Joburg billing issues pointing to another system implementation going bad

A quick scan through the original blueprint of Programme Phakamisa indicates a well-planned, large-scale systems development undertaking:
- Clear business objectives and well-defined value chains;
- A phased roll-out targeting low transaction regions of the city and initially excluding platinum clients;
- Great emphasis on change management to ensure readiness by impacted employees to adopt new business processes. The programme had, at one stage, a change management work stream headed by an Organisational Transformation Programme Manager; and
- Visible senior managerial support, judging from various articles in the public domain.

So why do programmes such as City of Joburg’s Phakamisa get delivered so painfully and why do they deliver lower than expected results?

The key is in the complexity of the design of the new system. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations are usually ambitious because they integrate a lot of legacy systems, each with dirty data and complex spaghetti code that is hard to follow. Naturally, complex systems are hard to test and are very difficult to de-bug. Due to time pressures, the interface development is signed-off with the hope that user testing will be extensive and will uncover all the bugs. Unfortunately, major bugs uncovered too late in the programme are even harder to resolve.

No amount of change management and business process training can help a highly complex system that is performing against what the user expects.

The city's head of finance, Parks Tau, was quoted by Timeslive (26 January 2010) as saying that the IT project is completed and that problems are interface-related. But the system includes all interfaces. So if the interfaces are not working, then the system is not working.

A lot is written about ways of ensuring successful IT implementations, including change control processes, project management skills, technical skills, executive support, change management, poor planning, poor decision-making and roll-out approach.

For enterprise-wide implementations such as Programme Phakamisa, in addition to the above, upfront preparatory work is very key. This should be business-led and should cover two items: simplification of existing business processes and cleaning up of data.

Completing these two major exercises ahead of an ERP system implementation will ensure that organisations are much more prepared to take on a more complex ERP programme. More importantly, the pressure on the ERP implementation team to work on highly inefficient business processes and to complete data clean-up is eased. The result is simplified processes, well-understood data, more knowledgeable business resources and a less painful and costly implementation. The upfront business programme should receive just as much executive support and should be managed on sound programme management principles, but it can be completed over many months by a number of independent consultants and business resources, as opposed to during an ERP implementation that has even tighter timelines and that brings in expensive resources.

An organisation that cannot simplify their business processes and cannot cleanup their data (and keep it that way) should perhaps think twice about taking up a complex ERP implementation.

Tumi Mphahlele is Managing Director: Busara Strategic Projects, a division of Busara Leadership Partners ( www.busaraleadershippartners.co.za )

IT is Business!

Organisations that have realised the value of IT no longer think of it as just a support function that sucks up much needed financial resources from the business. It is constantly seen as central in the quest to achieve operational excellence, innovation leadership, improved service delivery and compliance.

Surprisingly, the development of the IT strategy is still seen as a process that sits outside of the “business”, resulting in the frustrating and constant misalignment between Business and IT.

The misalignment has a lot to do with the strategy formulation process - where the enterprise strategy is developed and signed-off first.
As far as possible the IT strategy development process needs to be integrated with the enterprise strategy development process, as shown on the diagram below, so that the technology vision of the business is shared and agreed to by all functional executives.
The result is a business road map that takes into account the limitations as well as the enabling capacity of technology. This two-way development process facilitates an IT Strategy that is tightly aligned to the business.



The IT strategy developed through this process will be business-centric and more importantly, it will speak the business language that other executives understand.

So when faced with a challenge where IT and “business” are not pulling towards the same direction, examine your strategy formulation process and consider changing to a mindset that says “IT is business”.

Tumi Mphahlele is Managing Director: Busara Strategic Projects, a division of Busara Leadership Partners, www.busaraleadershippartners.co.za

Resource availability need not necessarily kill a project

Project Managers are not always afforded the luxury to recruit members of their own team. In certain instances they are considered fortunate if they have full-time resources assigned to the projects. This makes project resourcing one of the biggest issues that PMs have to deal with at some point in their careers.

There are valid reasons why business units cannot commit full-time resources to projects:
· Projects usually require content skills and expertise that the business unit cannot afford to be without for extended periods of time
· Business units that second employees are usually required to reintegrate them at the end of the project life cycle. The business units that replace secondees are then left with additional head count that they have not budgeted for
· Projects do not always end as per original schedule – they sometime run over due to scope increases, or they end sooner when deliverables are de-scoped. This makes it difficult for business units to manage their resource plans and budgets effectively

Rather than fight to have the highly skilled subject matter expert (SME) full-time on the project, the PM should rather push to secure a less-skilled, contractor to work full-time on the project to support the SME. The SME remains in the business unit but is actively involved in the project as a technical lead. This way, the integration and resource planning issues fall away. This solution, however, assumes that project location is not a factor. In other words, the SME is able to work both on the project and in the business unit at the same time, whether through physical contact or online.

Tumi Mphahlele is Managing Director: Busara Strategic Projects, a division of Busara Leadership Partners, www.busaraleadershippartners.co.za

"No PMO please, we are small"

The silo thinking in organisations is associated mostly with large companies that have semi-autonomous business units, differentiated customers and separate business processes. It is not rare, however, for smaller and medium-sized companies to also display some silo characteristics.

Project consultants are often surprised to find out as soon as they start working on a project at a medium-sized organisation, that there are other consultants working on a different project in the same organisation. The projects are likely to:
- Impact the same internal and external stakeholders
- Impact the same organisational processes
- Require access to the same or similar set of data
- Have implementation dates that are close together

On coming across such an issue, a good project consultant will get in touch with the project sponsor to work out a solution that will ensure success for all related initiatives, and ultimately for the business as a whole.

But that happens in another world.

In the real world, the consultant has a proposal in her hand that clearly specifies the scope of what she needs to deliver, including the timelines and the high-level milestones. She is not keen on liaising with another consulting firm to resolve a business issue that is not immediately in her scope. She is certainly not prepared to work closely with another consulting firm and run into delivery risks or even being “outshined”. The safe bet is to “stick to your knitting once the wool is apportioned”.

The concept of a Project Management Office in smaller organisations can be used to address issues such as these. The PMO in large companies is like a centre of excellence, resourced with a number of highly skilled Project Managers, supported by sophisticated tools and churning templates and processes to support projects in the entire organisation.

In smaller organisations, the PMO should not have a directive, supporting or controlling mandate; it certainly does not need a large headcount or sophisticated software. It just requires a single individual with Programme Management skills to align and integrate all the initiatives that take place in the organisation. This will ensure that projects are aligned in terms of what is being delivered as well as the impact to the organisation.

This approach facilitates proper planning, effective change management and reduces chaos. But more importantly, it challenges the very silo mentality that is meant to be out-of-place in smaller organisation.

Tumi Mphahlele is Managing Director: Busara Strategic Projects, a division of Busara Leadership Partners, www.busaraleadershippartners.co.za