Category: Business Transformation

Date: 23/08/2022

Subject: BPI & ERP Levers for Project Success

Audience: LinkedIn

Topic: No one ever wants their projects to fail, and projects have lots and lots of things to do - they are busy, busy places; but the focus points or levers for Before, During, and After (BDA) the project make all the difference in the world.

It is these ‘BDA Levers’ working together that make a BIG difference to successful outcomes.

➡️ Governance: Regardless of the size and complexity of the project, it is mandatory that appropriate levels of corporate governance be put in place…… both the Problem and the Solution need to be completely owned and supported via a multi-level ownership capability within the organisation; not just the project.

➡️ Risk Oversight: Risk is not a set and forget activity. Some folk seem to think that once risks have been assessed, nothing further is required. All projects need a Risk Board that meets regularly, extends into the business, and reports the status of actionable treatment items to the Project Steering Committee and key Business Stakeholders. The Risk Board is critical to success and shall be discussed via a separate post soon.

➡️ Solution Integrity: Also known as Wholeness of Scope; this is focused on Deliverables and Outcomes in alignment with Corporate Strategies. We have used the familiar HoShin KanRi model here rather than a methodology so as to show that the project needs to be all about the business - the dot points in the model are listed considerations that need to be put in place or linked into the project.

➡️ Solution Continuity: Invariably, projects are scoped to deliver variable levels of ‘utility or staging’, eg. an application development project may be scoped to deliver an MVP-2 outcome with the assumption or mandate to move to MVP-3 in subsequent stages. Projects have a unique start and a unique finish; whereas, business is dynamic and solutions need to be planned to be optimised and extended so as to stay relevant post project.

➡️ Transition & Buy-in: The whole rationale for a project is to create ‘change or a new beginning’; the project itself usually does the ending of the current state quite well, but seldom do projects set up expectations and commitment for significant User Buy-in and continuous improvement. To be successful and gain expected traction, we need to start assessing impacts and transition planning with appointed business process owners and data owners early within the project timeline.

Overall, it doesn’t matter whether what project methodologies you use; Waterfall, Agile, Revolutionary, Evolutionary, Hybrid, or Disney Methodologies coupled to the latest innovative technologies; you need to get these 5 Levers working together in order to be successful.