3.Under way and in jeopardy
4.Not started
5.“Major concerns”
12:15 Lunch
p.m.
1:00
REVISED PROJECT PLAN
1.Project charter, scope, and phases
2.Schedule and key deliverables
3.Dependencies and/or competing priorities
2:30
Break
4.Team roles and responsibilities
5.Priority-setting mechanism
6.Executive committee project involvement
4:50
SUMMARY and FEEDBACK
5:00
Close
AGENDA FOR DAY TWO
8:00
Continental Breakfast
a.m.
8:30
REVIEW MATERIALS FROM DAY ONE
(Confirm and edit the
document)
9:30
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
10:00 Break
10:15 CONTINGENCY PLANNING
11:15 COMMUNICATION PLAN
(a) Project team
(b) Executive committee
12:15 Lunch
p.m.
1:00
(c) Business units
(d) External stakeholders
(e) “Other communication factors”
2:30
Break
2:45
PROBLEM-RESOLUTION PROCESS
3:15
ACTION PLAN
– next 30 days
– next 60 days
4:00
WORKSHOP REVIEW
Log any Action items and prepare summary
4:30
PRESENTATION TO EXECUTIVE SPONSOR(S)
4:50
Feedback and acknowledgments
5:00
Close
Dave Doyle, ERP project manager, has been with Cenemex for five years, all of it in corporate IT. He has earned the respect of CIO Belinda King, a fast-track executive who has been with the company just under two years. Belinda knows that a successful outcome of this ERP project will place her firmly in the running for an executive VP slot within the next 18 mo nths.
Of the 14 full-time corporate IT project team members, about half are highly technical and work independently on most projects. The other half is split roughly between seasoned project managers and individual contributors who spend most of their time as part of project teams. In addition to the core team members, another eight to 12 field IT professionals make up the “extended” team.
The project, slated to last between 18 and 24 months, has been blessed by the executive committee members, who have high hopes that a successful ERP will provide the competitive advantages they need to sustain profitability. Belinda had persuaded them that for a $22M investment, Cenemex could expect to see dramatic reductions in manufacturing and distribution costs, significant increases in revenue, and a 50 percent decrease in the “time to order” to “time to cash.”
With help from Belinda and one of the more senior project team members, Dave pulls together a two-day project kickoff meeting. His overall objective: To get the project off to a smooth start by agreeing on fundamentals such as project goals, scope, roles and responsibilities, and critical success factors. He would also like to use this off-site session as an opportunity for team-building, given that some of the team members have not worked well together in the past.
Included are the core team members, four of the remote IT team members, and two consultants from the systems integration company that will participate in the early stages of the project.
TIME WASTER 1: VAGUE OR CONFLICTING PROJECT
DEFINITION AND SCOPE
Once Belinda rallies the troops with a rousing introduction, she leaves Dave to run the rest of the meeting. After leading group introductions and making welcoming comments, Dave gets down to business by reviewing the project definition and scope.
This part, he had guessed, would be the easiest. After all, everyone had received a copy of the project plan proposal that Belinda had presented to the executive committee.
The 15 minutes that he has mentally allotted to this part soon expands into a heated three-hour discussion. Among the questions that emerge (one often over another): How was this related to other past and current projects? How could an ERP
application really deliver the kind of benefits quantified in Belinda’
s proposal? Was
this project not going to be just like the one that poor Joe tried to launch a couple of years ago (the one that cost him his job)? Who determined when the project would be “complete”? Is this scope realistic for this group to achieve in the agreed-upon time frame?
After allowing this conversation to run on through lunchtime, Dave throws up his hands and asserts that the scope as written in the project proposal was the one they were going to live with. End of story. As they break for lunch, team members express varying degrees of frustration, confusion, anger, and resignation. Most leave feeling that their questions and concerns had gone unheard, and that they will have far less influence in the project than they had hoped.
Among the likely results: Team members will tune out the rest of the meeting. Most are likely to disengage from the project before it starts. Without a clear agreement about what the project will accomplish or include, the scope will continually expand and contract, wreaking havoc with the schedule, leaving team members vulnerable to accusations of slipped deadlines and missed expectations. Changes will be requested, and without criteria regarding what belongs and what does not, the project is likely to grind to a halt at several junctures along the way (see Exhibit 4).
Exhibit 4. When to Bring in an External Facilitator
No one on the team is regarded as neutral and able to demonstrate impartiality
Project team members all need to participate fully in the working session Issues are likely to be contentious and will require an expert who can deflect
prob lems and keep the group focuses
A sense of urgency makes it imperative that sessions are planned and delivered rapidly
There is recognition that a trained facilitator can get more out of the team than any existing members
TIME WASTER 2: LACK OF CLEARLY ARTICULATED
EXPECTATIONS
Two months after the now-infamous kickoff meeting, Dave feels that despite a rocky start, the project seems to be running pretty smoothly. Few people have aired any issues at the biweekly team meetings and even fewer have reported any problems to him. Most team members say they are on target to meet agreed-upon milestones.
One day, as Dave is passing through the cafeteria, he catches wind of a spirited conversation a few team members are having at a table in a far corner. He is stunned by what he hears:
§ “My deliverables are complete for this month. Now I can take it easy for the next week or two …”
§ “How can you say that? I’
m depending on you to complete a whole host of
other deliverables before I can ma ke any progress. You’
re not even close to
finishing!”
§ “Hey, no one ever told me I was responsible for those things. As far as I am concerned, someone else is doing all of that.”
§ “Well, who do you think is working on it?”
§ “To tell you the truth, I don’
t know. Ask me if I care.”
§ “You know something? I don’
t think any of us really knows exactly what the
other one is doing. Wouldn’
t you think that Dave would be concerned?”
§ “Nah. He’
s just happy he can tell Belinda that everything is going just fine. I think the guy’
s oblivious to what we’
re really doing — or not doing.”
§ His knees turning to jelly, Dave makes his way back to his office and does a quick calculation of how much time has been lost with team members waiting on missed deliverables, which are apparently not on anyone’
s radar screen.
Then he realizes that this cafeteria conversation included only three project team members. Would he have to multiply the time lost by three or four, if all members feel the same way?
TIME WASTER 3: COMPETING PRIORITIES
As the project chugs along in fits and spurts, more demands are placed on team members as business priorities change. In some cases, the business sponsor for the ERP project is adding new requirements to list that is now so long, the project time could litera lly double as a result. Since no one has said anything to the contrary, the business sponsor is fully expecting all requirements to be fulfilled.
At the same time, business sponsors of other projects are complaining loudly that their needs are going unmet. They insist on stealing “just a little” time from ERP
project team members to get their own projects on track. Because the ERP project team is “virtual” in nature, many members actually report directly to the business units that fund them. They agree to devote some time to their business units over the coming months. In most cases these agreements are tacit. Dave is unaware that he has lost up to a day a week from many key team members.
When Belinda asks Dave for a project update, he confesses that they are way behind schedule. When pressed for a reason, Dave scratches his head. He allows that the project scope has expanded somewhat, but that none of his team members had raised any red flags as a result. He also acknowledges that some of his team members may be spending time on other projects, but he thought this time was negligible.
Belinda keeps her anger in check as she suggests to Dave that he and the team regroup immediately and pinpoint all problems that are causing these delays and develop action plans to solve these problems. She wants a report by the end of the week