT infrastructure an endeavor that would bring about sweeping changes across an enterprise spanning more than 56 countries.
At flowserve, a would leader in the supplying of pumps valves, seals, automation, and sevices to the power , oil, gas, chemical , and other industries, jojo’s assignment was heravy on IT change as the company sought to udate processes and systems: establishing a common IT infrastructure, introducing global help desh capabilliteies, and cutting dozens of disparate erp systems. But that didn’t stop her from taking a decidedly business approach to something we talk about in terms of its business impact.”
“the first step was making sure that this wasn’t viewed as an IT project,” say jojo. “fromour ceo, our leadership team and our board of directors on down, we talk about in terms of its business impact.”
It’s a tactic that helped set the scope for a project that could have otherwise become unwieldy. For starters, jojo helped assemble 35 divisional representatives from across the globe at the company’s world headquarters. Here, holed up in a conference room for 17 weeks, these divisionalrepresentatives pored over disparate systems and processes, deciding what was and wasn’t worthy of improvement.
Throughout this period, flowserve also called on internal subject-matter experts, from enginerrs to sale representatries, to offer their in the trenches take on the company’s shortcomings.
The result: a blueprint for business standards, the desigbn of a common financia l chart of accounts, and the creation of a set of data standards for customers and suppliers. In addition to creating project perimeters, jojo says that by involving business leaders in the critical design phase, sghe was able to garner widespread support for a companywide strategic business initiative costing more than $60 million over four years.
“I’ve seen projects that should have been successful fail purely because of relationship issues,’ SAYS Greg Livingston director of IS planning and system development at shaw industries, a flooring manufacturer.
On the other hand, when muntual trust exists between IT project mangers and stakeholders.” IT project mangers are more likely to discuss problems that could threaten the project as they arise,” say IMholz. If bad blood exists between the two groups, project managers may not be inclined to point out those issues, or they may try to cover them up.
“if you look at projects thast faill, invariably someone on those projects knew things were going bad,” say imholz. “if you don’t have relationships and trust, those things don’t surface. And when you don’t do something about problems in a timely manner, those problems invattiably get bigger. In many cases, minor problems become more serious because they’re not addressed in a timely manner. A culture of openness is absolutely essential to good project performance.”
Furthermore, when something does go wrong with a project, business partners are less likely to place the sole blame for them on IT if they respect iT, says shaw Industries’s Livningston, In fact, they, they’re more likely to give IT some leeway with the project schedule, he says.
“It doesn’t matter what technology you’re using, how talented your technology staff is and how knowledgeable the business partners are on process and business improvement: Every system initiative will have issues,” say Livingston “If you don’t have a relationship, you resort to pointing fingers as opposed to being transparent and admitting ‘ we messed up’ or ‘we didn’t test that as well. ‘ if you have a good relationships, you’ll sit down and find a way to make it work.”
Decisions affecting the project also get made more promptly when everyone involved gets along. “fast and good decisions are crucial to keeping projects on track,” says imholz. “the failure of senior people to make decisions means decisions are made at lower levels of the organization. If you have a software developer who’s waiting for a decision on a business requirement, there’s three things that can happen: He can guess what to do and guess right. He can wait for a decision and while to do and guess right. He can wait for a decision and while he’s waiting he’s not as productive. Third, he can guess and guess wrong. If those are equal possibilities, two-thirds of the time it will be detrimental to the project. And if you stack enough of those decisions on top of each other, it will negatively impact the project.”
Despite the positive impact good relationships have on project management, IT project managers rely more heavily on software and methodologies than on building relations when they need to improve theiur delivery. It’s no wonder: compared with the time it takes to build relationships, software seems like a quick fix. IT project managers are also most comfortable with tools.
Shaw industries’s Livingston is using scrum, an agile software development practice, to improve relationships between IT and business partners and ensure project success. With scrum, says Livingston, business partners meent with IT during a four- to eight-hour planning meeting to look at all the projects in the backlog and to jointly determine which one will bring the greatest value to shaw industries. IT then divides the project into sprints – 30 day increments of work. When it completes a sprint, business partners assess it’s progress and suggest any necessary changes.
“the agile development methodology, just by design, promotes better relationships,” sats Livingston. “scrum and agile force interaction on a more frequent basis. By doing so, it delivers soluitions on an incremental basis to the business, as opposed to the waterfall method, where it’s a year and a half before the business sees the fruits of an initiative.”
Livingston say it’s not necessary for IT and other business functions to get along swimmingly for agile to work effectively. Agile can work even if there’s initial tension between the groups, he says. “we’ve had groups with troubled relationships, and certainly initial meetings are not always effective out of the gater,” he says/ “but at least we can agree that we’re going to focus on 15 key items in the next 30 days, and at the end of the 30 days, we’ll get back to you.”
The process forces it and business partners to prioritize projects togerher and agree on the 15 item it will complete in 30 days. Scrum also then drives it’s behavior. At the end of that 30 days, it has to show something for its work. Scrum makes it accountable to the business
When business partners see it making tangible progress every 30 days, their confidence in it grows. Says Livingston,”If the business partner sees results more frequently than they usesd to, relationships can get better. Agile promotes better relationships just by forcing a process, forcing interaction.”
Between the structure that scrum imposes and the relationships that grow out of it, project delivery improves. Livingston says shaw industries is seeing this happen: “better collaboration results In better value for the business,” he says.