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Archive for the ‘Project Management’ Category

How To Manage Technology Projects

24 mar

As your business grows, you will likely find more ways to use technology to increase production (and hopefully, profits). Making the decision to enhance your technology environment in order to achieve your business objectives is a necessary milestone, but it is equally important to identify the scope and budget of your project before jumping into implementation.

This article explains a phased approach that will help you maximize your budget and provide the greatest results when considering a technology enhancement.

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Phase I – Business Need

This initial phase is designed to help you determine if you have answered the « why » questions as it relates to your objectives. You should be able to clearly identify the business benefit (return on investment) for your potential project after completing this phase. Here are the steps that will guide you through this phase:

1. What is the problem/deficiency that needs your investment in time and money to be solved?

2. Does your business challenge absolutely require new or enhanced technology?

a.Do your employees require additional training with existing systems?
b.Can the challenge be solved by changing the workflow or business practices?

3. Once the problem is clearly defined and the solution points to technology improvements, a preliminary budget can be established.

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Phase II – Budget & Scope

In Phase I we qualified our potential solution within the realm of technology and now we need to define the scope of the solution. Without defining scope, you will run the risk of your project growing out of control in both time and money. This is the phase where you should spend the time to clearly document the business requirements or « what » will be implemented.

1. Bring all the necessary players together to discuss the objectives of the project.

2. Determine how the problem that was identified in Phase I affects all key players.

3. Discuss how the problem can be solved with technology and be specific as it relates to your current business practices and workflows.

4. Document your findings and discussions.

5. Once the solution has been identified, you can present your documents to your preferred vendor(s) and obtain proposals or quotes.

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Phase III – Pilot

Implementing any technology project can be challenging in that technology itself changes so quickly and your employees may have different expectations with the solution. A pilot phase is very effective to « test » the solution and confirm all expectations are met.

1. Once your vendor has been identified, you can request a pilot or trial solution be put into place for limited use to test results.

2. After the pilot solution is implemented, be sure to measure the effectiveness and verify that the problems in phase I are being solved.

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Phase IV – Implementation

So now you have confirmed that the pilot is solving some or all the problems identified in phase I, now you are ready to rollout the full solution. It is very important to closely manage your vendor and be sure they are delivering what they promised within their proposal.

1. Create a project plan that consists of key milestones for the implementation of your solution.

A sample plan is shown below:

* Project Kick-off
* Budget review
* Set timelines for remainder of project
* Determine training requirements
* Technology install/enhancement
* Document the changes in your existing workflow
* Create a forum for employees to provide feedback during this process
* Develop a suite of tests that verifies the newly installed technology does not break any existing processes.
* Develop a suite of tests that verifies the newly installed technology meet the expectation of the proposed solution.
* Insure your timelines are being met and budget is not growing.
* Implementation complete
* Begin training

2. After the solution has been installed, consolidate all the documents and training materials in one repository for quick reference.

Phase V – Project Review & Closure

Now that the technology solution has been successfully implemented and everyone has been trained, you will need to setup measures to ensure that the solution is effective.

1. Create an anonymous survey for employees to provide feedback.
a. Survey questions should include: overall project success, training materials and responsibility impact.

2. Develop metrics that can measure the profit and/or efficiency that was achieved as a result of this project. This will help you identify the true return on investment.

3. Continue to refine training.

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This phased approach for managing a technology project is meant to be a guide. There are many details within each phase that would be too lengthy to describe here. There are also many books that can assist with successfully managing any type of project, not only technology.

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Here is a website that is a great reference for project management:

http://www.pmi.org

 
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Business Process Re-engineering

29 sept

Business process re-engineering (BPR) sounds esoteric at best, and maybe a little pretentious. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say business process change?

Most people understand what a business process is but when you combine it with re-engineering, it suddenly sounds vague.

The ProSci-sponsored BPR Online Learning Center calls a business process “a set of activities that transform a set of inputs into a set of outputs (goods or services) for another person or process using people and tools.”

It is simple. The way we interpret that is:

  • there are many ways of doing business,
  • when one of those ways does not work or is considered to be ineffective it has to be improved,
  • certain elements are introduced to make it better (“inputs”),
  • those elements translate into a better product or service,
  • that product or service is supposed to serve another person (a customer, a supplier, a partner)

    • Business process flow chart

    That’s elementary enough, but why do business processes have to be re-engineered?

    It’s All About the Customer (and Competition)

    The philosophy behind business process re-engineering is to please the customer. By delighting him, we get to keep him, turning him into a loyal disciple.

    Rivals have a sneaky way of snatching customers away from us. It’s not because this world is full of sly and evil people, it’s because we tend to sit on our bottoms and think that we’ve finally got it made. We’ve become lax.

    Business process improvement, according to ProSci, is not be confused with business process re-engineering. Instead of improving on current processes, the re-engineering concept says that because the technique is no longer viable, it has to be replaced, abandoned. There’s a need to establish a clean slate, as the BPR Online Learning Center teaches us.

    Business process re-engineering, just like the DMAIC in Six Sigma, presupposes a series of stages: stage 1 involves a definition of the project – its rationale, objectives and scope. Stage 2 covers the entire learning process wherein we obtain as much information as we can about our employees, customers, suppliers and competitors – including non-competitors and align that new information with technology.

    Armed with this knowledge, the next stage – stage 3 – is to set up our mission. Others call it a vision of the future. This requires a new set of business processes. Once we’ve determined the desired outcome of this transition, we move on to the next stage which calls for a plan of action that allows us to measure the gap between our company’s present state and where we want it to go.

    When we get to this stage, solutions logically follow.

    If you’re still wondering what distinguishes business process improvement from business process re-engineering, think of the starting point: are you starting from an existing process and want to improve on it, or do you want to start from scratch?

    Thanks to Information Technology

    Jump to globalization. We’re ushering in new technologies and they’re coming faster than we can learn them. There’s also this whole new talk about customer relationship management (CRM) strategies. We’re huffing and puffing and bursting at the seams. Businesses that have not adapted to global trends or introduced newer technologies into their operations will be clobbered by the competition. Today’s companies cannot afford to sit back and watch while others struggle with changes in the industry.

    Thanks to information technology and the creation of new business models, the world of e-commerce has given new meaning to the way we do business.

    As Hui-Liang Tsai puts it, “e-commerce is no longer a way to gain competitive advantage, it is a competitive imperative.” (Information Technology and Business Process Re-engineering: New Perspectives and Strategies, Praeger Publishers, Connecticut, 2003).

    While companies are trying to keep up with technologies, customers are also changing. They are more demanding and are never satisfied. They fall out of love, and don’t necessarily have to explain why.

    Picture the speed with which information is transmitted with just a click of the mouse. It used to be that urgent documents had to be couriered by special messenger or faxed immediately; today, documents are electronically portable. Mr. Tsai says that this phenomenon alone is producing a new crop of workers – he calls them knowledge workers. We are looking at the transformation of industrial society into an information society.

    Progress in information technology is only one of the many reasons why companies have embraced business process re-engineering. If organizations desperately want to succeed, first they need information – truckloads of it. Second, they need to know how to turn that information to their advantage. The practice of business process re-engineering can refine a lot of that information into digestible parts.

     
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    10 Ways To Stimulate Employee Motivation

    30 jan

    Today’s fast-moving business environment demands that the effective manager be both a well-organized administrator and highly adept in understanding people’s basic needs and behaviour in the workplace. Gaining commitment, nurturing talent, and ensuring employee motivation and productivity require open communication and trust between managers and staff.

    1. Understand their behaviour
    People at work naturally tend to adopt instinctive modes of behaviour that are self-protective rather than open and collaborative. This explains why emotion is a strong force in the workplace and why management often reacts violently to criticisms and usually seeks to control rather than take risks. So, in order to eliminate this kind of perspective and to increase employee motivation, it is best that you influence behaviour rather than to change personalities. Insisting what you expect from your employees will only worsen the situation.

    2. Be sure that people’s lower-level needs are met.
    People have various kinds of needs. Examples of lower-level needs are salary, job security, and working conditions. In order to increase employee motivation, you have to meet these basic needs. Consequently, failures with basic needs nearly always explain dissatisfaction among staff. Satisfaction, on the other hand, springs from meeting higher-level needs, such as responsibility progress, and personal growth. When satisfaction is met, chances are employee motivation is at hand.

    3. Encourage pride
    People need to feel that their contribution is valued and unique. If you are a manager, seek to exploit this pride in others, and be proud of your own ability to handle staff with positive results. This, in turn, will encourage employee motivation among your people.

    4. Listen carefully
    In many areas of a manager’s job, from meetings and appraisals to telephone calls, listening plays a key role. Listening encourages employee motivation and, therefore, benefits both you and your staff. So make an effort to understand people’s attitudes by careful listening and questioning and by giving them the opportunity to express themselves.

    5. Build confidence
    Most people suffer from insecurity at some time. The many kinds of anxiety that affect people in organizations can feed such insecurity, and insecurity impedes employee motivation. Your antidote, therefore, is to build confidence by giving recognition, high-level tasks, and full information. In doing so, you only not refurbish employee motivation but boost productivity as well.

    6. Encourage contact
    Many managers like to hide away behind closed office doors, keeping contact to a minimum. That makes it easy for an administrator, but hard to be a leader. It is far better to keep your office door open and to encourage people to visit you when the door is open. Go out of your way to chat to staff on an informal basis. Keep in mind that building rapport with your staff will effectively increase employee motivation.

    7. Use the strategic thinking of all employees.
    It is very important to inform people about strategic plans and their own part in achieving the strategies. Take trouble to improve their understanding and to win their approval, as this will have a highly positive influence on performance and increasing employee motivation as well.

    8. Develop trust
    The quality and style of leadership are major factors in gaining employee motivation and trust. Clear decision making should be coupled with a collaborative, collegiate approach. This entails taking people into your confidence and explicitly and openly valuing their contributions. By simply giving your staff the opportunity to show that you can trust them is enough to increase employee motivation among them.

    9. Delegate decisions
    Pushing the power of decision-making downward reduces pressure on senior management. It motivates people on the lower levels because it gives them a vote of confidence. Also, because the decision is taken nearer to the point of action, it is more likely to be correct. Consequently, by encouraging them to choose their own working methods, make decisions, and giving them responsibility for meeting the agreed goal will encourage employee motivation among your staff.

    10. Appraising to motivate
    When choosing methods of assessing your staff’s performance, always make sure that the end result has a positive effect on employee motivation and increases people’s sense of self-worth. Realistic targets, positive feedback, and listening are key factors.

    If you follow these simple steps in increasing employee motivation, rest assured you will have a good working relationship with your staff at the same time boost you company’s productivity. Just bear in mind that people are employed to get good results for the company. Their rates of success are intrinsically linked to how they are directed, reviewed, rewarded, trusted, and motivated by the management.

     
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    Posted in Management, Project Management

     
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