A Truly Path-Based Approach

This month’s edition (March 2008) of the Harvard Business Review contains an article by David Upton and Bradley Staats called ‘Radically Simple IT’. It proposes an approach to implementing new IT systems that is preferable to the ‘big bang’ or ‘incremental’ methods favoured by most organisations.

The ‘Big Bang’ method involves spending a long period of time developing a system and then implementing it in one foul sweep. This clearly is problematic as the new system may end up being ‘legacy from the day it is turned on’. The incremental approach involves replacing an existing system one small piece at a time. This can take even longer than the ‘big bang’ approach and usually ends up duplicating what it replaces which prevents innovative advancement in the business.

Upton and Staat’s suggestion is one that has been used with particular success at a Japanese company called Shinsei. It is called the path-based approach. The idea behind the path based approach is to focus on providing a path for the new system to be developed over time rather than the functionality that will be in it. This approach takes into account the problems inherent in the implementation of new systems namely,

· People often cannot specify everything they will need at a project’s inception
· Unanticipated needs almost always arise once a system is in operation
· Persuading people to use and own the system after it is up and running is much easier said than done

Three foundational elements of the path-based approach are: -

1. Build a low-cost, efficient platform for running the company’s existing business
2. Ensure that platform is flexible enough to support the company’s growth into new areas (i.e. tweakable)
3. Forge together (don’t just align) business and IT

I was speaking recently with a man in South Africa who has used Serena TeamTrack to build such a foundation for his company. This bank operates in 38 countries round the world and employs about 40,000 people.

At his bank, over 30,000 users can log into TeamTrack to participate in over 300 different processes ranging from HR related processes to server commissioning to SLA management. In other words, TeamTrack extends into all parts of the business and links those parts together.

Continual Improvement is something that Shinsei also recognises as important. By using TeamTrack, companies are able to perform continual improvement even after a system is rolled out. The system can be tweaked extremely easily. Any changes that are needed can be implemented by configuration rather development. Business users can make changes themselves rather than having to renegotiate with software developers every time a change is needed.

So how does TeamTrack meet the three foundational elements of the path-based approach? TeamTrack provides a low cost framework (element 1) that can be easily modified to facilitate growth (element 2) by business people as well as IT people (element 3).

If you would like someone from Client Solutions to contact you to discuss how you might be able to leverage the power of TeamTrack in your organisation, please get in touch.

The fourth project management constraint

Robert Graham, in an article titled ‘Beyond the Triple Constraints’ makes the case that project managers need to consider contribution to shareholder value as an additional variable. Anyone who has studied project management will be familiar with the triple constraints of time, quality and cost. Graham suggests that in the modern business environment focusing on these constraints alone is not enough.

He says that because project outcomes are increasingly vague (agile development methodologies and more fluid market place), costs are continually changing (caused by constantly changing outcomes) and schedules are more externally driven, an additional metric is needed.

A project manager who focuses exclusively on delivering a project in the quickest time to the highest quality and lowest cost may be doing a disservice to the organisation. Because the business environment is constantly changing, delivering on a plan that was agreed months or years before may not be the best outcome for the organisation now.

Suppose for example that a project manager was working on delivering a new product but during development some new technology emerged that made that project redundant. Continuing to work on that project would not be in the best interests of the organisation. Project managers need to consider more than just time, cost and quality. Graham suggests that an additional metric of shareholder value should be included. Increasing shareholder value is chosen of course because it should be the goal of any publically trading organisation (non-profit organisations aside). Project Managers need to constantly ask themselves, is my mix of projects maximising shareholder value given the way that the market is now; not the way it was a few months ago.

I agree with him that this should be the case but suggest that most project managers will be unable to ascertain which courses of action would best maximise shareholder value. Instead, project managers should focus on advancing strategic goals as communicated by senior management. It is the responsibility of senior management to communicate a small number of strategic goals that will lead to shareholder value maximisation, that all employees should be striving towards. This will result in a more coordinated, unified organisation and will avoid the danger where project managers take a course of action that increases shareholder value in the short term but damages its ability to do so in the long term.

Of course, for a project management office (PMO) to be able to take a real time look at its mix of projects requires a project and portfolio management tool. With such a tool, individuals within the organisation can take a holistic view of the PMO and ensure that it is constantly aligned with its strategic goals. If you would like to discuss how you can get that real time, holistic view of your PMO, please get in touch with us.

Enhance your TeamTrack Interface

In this tutorial I want to show you how you can use HTML to add pictures to your TeamTrack solutions in order to make them more interactive and colourful. A picture that uses shadowing can also add depth to your solution making it richer and more appealing.

The technique basically is made up of the following steps.

1. Make the graphic that you want to add and save it as a jpg file [e.g. ExplainImage.jpg] in the main images folder which is usually [C:\Program Files\Serena\TeamTrack\bin\images] on the server computer.
2. Add a new text field to the workflow called lblExplanationHTML. Set the type to 'Memo' and check the ‘Spans entire row on form’ checkbox. ‘Render HTML tags’ should also be checked
3. Check the ‘Access Overrideable Attributes’ box to make the ‘Default Value’ box editable and make it read only.
4. In the ‘Default Value’ box type the following
   
   

   <img src = "../tmtrack/images/ExplainImage.jpg">

5. Click the 'OK' button to save the new field
6. Edit the field again and replace the logical field name 'lblExplanationHTML' with a colon :If you add that field to any transition or state it will be visible as in the screen shot below

In a future article I'll show you how you can build complex colourful tables using HTML and scripting.

Modelling as the future

This interesting blog article by Jeremy Burton looks at the focus Microsoft is putting on Modelling as the ‘Holy Grail’ of programming. The idea is that programmers will be able to develop applications in the future simply and quickly by linking together services using a graphical tool.

The developer essentially draws a picture of a process (model). When she is happy with that process she can turn it on and it becomes available to the entire organisation. The new process is automatically enforced which frees up employees from focusing on operational issues and instead allows them to spend their time pursuing strategic goals. This is already possible with Serena TeamTrack which organisations all over the world have been using for years to manage their businesses.

The next generation of modelling that Jeremy speaks of is the ability to have non technical people draw these pictures and be able to expand their process pictures to tie in with other applications in the organisation or websites that are outside it. These websites can include SalesForce, Google Earth, QuickBooks online, or any other website that exposes a web service.

While Microsoft talk about this Modelling as an aspiration, Serena is about to release a product that will accomplish it.

Business Mashups are coming early next year.

Augmenting your SharePoint system with TeamTrack

Many organisations have a Microsoft SharePoint system in place which they use primarily as a document library. Often it can grow to become a monster that is full of redundant documents and is impossible to navigate and maintain. TeamTrack, a business process management tool, can be used with SharePoint to enforce a more controlled solution.

To understand how this can be done consider the following core strengths of both SharePoint and TeamTrack.

SharePoint
SharePoint is mostly used as a browser-based document management system. Individuals within the organisation create site collections, sites and personal sites in which libraries can be hosted. SharePoint can tightly integrate with Microsoft Office (2003 and later versions only) so that documents can be added to SharePoint libraries directly from within the Microsoft Office application itself.

Users can also ‘check out’ a document from within the Microsoft Office application itself which effectively locks it down so that other users cannot edit it until it is ‘checked in’ again.
Some basic process management can also be implemented in SharePoint such as a predefined approval process though it is limited and difficult to change.

TeamTrack
TeamTrack is a full business process management tool that enables an organisation to quickly define and automate its own internal processes. It can enforce agreed standards so that control is put on the routing and authorisation of items such as documents or issues. Versioning can also be enforced and any changes to the process can be rapidly implemented.

Processes that have been enforced can be viewed graphically so that users can easily see what the document has gone through in order to be in its current state and where it will be routed next.

Combining SharePoint and TeamTrack
A solution that combines both SharePoint and TeamTrack would be the ideal as it would effectively wrap the SharePoint library with the control provided by TeamTrack as shown in the graphic below.

TeamTrack Process Wrapping your SharePoint Libraries

Taking advantage of TeamTrack’s open APIs; integrations to established third party change management tools can be easily implemented. This level of version control is not present in SharePoint alone and is important from an auditing perspective.

Rather than forcing your employees to provide required documents as a method of controlling how they work, this solution will allow your existing processes to drive the business and where documents are required along the way they can be attached. This is a subtle difference but it results in a solution that is more in tune with how you do business. Any collaborative business process can be represented in TeamTrack quickly and easily. Where you rely on SharePoint alone to manage your documentation you can miss out on this.

Finally it is worth pointing out that this combined solution will also be Mashup-Ready as the next version of TeamTrack (due out in the next couple of months) will allow quick integration with any Web 2.0 application that exposes web services such as SalesForce, PeopleSoft or Google Maps. More about that in other blog articles.

Conclusion
Integrating SharePoint and TeamTrack provides a stable, extensible, enterprise-wide solution. It will allow you to easily manage your documentation ensuring any approval or change processes are well managed and audited. If you would like to discuss augmenting your SharePoint system with TeamTrack please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Business Process Lego

Most of us will remember building things with Lego as a child. Lego, the company, sold bricks of various sizes and shapes and left it up to the imagination of children to use them to build whatever they wanted. The results were often very complex models that the Lego designers had never even considered would be built when they sold the bricks.

Over the years, Lego has brought out new components. These components can fit into a Lego model because they comply with the standard interlocking brick bumps, but each component offers additional functionality of its own. These components have included doors, trees and drawbridges and even more recently components that are programmable by a computer. By making these advanced components available along with the original standard Lego bricks, much more complex models can be created and innovation is fostered.

Here’s where we get a bit abstract. Imagine if in business, companies provided components that complied with a common standard so that they could be linked together and built into an overall solution. SalesForce.com, for example, might provide a component that gives you an employee’s details if you gave it the employee number. Google might provide a component that gives you a map if you gave it an address. Quickbooks might give you an account balance if you gave it an account number. If you wanted to create an application that updates an employee’s details, you might put these components together and very quickly you would have a working Internet based application.

A solution built with business process Lego

Some companies already provide these components in a format called a WebService. (Click here for an example of Dunn and Bradstreet’s credit rating check WebServices.)

Serena is about to launch a new product called Mashup Composer which will allow you to effectively use business process Lego to create exciting new applications much more quickly than if you developed them from scratch. This can empower those who are not software developers to be innovative and build simple web applications of their own. Now no one is suggesting that they will build the next national healthcare management system, but they can build simple web applications for getting things approved, recording complaints, or managing leave requests for example.

I will be discussing these exciting developments in the world of business mashups in the coming months in this blog.

Getting the most out of your TeamTrack System

Serena estimates that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of TeamTrack applications in existence. This means that although you may have installed TeamTrack in your organisation to manage a particular process, chances are, you could be getting more value out of it.
In this brief article I want to give you some examples of ways that organisations are using TeamTrack.

1. NDA approval
In the US, over 4,000 employees at Lockheed Martin use TeamTrack to manage a number of processes including their Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Details of each NDA are entered into TeamTrack and can be tracked as they are approved. Through powerful reports, users can quickly see what NDAs are in place and what their statuses are.

2. Leave Requests
In this workflow, an employee submits a request for leave. The system routes it to the employee’s supervisor who will receive an email with the request details. The supervisor can approve or reject the request and this response is sent back to the employee. If the leave request is approved, the number of days requested is subtracted from the employee’s entitlement. Reports can show all outstanding holidays for employees.

3. Project Governance
While Serena Mariner can be considered the tool of choice for managing a portfolio of projects, some organisations do not want that level of control. For simply guiding a project through a series of authorisation gates and phases, TeamTrack can be the perfect tool.
TeamTrack can be configured to require that certain documents are attached at specific phases of the project and that sign-off is obtained from management at various points along the project lifecycle.

4. Expenses Approval
Many large organisations use TeamTrack to manage their expenses approval process. Employees can enter their expenses directly into TeamTrack or attach their expense forms as spreadsheets or documents. They are then routed to appropriate supervisors who can reject or approve them. If they are rejected, they will be sent back to the employee with a note and if they are approved they will be automatically sent on to the finance department to be dealt with. This simple process can really speed up expenses approval and reports can show how expense claims are distributed across your organisation.

5. Managing Customer Enhancement Requests
Over 3,000 employees at Thomson Financial use TeamTrack to streamline various processes including the routing of enhancement requests. Using the process that they implemented, when a customer logs a suggestion or request with a customer service agent, it is routed based on its importance, to the product manager or development manager for consideration.

Thomson Financial has also overhauled its sales proposal process with TeamTrack. “It used to take about five days to pull together a sales proposal. Now it takes three minutes,” says Hastings-Kimball. “Our sales teams now spend more time with their customers and prospects to increase revenue.”

I hope this short article has stirred your creative juices and you can start seeing new ways that TeamTrack can be used in your organisation. If you would like to get in touch with us to discuss those new ideas, please do not hesitate to do so.

Reducing Project Failure

Most organisations have war stories of projects that were never completed or failed to deliver on what they promised. It is far too common an occurrence. A report from The Standish Group in 2004 entitled “CHAOS Chronicles”, which studied over 40,000 projects, showed that project success rates had more than doubled to 34% from their previous study a decade earlier! 34% is still a success rate that most organisations would consider to be unacceptable.

Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) has been generating a lot of hype recently because it addresses this high failure rate. It looks not just at how individual projects are being managed but at how those projects fit in the wider context of the organisation’s strategic goals. PPM asks the question, “Are the projects being pursued the ones that should be done in the first place?”

Forrester Benchmarks
When considering if PPM is right for your organisation, consider the following key benchmarks on PPM success from Forrester, the independent technology and market research company.

· Visibility of the total project portfolio
Elimination of redundant, underperforming, low-value and poorly aligned projects
Benchmark #1: Reduced Project Cost: 1% - 5%, Forrester, 9/05

· Better utilization of resources
Efficient allocation, reduced bottlenecks and balanced workloads
Benchmark #2: Reduced Resource FTEs: 1% - 5%, Forrester, 9/05

· Improved project success
More projects delivered on-time and within budget
Benchmark #3: Improved Project Success Rate: 15% - 30%, Forrester, 9/05

· Improved operational efficiency
Reduction in manual effort required for PPM processes.
Benchmark #4: Reduction in manual effort 20 - 30%, Forrester 9/05

· Better investment decisions
Minimize the full lifecycle costs while maximizing benefits of technology investments.
Benchmark #5: Savings in total IT costs of 5% - 8%, Forrester 9/05

· Alignment of the application portfolio
Consolidate the application portfolio, replace high cost applications, and enforce standards.
Benchmark #6: Savings in application maintenance cost: 10 – 20%, Forrester 9/05

If you would like to discuss how Mariner from Serena can help your organisation achieve these kinds of results, please contact us.

Business Process Modelling third in top 10 technologies for 2008 (Gartner)

According to Gartner, Business Process Modelling is one of the top technologies to focus on in 2008. While BPM is not technically a ‘technology’ (it is more a field of knowledge), it must be in place before really useful SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) applications can be developed.

This supports comments in an earlier blog article where I suggested that more formal automation of business processes must occur in organisations to accommodate recent changes in the general business environment. In that article I argued that organisations cannot enforce their processes without some process automation tool like Serena’s TeamTrack.

Gartner’s full top-ten list can be found here.

Your Maturity Matters

It has been said that Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is largely a discussion about maturity. The more mature your key processes, the better your IT governance. As an organisation’s IT governance processes mature, it becomes more successful at doing the right projects right.

As discussed in a previous article, where project management focuses on the execution of projects, PPM looks at ensuring that the right projects are selected in the first place and that there is a balance in the portfolio of projects that is congruent with the pursuit of the strategic goals of the organisation.

Now, an organisation cannot become mature over night. Maturity takes time and effort and must be done in a progressive manner. Obviously the organisation needs to know where it currently is and what direction it should head in to make this change.

QMA
The Quick Maturity Assessment (QMA) is intended to help in this regard. It takes the form of a two hour telephone survey where key people from the organisation, with the help of an expert, answer set questions about the way it operates in seven key areas.

The output of the QMA is a report that shows, amongst other things, how the organisation scores in these seven areas. This gives the organisation a sense of what its current maturity level is. The report also details which are the areas that would bring about the most advancement in maturity for the least cost. Obviously by tackling these first, the organisation gets the most benefit for the least effort.

The screenshot below shows the Future State Maturity graph from a sample QMA which maps the organisation’s current maturity and shows where it could expect to be if it was to implement the next level of the plan from the QMA report.


The QMA is a free service that Client Solutions is now offering. Please contact us if you want to talk about your maturity and getting a free QMA.

The common misunderstanding of Project & Portfolio Management

Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is often misunderstood to be simply a method of managing multiple projects. This misses out on the key benefit of PPM which is to do with aligning projects with the strategic goals and direction of the organisation. To assign the PPM function to the Project Management Office (PMO) is to severely limit the advantages that can be achieved from it.

The core mistake is to think that PPM is fundamentally the management of multiple projects. This definitely is not so. PPM is the management of the project portfolio so as to maximise the contribution of projects to the overall welfare and success of the enterprise.

PPM effectively bridges the gap that exists between the PMO and other business operations. It is about bringing projects into harmony with the strategies, resources and executive oversight of the organisation and it provides the structure and processes for project portfolio governance. It is not so much about doing projects right as it is about doing the right projects right. Projects that are out of line with the organisation’s strategic goals or that have excessive risk can waste precious resources and time.

The ability of managers and employees to stay strategic, i.e. focus is on advancing the organisation’s strategic goals, is vital for an organisation if it is to move forward as a single unit. If projects don’t advance those strategic goals (directly or indirectly) then they waste resources and energy. We can call such non-strategic projects ‘distracting projects’ because they misdirect parts of the organisation’s intent as defined at senior management level in the form of strategic goals. Distracting projects can be thought of as projects that negatively impact on the overall aerodynamics of the portfolio. They hinder the portfolio’s ability to move the company forward in the direction set out by senior management.

The earlier that an organisation can weed out ‘distracting projects’ the better. In fact, not starting ‘distracting’ projects at all is the ideal!

As an example of a company that successfully weeded out distracting projects consider the following the merger between HP and Compaq. During the first 90 days of the merger the global project management office stopped over 100 projects or programmes that were not aligned with the emerging strategy or made poor use of resources. This is a rather extreme example but one year after the merger they had achieved over $3 billion in savings. In a later blog article I will examine this merger in greater detail and look at the way HP implemented PPM throughout the organisation.

Communication
The integration of projects and other business activities cannot be achieved without good communication structures. Key information must be shared. Management needs to be able to clearly communicate what the strategic goals of the organisation are and the PMO needs to be able to provide visibility on how those goals are being pursued (directly or indirectly). What often happens is that both groups (management and the PMO) are off in their own worlds, working to do the best that they can pursuing their own objectives. What a waste!

PPM sets out to bridge the gap between these groups by providing two way communication. One of the best ways of describing what PPM is about is to say that it provides insight.

Management get insight into what is happening throughout the organisation in the pursuit of its strategic goals. The rest of the organisation gets insight into what direction management wants it to be moving in.

Technology
It has been said that PPM is largely about process, people and technology. The technology is vital to allow the communication to take place and provide good visibility into what is happening in the PMO. Serena Mariner provides portfolio, project, resource, demand and financial management for complete Project and Portfolio Management. Unlike other products whose bottom-up approach is difficult to implement, Mariner offers an approach that ensures rapid results and on-going incremental value. With packaged integrations to Serena ALM applications, Mariner provides complete visibility into the entire application lifecycle—from initial idea to application retirement.

For more information click on the link below or contact us to request a visit so that we can discuss the Mariner solution with you.

http://www.serena.com/products/mariner/index.html

What has changed that businesses need process management software?

The business environment in which we all operate has changed fundamentally over the last decade or so. The need for organisations to employ some form of process automation is greater than ever. So what are these environmental changes and how have they impacted businesses? In this article I will look at five environmental factors that every organisation must consider.

1. Globalisation
The Internet and email have made the world a much smaller place. This has had two profound effects on business. First, competitiveness has increased as greater numbers of companies are able to enter the most lucrative markets. You no longer need to be physically close to your customers to do business with them. A well designed Internet site can attract customers and manage the sale without the need for any personal interaction.

The Internet has also permitted the free flow of information. Information about company offerings and pricing are easily accessible to both customers and potential competitors! The net effect of all this free flow of information is that companies are becoming more homogenous. It is increasingly difficult to be dominant in a market from a cost leadership or differentiation strategy. Increased competition is driving down margins and increasing the flow of information so that any advantage gained from a differentiation strategy is soon eaten up. The only strategy left is to be more customer focused, or operationally excellent. RyanAir is a great example of a company which is doing this. The difficulty with being operationally excellent is that you need good processes that are strictly adhered to. This is something that is impossible without some form of automation.

A further effect of globalisation is geographically dispersed workforces. Increasingly we are seeing companies outsource entire business functions. To ensure that these outsourced groups are participating in the business effectively, a high level of communication and collaboration is needed.

2. Increasingly regulatory environment
Various debacles in the world of business from Enron to WorldCom have necessitated the introduction of tighter regulations on how organisations do business. Required periodic audits now interrupt businesses on a regular basis. Manually, such audits can take weeks to complete but an automated system can reduce them to a few hours.

3. Changing Labour Markets
Charles Handy introduced the term 'Portfolio Worker' to describe a way of working where individuals are mobile and move between organisations bringing their expertise with them for the duration of the project they are working on. While that prediction has not fully come to pass, it is increasingly the case that employees are staying for shorter periods in the one company and are seeking more flexible working hours and working arrangements. Where processes are embedded in employee's heads, the danger is that an organisation cannot learn from past experience. Processes need to be stored outside of individuals so that they outlast those employees in the organisation.

Employees that do stay with their organisation are also seeking more flexible working arrangements. These can include working from home one or two days a week or working hours that suit them. Obviously in an organisation where processes require immediate action from these employees, major bottle necks will begin to form. The good news is that these employees who seek more flexible working times tend to be willing to be contactable through their Blackberry, or equivalent, umbilical cords. Automated process management tools that can use these devices therefore, can overcome most limitations flexible working arrangements introduce.

4. More demanding customers
With increased competitiveness, customers have become more demanding. They are unwilling to tolerate issues getting lost in the cracks. They expect quick response times of 'minutes' or 'hours' rather than 'days' or 'weeks'. If they are not satisfied they will simply move to another supplier. All of these threats can be managed effectively with some form of automated process management system. No longer do companies need to depend on employee's remembering to keep issues open or to get back to customers with information or resolutions to issues raised. Instead automated systems can prompt employees to perform the actions necessary to enforce adherence to predefined processes.

5. Greater need for flexibility
Entrepreneurial Management is largely about managing change and being able to best position oneself to best take advantage of inevitable change. Many of the top business schools around the world have entrepreneurship management units or are offering modules in this up and coming discipline of management agility. 'Taking charge of change' necessitates having established, visible processes in place that can be quickly and easily modified. Unless these processes are managed by a tool, communicating changes can lead to confusion and mistakes.

Conclusion
The business environment has changed fundamentally in the last decade. Companies will increasingly struggle to keep up if their way of doing business (their processes) is not automated by software.

Serena TeamTrack is a web-architected, secure and highly configurable process and issue management system. It creates a clear process throughout the application lifecycle—from initial request to post-delivery customer support activities.

Thousands of companies around the world are using TeamTrack to manage processes across organizational silos and drive the highest levels of efficiency. With TeamTrack, you can control and automate any business process, manage issues throughout the lifecycle of your IT projects, and facilitate collaboration among all stakeholders across your enterprise and beyond.

For more information click on the link below or contact us to request a visit so that we can show you the power and advantages of TeamTrack.

http://www.serena.com/products/teamtrack/index.html