Introducing the stakeholders,
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It’s a new week
| Nancy | It’s Monday morning. Bobbi arrives at the office, grabs a cup of coffee, visits with her colleagues, and sits down to reads her email. |
| Bobbi | Now that the Senior Management Team has approved the project, I need to begin thinking about the way in which we will measure the performance of the solution as well as the outcomes and benefits of the project. We want to ensure that the new solution brings all the benefits that have been proposed… and if it doesn’t, I’ll begin an investigation into what the roadblocks are and if there is anything that may be done to alleviate the performance challenges. |
Bobbi theorizes about metrics
| Bobbi | As with everything I do, I need to think about the stakeholders involved. | |
| Bobbi | Capturing the interests of Valerie and Farouk are important. Valerie is the project sponsor and Farouk has been a key contributor to the business case. Then there is Megan, the Marketing Manager, and Patricia, the Project Manager. They will be interested in watching the results as well. | |
| Bobbi | Oh, and I can’t forget about William and Sullivan in the warehouse. They are always interested in trends, though I’m sure their day to day experiences will provide plenty of first hand knowledge on whether things are going well or could be going better. | |
| Bobbi | As for those in Customer Service and IT, I’ll reconsider their interests tomorrow. Today, I want to focus on the VPs and managers that are directly associated with this project. | |
| Nancy | Bobbi, considers each stakeholder and their different interests. | |
| Bobbi | Since Valerie is the VP of Operations, and a very detailed person, she is interested in everything. I’ll consider her interests last. Let me start with those that have specific interests. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Bobbi | William may be interested in metrics about the number of books in inventory, and those on order, but I know that he will be more interested in a detailed report identifying the books that are below the standard low inventory level, and their expected date of arrival. The list should be sortable based upon title, expected date, and publisher. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Bobbi | Sullivan will be interested in that same report, but Sullivan has additional interests. He’ll want a summary report that presents the delivery achievement and confidence level of each supplier and then rank orders the suppliers based upon these metrics. And because Sullivan loves details, the summary report should drill through to present a detailed statement of the the shipments from that supplier in the last month. Hmmm…. I can’t recall the specific formula for how Sullivan calculates those metrics. I’ll send him a quick email and get clarification. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Bobbi | As the Marketing Manager, Megan is interested in seeing market trends. Her standard dashboard of book sales, by genre, by format, by market segment, by client segment will probably do fine…. though perhaps the dashboard should be extended with some metrics related to order fulfillment and customer satisfaction (or customer complaints) so that she has a good understanding of how our customers are feeling about our books and the value they receive. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Bobbi | And then there is Farouk. As the VP of Finance, his primary interest is in revenue, expenses, and profit margin. Though I will recommend a slight variation into his standard reports to account for the delay in receipt of revenue due to the delay in delivering books. I’ll check with him later today to see if he is interested in any other metrics. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Nancy | Bobbi realizes that there are a lot of metrics from business operations that can be captured to measure and plot the success of this initiative. Some are high level, others are more detailed. Bobbi is grateful that she doesn’t need to devise a scheme to capture and record the metrics specifically related to project execution. Patricia is an experienced project manner and has already established practices and reports to help her measure and monitor the schedule, budget, scope, and other details related to management of the project itself. Bobbi begins to draft a description of the measures that will be captured to measure the solution performance. | Measure Solution Performance |
Measuring performance
| Bobbi | I have documented all the measures required and confirmed the expectations of the stakeholders…. | |
| Bobbi | Now, I need to establish a baseline measurement. We will need to take preliminary measurements now, before the solution integration takes place so that we can measure the magnitude and rate of the change after the solution has been installed. | Measure Solution Performance |
| Bobbi | I’ll talk with the team in IT to get their ideas on the best way to capture the metrics and ask them to begin collecting the metric as soon as possible. | |
| Bobbi | I wonder if the metrics should be collected and reported daily? weekly? or monthly? I suspect that it may be a different frequency for the different stakeholders and the different metrics. It appears that there is more thinking and investigation that I need to do. Perhaps that’s another topic for discussion with the IT team and the stakeholders. I’m not sure what’s possible or desirable. | |
| Nancy | Bobbi works with the stakeholders to confirm their requirements for the reports and dashboards and she works will IT to collect the appropriate information. The data collection process is set in place as soon as possible so that a sufficient baseline of data is available. Then she makes a note in her calendar to study the same reports as her stakeholders. She is interesting in monitoring the performance of the solution. She likes to know how things are going. She takes great personal satisfaction in watching her projects bring improvements. | Analyze Performance Measures |
Integration is complete
| Bobbi | It’s been a month since the new solution was put into production. The various teams have had the opportunity to learn the new systems and processes. The learning curve should be over. I’m going to look at the dashboards that show me a trend for the past 2-3 months. | Analyze Performance Measures |
| Bobbi | Wonderful… The lines are heading in the right direction. There are fewer back orders. The supplier confidence rating is increasing and there are fewer customer complaints. | Analyze Performance Measures |
| Bobbi | But they are not progressing at the rate we had hoped. I know that Valerie will want to know why the solution is not meeting expectations. I’ll drop by her office and let her know that I will begin an investigation to identify if the limitation is with the solution or something else in the enterprise. | Assess Solution Limitations Assess Enterprise Limitations |
| Nancy | Bobbi walks to Valerie’s office. | |
| Bobbi | Good morning Valerie. I was looking at the monthly dashboard and I see that the number are not what we had predicted. I’m going to begin an investigation to identify why with the solution is not working as expected. Perhaps the teams are still adapting to the change, perhaps there is a problem with the system, or perhaps there is something in the environment that is influencing the result. | Assess Solution Limitations Assess Enterprise Limitations |
| Valerie | Thanks for thinking about this and thanks for coming to see me before you started. While the number are not what we had expected, I just came from a meeting with William and Sullivan. They are happy with the way things are progressing and expect that we will meet the target within the next 2 months. Learning always take longer that we predict. For now, let’s keep monitoring the situation, and if the trend does not continue, then you can begin the investigation; but please check with me before you proceed. | Assess Solution Limitations Assess Enterprise Limitations |
| Bobbi | Sure thing. Have a great day. | |
| Valerie | You too. Take care. | |
| Nancy | Bobbi is relieved that she doesn’t need to initiate an investigation or assessment at this time. She was looking forward to the opportunity to do a little bit of sleuthing, but that will need to wait for another time. Meanwhile, she’ll continue to look for opportunities to make recommendations that will increase value in other parts of the business. | Recommend Actions to Increase Value |