Programme Management

When AIIM (The Association for Information and Image Management) recently asked their member user community about the biggest implementation challenges that they had faced, most of the problems cited were not technological, as is our experience, but as follows:

Managing the human element of business change effectively
Providing adequate staff training
Providing a clear relationship between the change and organisation objectives
Designing optimal processes to manage content flow
Recognising that effort is required by individuals to change their working practices and supporting them fully with this change

In a report issued in 2004 by the UK National Audit Office (Improving IT procurement: The impact of the Office of Government Commerce’s initiatives on departments and suppliers in the delivery of major IT-enabled projects. Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General HC 877 Session 2003-2004: 5 November 2004) they cited the following common causes of failure in IT-enabled projects:

Lack of clear link between the project and the organisation's key strategic priorities including agreed measures of success
Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership
Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders
Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management
Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation
Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits)
Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps
Inadequate resources and skills to deliver the total delivery portfolio

Although this picture reflects government experience, is not unlike the experience of the private sector, substituting government terminology with corporate terminology where appropriate.

Taking all of the above into consideration, combined with One Point’s commitment to quality, we have chosen to adopt all appropriate, and internationally recognised, best practices, the default being those of the UK government, Office of Government Commerce (OGC), developed to improve the delivery, and benefits realisation from UK government IT Programmes and Projects.

These best practices are just as appropriate for use in the private sector and numerous such organisations have now adopted them, and worldwide. One Point uses these best practices internally across our international offices, and in working with our international (non-UK) clients.

By taking this approach, it allows our clients to have full visibility of our work, and helps to mitigate against one of the key underlying risks of any implementation, namely inadequate communication, as well as provide a degree of assurance in working within a framework that is in public domain.

As part of our initial consultation process, we also recommend an initial risk assessment, and once again we recommend that our client uses the OGC Risk Potential Assessment, at least as a basis for commencing discussions about programme complexity, and hence risk. Similarly, we also encourage our clients to use the full suite of OGC Gateway Reviews to provide independent assurance that the programme is on track.

As detailed above, many of the risks faced with such implementations are related to the impact of the business change, which must therefore be managed. Many methodologies exist, some of which our staff are experienced and accredited in, but those that are most effective are founded on the principle that – all the required business benefits are achieved in the required timescales - change can only be achieved with participation of those that are impacted, and not by imposed change.

Consequently, and in the interest of engaging as many client staff as possible in the delivery of change, we again recommend the use of a public domain best practice, such as the APMG’s ‘Principles of Change Management’ approach, in managing change from individual, group and organisation perspectives. APMG is an internationally recognised Accreditation, Certification and Qualification organisation.

With regard to the design and build stages of the product lifecycle, we have experience in using a number of waterfall and agile development methodologies and can adapt to the client's preference. For agile based development we use public domain best practices such as Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), which integrates with PRINCE2, and with Enterprise Architecture approaches in public domain, such as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).

Last, but not least for total piece-of-mind, One Point also conforms to industry best practices, as provided by, and publically available from, the internationally recognised industry body, ‘The Association for Information and Image Management’ (AIIM). Furthermore, One Point holds service provider level membership of AIIM, providing further assurance of compliance.