Business Initiatives and Projects

Organizations establish Business Initiatives to focus on and achieve business outcomes.  Examples of business outcomes could be 100% customer satisfaction, increase employee retention, reduce costs, etc.  To complete a Business Initiative and achieve the business outcome, one or many Projects can be struck.  There may be a technology project, a business process project, a reorganization project and/or a training project. Each of the Projects are to contribute to achieving the organization’s business outcome.  The overall Business Initiative helps to focus all of the Projects on accomplishing the desired business outcome.  The Projects are like pieces of a puzzle that must come together to support the big picture represented by the Business Initiative.

Testing Starts when the Project Starts

Building an effective test strategy and approach will have a significant impact on your project’s quality, timelines, and costs.  As part of the initial project planning, significant attention should be spent on designing an effective testing strategy that ensures not only the functionality is complete, but the overall solution achieves the desired business outcomes.  This includes testing for technical capabilities and business processes.

Develop Effective Regression Testing Early

The best time to discuss and develop an effective regression test case suite is during the original project test phase.  During this time, experienced resources are available to debate which test scenarios will produce the optimal balance between functional coverage and time/cost of regression testing.  Leveraging a subset of the test scenarios from the project to produce a regression test set will reduce the time and effort of future testing cycles and production break/fix occurrences.

Key Business Role in System Testing

Business resources that understand the underlying business drivers of the project should be included at every stage of testing. From the initial design and strategy discussions, through to the final sign off of User Acceptance Testing. This will reduce the risk that testing only focuses on functional system testing and misses testing for business outcomes.

Searching for the Best Solution

INTP consultants look for the best solution for our client, without drawing out the contract through unnecessary steps and extensions. We only recommend extensions when the scope has increased. We have had many more project contracts completed under budget than over!

Our past clients have been satisfied with this approach, evidenced by their requests for our return/repeat engagements to assist with another or different business requirement, opportunity, or problem.

Focusing your Project Steering Committee

In the early stages of a project, the Steering Committee meetings are often focused on providing a status of progress.  When the project reaches a challenging point (cost overruns, schedule slippage, etc.), the natural reaction is to increase the status reporting, either increasing frequency and/or increasing level of detail.  This creates additional strain and increases the energy that goes into preparing these updates, rather than focusing energies on managing the project back to health. The most valuable use of the Steering Committee at these times is responding to specific needs of the project. The meetings should be centered around “asks” and the outcomes of those asks.

Maintain Focus on Business Outcomes

“Business Outcomes” are related to future business results!  Sometimes project teams focus only on their project deliverables of project completion and acceptance and think that those are the “outcomes”.  In doing this the initial business drivers for the solution, are missed or forgotten.

Test Plans using Entry/Exit Criteria

Using a set of well defined and endorsed entry/exit criteria is an excellent way to manage moving from one test cycle to the next.  However, for this approach to be effective, the project governance must understand that it is making the decision to have quality take precedence over schedule and cost.  In order to manage time and cost, it usually means making judgements around where and when to override entry/exit criteria.

Who runs your PMO?

Running a program involves policy, process, and people coming together to effectively monitor and manage the execution of a program.  INTP believes that the best run projects are those where the PMO has an effective governance structure that combines appropriate client and vendor accountabilities.  When these accountabilities are clearly defined in a “Terms of Reference”, members of the PMO are able to contribute in the best interests of the program, regardless of their corporate affiliation.

Project vs. Operating Budget

Financial management of a project is different than managing an operating budget.  Where an operating budget is usually defined by a fixed fiscal period, a project budget is defined by deliverables outlined in a project plan.  It becomes important to monitor project spend relative to project progress.  Where an operating budget is typically impacted by head count and support contracts, a project budget is impacted by level of activity through the life of the project.  There is an increased need to forecast activity level remaining to ensure funds are available through to project completion.