Ten deadly weapons for your “information systems change” SAP Implementations By Ankush Chopra 2002

Its commonplace to hear how major implementations in a large number of organizations ended up being a

disaster- more pain than gain! Makes one wonder if it is even worth going in for? If there is too much

pressure from business needs, then one might even reconcile to the fact that the pain involved in the process

is a necessary evil.

However it is not uncommon to experience a roaring success in your next big implementation — the lessons

we learnt from our implementations, were in short “back to basics” lessons. The lessons were so simple that

we were amazed by the effectiveness of something so simple and basic. Moreover, the same lessons are

applicable to any implementation, corporate restructure or change management. These ten lessons are

aimed at the project managers, project champions, project teams and students of project management who

seek experiences of other project managers in an effort to improve their own art.

It’s the customer, stupid!

No matter what the size of your implementation, the customer will be the final arbiter of its success. Forget

the customer to save some time, and you will ensure that you spend far more time dealing with customer

issues at the end of the day.

The customer’s needs are being fulfilled with the implementation, the customer knows the current situation

better than you and it’s the customer who will carry the mantle when you are off to a scuba diving holiday

after the project is over. In spite of the fact that no matter what you want to do in an implementation, your

customer occupies the center-stage, often the customer simply vanishes from the picture and that’s where

the problems begin. Internal implementations are especially notorious for this lapse.

Remember that customer engagement is not only a pre-requisite but also the driver of success you achieve

in your project and will pay back in a big way at the end of the day. Instead of looking at the customer as an

external entity, make him or her as a partner right from the start and move ahead hand-in-hand through out

the project.

Right at the start ensure that you and your entire teams knows who the key customer(s) is (are). Make sure

you spend a lot of time understanding the customer organization, the key people who will be impacted with

the change and the way business is handled by your customers. It goes without saying that each customer is

different and its important not to just groups customers in a category and work on the premises in that

category. For example don’t think all Banking organizations work in the same way and thus assume it is

similar to the earlier banking client you handled.

Insights about the customer will help you engage the customer in a meaningful way. Use these insights for

helping the customer understand what changes will occur with the implementation. This would help you to

set expectations, get commitment of organization’s time and communicate and mitigate the risks of the

implementation.

It helps to define (roles and responsibilities) and agree on the key single point of contacts (SPOC) from

customer organization, in case the customer does not have enough time for the project engagement

throughout the project. It helps a lot to detail the customer engagement needed right at the beginning — for

process understanding, resolving key issues, getting approvals on process changes, training effort from

customer organization and effort needed in handholding after the “go-live” date.

Success criteria for the project along with measures for the same should be set up at this time and

communicated within the project team. This ensures a proper alignment of goals and effort from the project

team and the customer organization.

No matter how large or small the project is, there should be some success gates that allow the project to

move on the next stage with confidence in what has been achieved earlier. Involving the customer during

the success-gate meetings would be another way to ensure stronger engagement.

In the end, it is apt to say that finding creative ways of involving customers in the project would pay-off, no

matter what the size of your project.

Let one General be!

“A slave with two masters is a free man” when written in the context of an implementation reads as

“multiple project managers results in chaos”. Right! No matter how large the project is, there must be one

person where the buck stops. This is a person who heads the steering team when the implementation

involves various functional boundaries. This is the person who busts barriers and ensures that the cost, time

and functional objectives are met.

Ignore this and ensure an interesting project life with a number of surprises along the way!

I have been in a project where there were 4 simultaneous projects running with one project manager for

each and each reporting to the steering team manager. The situation worked really well when the structure

was tight and misses were taken care of early in the game. The moment the single command structure

started slackening, havoc ensued. I also witnessed projects running without this structure — you can imagine

the result. The ball was dropped in cases when something did not fall clearly within one functional area.

Don’t use a pea in a bazooka

Resources, resources, resources! Give me more resources and everything will be fine! There cannot be a

bigger fallacy in project management than this one. Adequate staffing is no doubt a key element in the

success of a project of this nature — but right staffing is more important.

Make sure your resources are well trained and adequate right at the beginning of the project. Getting

resources during the project and making them learn on the job will end up in a situation when it would

appear that the project is understaffed, whereas the problem is elsewhere.

Ensuring that you understand what work is involved in the project and what skills are needed to perform

the work will eventually ensure slower graying or loss of hair for you.

I asked a very successful project manager “ what is your resourcing strategy in project?” and his reply was

“I would rather not have a person than have the wrong person”! There is a deep understanding of the

importance of right resources in this statement.

I witnessed a large SAP implementation that started with only 70% of the resources and had a promise of

getting the rest at a later stage. Eventually, there were always issues in getting the people on time and being

given sufficient training before deploying them on the job. The results can be imagined — “misses and

customer dissatisfaction”.

Ensuring that sufficient training time is given before the project not only ensures that misses would not

occur at the most important stage of project planning (which are obviously very painful to rectify later) but

also that if there is attrition, the project wouldn’t collapse.

Finally, right staffing always goes hand in hand with a risk profile of the people (risk of attrition) and an

action plan for mitigation of the risks.

Fasten your seatbelts please…

A large information systems change can have a significant impact on the customer organization and

business. Depending on how well the communication of the impact of this change has been done by the

project team, the reaction can vary from “oh my god!” to “wow! Its not as bad as I thought”.

Any information systems implementation basically deals with three kinds of readiness to ensure success -

Systems, processes and organizational readiness. While the first two are easy to manage by excellence in

project management, the third poses the biggest challenge. If customer organization were not ready to take

over the new system & processes, no matter how great a job is done in project management, the probability

of success would be extremely low.

Organizational readiness is probably the most difficult task at hand in a large implementation project. This

requires customer engagement, capability building in customer organization and ownership from

customers.

While training can go a long way in ensuring organizational readiness, it is the buy-in at all levels and

across organizational boundaries which poses a bigger challenge.

Training is easier to manage through proper planning, good understanding of the customer, engaging

customer in the real time systems testing and building capability in the customer organization to handle the

new system and processes. When it comes to getting a buy-in across levels and organizational functions, it

is no easy task with a simple solution.

Buy-in needs a strong project champion in the customer organization. This champion comes to rescue of

the project manager and help him bust barriers when project progress turn into a Sisyphean task. Setting the

right tone at the top in the beginning goes a long way in making the process of getting various buy-ins in

the project.

As a project manager, I have turned to the project sponsor many a times and saved a huge amount of effort

in getting the right alignment in the organization. Don’t discount this in any event.

Please understand me.

Communicate! Communicate! Communicate! Could be the first three priorities of a project manager at any

stage of the project.

In fact the project manager spends more than 70% of time on communication. It is no surprise given the

large number of players involved in any project of systems change. The objective of communication is not

just to run the project smoothly but also to ensure that no barriers arise in any part of the supplier-project

team-customers-stakeholder communication system. This in a way furthers the objective of organizational

readiness.

The communication paths if drawn on piece of paper could easily look like spaghetti on paper. A Project

manager not only actively communicates to the project team and customers but also acts as a facilitator in

communicating within the supplier — project team — customers — stakeholders communication system.

Frequent communication with customers help build confidence in the customer organization to handle

change. The key watch out for customer communication is ensuring coordinated communication without

creating an information overload. This comes from customer focus (“outside in” versus “inside out”

thinking by the project team). This thinking has to be championed by the project manager. Ensuring a 30-

second speech (elevator speech) which is consistent and cogent is a good idea for the project manager to

manage the project team to stake holder communication better. A centralized communication strategy is

important and helpful for the project manager to create and execute.

Who is your Goebbels?

Hitler understood the importance of the propaganda Minster and his use for achieving his goals, do you

have this aspect of the project management on your mind?

Since any large project with multiple stakeholders is bound to go through an experience of a start-up, it is

extremely important to maintain a healthy and positive outlook among its stakeholders. Positive statements

and constant communication of success goes a long way towards achieving this goal.

Project champion, the key customers, customer SPOCs and the key project members are your best bets for

potential Goebbels. It is a task that needs to be managed with subtlety, tact and planning to be successful.

If a Goebbels is not a part of your project plan, be prepared to go through an interesting roller coaster ride!

Take care of Cassandras

History has taught us that change is never easy or uncontested. Any change to an existing situation impacts

at least someone negatively. The phenomenon of Whining Cassandras is usually a manifestation of this

impact.

There are many other reasons why people resist change and sometimes there are strong and valid reasons

too. This brings us to the subject of stakeholder management.

There are numerous technical, cultural and political reasons for resistance to change. An extremely good

grasp of this is needed for a project manager to deliver a big change successfully.

One of the ways to manage stakeholders is to have a list and rate the attitude of the stakeholders on the

proposed change. An analysis of the power equations within the organization and critical mass of

stakeholders in favor of the proposed change is needed to begin with. The source of resistance need to be

understood too — is it technical, political or cultural. What is the cause of the resistance and what change

would lead to minimization or neutralization of resistance?

The reason to do this in a structured manner is that it gives a bird’s eye view on the landscape of human

side of the change being worked upon. Moreover, a well thought out plan to reduce resistance has a higher

chance of success than if it is done otherwise.

Finally, do keep in mind that sometimes the Cassandra do have a very valid reason to whine and

constructively listening to them can prevent a major disaster later on.

Where is the command center?

Closer to the “go-live date” there is so much activity in any project that the normal communication

channels and project tracking activities become less effective. This is the time when there is a strong need

for a command center.

A command center is nothing more than a virtual or real arena tightly controlled by the project manager

where all aspects of the project are tracked on a mission critical basis shortly before and after the “go-live

date”. In movies you see this kind of thing when complex criminal cases are being solved by a team of

people and information flow and quick action is the key to success of the case. I think you get the picture.

Don’t forget the customer when you get busy with the command center. In fact the information should

come from the customers after the go-live date. It makes sense to have the customer / SPOC sit in during

some of the daily command center meetings. This not only gives a lot more confidence to the customer but

also helps the team focus on the most critical issues.

The old method of “management by walking around” comes in very handy during this time. The project

manager should be able to get the pulse of the entire project during the walkthrough in customer’s office

after the “go-live” date.

Attitude determines altitude

Remember the proposal Richard Gere makes to Julia Roberts in The runaway bride “I guarantee that there

will be problems…when one or both of us would want to get out of this at some point of time or the

other….”. System implementation projects are very similar in nature.

No matter how well the project is planned and executed, there will be times when things go out of control,

unexpected issues will appear and the customer or the stakeholders will be annoyed.

At all times, the project manager has to be the emotional black hole for negative emotions flying around

and a fountain of positive, optimistic feelings. The confidence of the project team and the project manager

can move mountains, make big issues look small and resolved with amazing alacrity.

You would have witnessed events and tasks undertaken by various people and finally the attitude defining

the success or failure. A project context is no different. Leadership comes at a cost and this is the price the

project leader has to pay — Smile even when the world is collapsing around you. It’s a tall order, but see

what you can do about it.

Maintain the victory

You planned the project well, staffed it properly, managed the stakeholders, infused loads of confidence in

the team and the customers, managed the command center, trained the customer organization well, came

out in flying colors on your PR exercises with the clients and the project is completed. You just celebrated

the “go-live” date. Now what?

Don’t be in a hurry to open that champagne bottle and celebrate (not to say that you shouldn’t celebrate

after each success-gate is passed) and rush for your scuba diving holiday yet.

This is a very critical time of the project when tables can turn. Start monitoring the stabilization of the

system by all means but done forget the stabilization involves the processes and the people too. Keep a

close eye on the data on system, process and organizational stability. The plan should have had this system

of tracking the right stabilization measures and there must be a reasonable time frame within which those

measures would be achieved.

You success is complete when the customer can confidently say they don’t need you to hang around any

more — their organization is handling the new system and processes without any help.

A final Word

The best thing about projects and large system implementations is that their basic fabric is very dynamic

and as corporate landscape, technology usage and cultures keep evolving there are newer challenges and

opportunities that keep appearing. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for these newer challenges and

opportunities and leveraging them to your advantage!

If the chase were the same each time, you wouldn’t like your job too much either. Right!