The rapid pace of technological advancement is leaving everyone grappling to keep up. Vendors are rolling out innovations quicker than customers can assess them or implement them. The transition to hybrid work models continues to pose challenges, with no easy fix in sight. And despite the prevalence of cloud-based solutions, there remains a sizable market for on-premises offerings, particularly in contact center environments. The significance of managing these technology projects efficiently has never been greater.
Our firm recently worked on a technology refresh as the project manager sitting in between the customer and vendor to assure a successful Microsoft Teams implementation of around 4,000 endpoints. Here are my key insights from managing this project – they can help anyone else tackling a big, complex technology migration project.
- We found that large enterprises have several projects going on at once, and they get pulled from one area to the other. Endorsing too many projects at the same time leads to prolonged completion times, just because there will not be enough resources to fully provision each project. To mitigate this, it is best to implement a robust strategy with upper management from the beginning that aligns the projects with their strategic goals, then prioritizes accordingly. This ensures that only the most critical projects are initiated, reducing the likelihood of resources being spread too thin across multiple projects.
- We also found that best project management deployments are the ones where you have complete buy-in by upper management from the beginning. Before you do serious work, make sure you’ve got backing by senior management. Showing how your project is aligned with their strategic goals will help.
- Make sure you make the business case for completing the project prior to starting. Get the employees involved in the excitement of the project informing them ahead of time what is going to happen and when. Listen to them as they describe their pain points and really listen then act on it. Projects go much smoother when the employee feels that they are being heard and not just dictated to.
- Stop the siloes. So many projects involve many areas of the organization; however, many employees work within their own silos, and have no idea what their colleagues in other departments are doing. Clear and continuous communication among all stakeholders is key. Establish a way to make sure everyone is frequently updated on which resources are being used and by whom, what appointments or installations are happening and where, and what is coming up. This will help prevent siloed working practices and ensures that resources are utilized efficiently across projects.
- It is best to bring in an outside project manager who lives and breathes this stuff daily. Too many times organizations think they can handle this, but it typically becomes a part-time endeavor on top of the employee’s existing day-to-day responsibilities and that delays the project. A dedicated project manager can turn all their attention to making sure everyone delivers on time.
- Sometimes project delivery suffers from inadequate accountability measures. You need a point person heading up the project that will assume and be accountable for all of it. I recently read the book “The Focus Project” by Erik Qualman (great read by the way), and he said, “People don’t love us or our organization because we are perfect…they are love us because we are perfectly flawed, so embrace being Flawsome.”
Being flawsome means we are willing to:
- Admit we made a mistake.
- Give a plan for fixing it.
- Follow through with fixing it.
So find your flawsome point person whom everyone knows as the go-to person for the project’s deliverables and deadlines.
- If there is no other choice than to utilize an in-house person for the Project Manager in-house, please invest in training and development programs to enhance the skills and capabilities of project teams. Building a more skilled workforce can improve project efficiency and reduce the likelihood of implementation hurdles. Training is of utmost importance and will give you a good return on your investment in this person.
By implementing these strategies and lessons learned, enterprises can better manage the risk of undertaking too many projects simultaneously and mitigate the challenges associated with project implementation. This ultimately will improve the organizations’ ability to deliver projects successfully and achieve it strategic objectives.
Barb Grothe is writing on behalf of the SCTC, a premier professional organization for independent consultants. Our consultant members are leaders in the industry, able to provide best of breed professional services in a wide array of technologies. Every consultant member commits annually to a strict Code of Ethics, ensuring they work for the client’s benefit only and do not receive financial compensation from vendors and service providers.
