Managing Successful Programmes

Delivering successful IT-enabled business change (PDF), published by National Audit Office November 2006.

Summary

IT-enabled business change essential for reforming public services.

Many examples of failure, report examines 24 examples of success to draw out key factors, projects from £k20 to £M800+.

For the critical success factors identifies key questions to assess likelihood of success.

Critical Success Factors (and related questions)

Ensuring senior level engagement

• Is the board able to make informed judgements about the department’s capacity to manage change?
• Does the department have in place a decision making structure that will ensure strong and effective leadership of the IT-enabled business change?
• What incentives exist to drive performance?

Acting as an intelligent client

• Does the department have the necessary programme management skills?
• What is the natural division of duties between the Programme and Project Management Centre of Excellence and the Chief Information Officer?
• How will the department establish and promote an open and constructive relationship with suppliers?
• How clear is the department about the business process that it is seeking to change or develop?
• Does the technology exist to deliver the change?

Realising the benefits of change

• Beyond immediate technical success, how will wider benefits be secured?

I’ve just got my hands on Benefit Realisation Management: A Practical Guide to Achieving Benefits Through Change by Gerald Bradley.

I’ll blog key notes here as I dissect the book.

As Nick Spargo points out in the comments these links are now dead. If anyone can point to the modern equivalent, that would be appreciated.

A series of documents from the UK Directorate for Defence Acquisition about Benefits Realisation Management

• BENEFITS REALISATION MANAGEMENT – “All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask” [Word]
• Example benefits strategy [Word]
• Example of a populated benefits model [Powerpoint]
• Example of an initial benefits brief [Powerpoint]
• Example of analysis tools [Excel]
• Example of a benefits ranking model [Excel]
• Example of a Benefits Profile [Word]
• Example “Measures and Owners” brief [Powerpoint]
• Template for capturing measures and owners [Word]
• Simple Benefits Tracking Document [Word]

Via Brad Appleton’s excellent post of links to Agile Programme Management resources, a paper on Combining Agile Methods with Stage-Gate Project Management.

Based on studies in three engineering companies, the conclusion is that are benefits from both the management and engineering perspective.

Good things:

• Agile method add microplanning and day-to-day control to the stage-gate methods
• Engineering teams felt more in control of their work
• Stage-gate approach improves ability of agile methods to interact with other engineering teams, other functions (such as marketing) and senior management.

Things to watch out for:

• Need to manage expectations
• Challenge on large projects of finding a “customer representative” as required by Agile methods

The pre-work for the course consists of

• A copy of the Managing Successful Programmes book (wiki page)
  
• Two documents that form part of the “Telekom BV” case study
• A pre-course workbook