Our HOT TOPICS section provides you with a recent selection of our thinking on topics which we hope will enlighten, intrigue, and inspire. Our intent is to be informative, but not academic. Business results occur when context and real world experience meet collective thought leadership – something we call Traction.
Your business must be able to react quickly to the changing needs of its customers, which requires you to be agile and flexible enough to change course midstream when needed. Agile software development methodology combined with a virtual team approach can enable this flexibility while reducing project risk and costs. While this combination can pose some challenges, we’ll discuss some ways to mitigate them and achieve a truly high performance development organization.
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The reality in which we must succeed today is one of increasing pressure to deliver tangible benefits
and quantifiable value with an ever-tightening resource belt. Too often organizations rely solely on
quick hit conventional cost cutting strategies during down turns, crippling their ability to take full
advantage of the time-sensitive tipping point of the economy's recovery. Despite (or perhaps with the
help of) the current market, an organization can leverage a combination of strategic project/program
management program and cost optimization approaches to prioritize initiatives, emerge successfully and
sustain that success over time. This article highlights some key principles and approaches to help
position your organization for long term success.
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Today's requirements for quicker, higher-quality decision making and the need to adapt to a
changing business environment has been coined as "agility" in the business press. A strategic
approach to application integration can be a key enabler of business agility. Integrating a company's
internal applications with each other, their customers, and their suppliers is not a new challenge,
but the recent explosion of proprietary and open solutions has added many choices. This article will
take a look at the current integration landscape, providing some practical guidelines for some of the
key decisions as you choose the best approach to integrate your portfolio of applications.
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Work teams are defined now more than ever by their uniformity of purpose rather than their location
and the same holds true for today's worker. Rapid upward trends in teleworking require that best
practices and processes be identified and developed in your organization in order to support the
implementation and management of virtual work technologies and teams.
Virtual teaming, just like any other business concept, will only yield the desired benefits for the
organization if implemented correctly. With this article we provide insight into the benefits and
considerations for such an undertaking from the employer, project/project team, customer, and employee
perspectives.
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“People risks” are not warm, fuzzy, or squishy. They are very real threats to your project’s execution and ROI.
We all expect a Project Manager to manage risks. We talk about dependencies, resource constraints,
contingency plans, funding, back-out plans, volume testing, and compliance risk. Yet even after
documenting, quantifying, and mitigating all of those, the team may still have a sinking feeling that
they just can’t put their finger on. We may be sensing danger but choosing to overlook it because they
are dangers of, well, a “human” kind. That sinking feeling may actually precede the sinking of the
project; people issues are icebergs in your path to success.
A project that was “successful” (based on flawless, on schedule/on budget execution) can be a failure
if the users never fully adopt the new system or process and thus fail to yield the promised ROI. A
project that was “successful” (based on ROI) can be a failure if it were to be measured on the amount
of “change pain” it introduced. In this article, we review some dangers and warning signs, and lay out
a concrete plan of activities to help you minimize risk related to the people side of change.
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Too often the work of Process Improvement is viewed in the context of small, incremental
gains across large numbers of repetitive tasks. Organizations which do not have high volume
repetitive tasks or which have custom processes, often see little value in Process Improvement
Initiatives. This article focuses on the dramatic benefits to the business of identifying and
repairing "Process Holes". Process Holes are often "Big Picture" issues which are easily missed
or ignored because they do not lend themselves to simple analysis and often require thinking
"outside the box". At the other extreme, they may be "easy-to-fix" issues (with major business
impact) which are overlooked because they fall between the boundaries of process activities or
organizational responsibilities.
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Organizational change management (OCM) is a discipline which may be applied to a broad
range of organizational change efforts, from enterprise-wide transformations to individual
capital or technology projects. When enterprises embrace and employ Organizational Change
Management methodologies and approaches, quantifiable results are achieved.
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With knowledge, technology, and globalization increasing at exponential rates, change
is a common and pervasive experience. Within the business organization, the ability to
understand and manage change is essential for successful outcomes through transition.
We have created an article that defines the attributes of change, the different types of
change, and how change management techniques can be applied to ensure a successful outcome.
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Your organization may have considered one or more of these steps in the past, but a careful
evaluation of the presence and effectiveness of these components can help ensure your PMO is
on the right track to provide business value. In this article, we explore Data Governance
implementation as an example of a project that requires a holistic view involving people,
processes, and technology. It involves an organization-wide cultural change toward understanding
data as a strategic asset; every person must recognize that they have some sort of data
accountability. As such, it is critical that organizational change management (OCM) tools and
techniques be employed to mitigate risk to your organization’s ROI.
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You're tired of projects missing key deadlines and going way over budget and out of control.
You're ready to put some processes in place so that you can rely more on proven methods rather
than on eleventh hour heroics from those within your organization. In our previous article, we
talked about the need for and the benefits of having a project management office (PMO) in your
organization. You've thought about it and decided your organization should have a PMO. In this
article, we'll focus on some specific tactics of starting up a PMO and what it may look like.
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Let's face it, your business needs successful projects that are done on time and on budget,
but successful projects can be elusive. Based on trusted sources such as a 2004
PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey of executives and project managers from 200 companies in 30
countries, only 2.5% of these companies completed 100% of their projects on time, within
budget, and within the originally defined scope. A solution to these project challenges
may well be a Project Management Office (PMO), as discussed in this article. The PMO,
backed by senior management sponsorship, establishes consistent implementation practices
for projects across your organization. This consistency from the PMO helps your
organization in ensuring higher project success rates. A 2003 PMI and CIO magazine survey
shows that project success rates increased 46% as a result of having a PMO.
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Project Management, and the role it plays in modern business, has changed. Project
management is no longer just about ensuring successful project execution. Instead,
it ensures organizations are aligning their project initiatives and business resources
with the business objectives. It focuses on partnerships, collaboration and continuous
improvements. This shift is forcing leaders to evaluate their existing project management
capability and its role within the organization. We have developed an article defining
the different project management approaches and the changes organizations can implement in
order to make it a strategic advantage.
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Why do some projects fail, while others succeed? Our experience tells us that it could
simply be a factor of the project resources skill-set. In this article we focus on the
"people skills" that increase the likelihood of project success. Specifically, those
skills related to project leadership, which are commonly found in resources highly versed
in both the Organizational Change Management and Strategic Project Management disciplines.
By identifying the key skills required during each phase of a typical product development
lifecycle and the associated action steps that should be utilized; you will be better
prepared to select the "best" resources and implement corrective measures to keep your
project on track.
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No one would purchase a vehicle whose dashboard instruments presented unreliable data which
was minutes or hours old. Imagine the driving experience if speedometer information was
delayed ten minutes or if the oil warning light came on two days after the engine blew up.
Nor would drivers tolerate instrumentation which was difficult to understand and required
extensive training, multiple menu selections or detailed explanations. Consumers reward
companies whose products provide real value and are easy to use. Often, however, in scorecard
and dashboard initiatives the product delivered to the end user results in disappointment,
frustration, and eventually disuse.
This article is intended to highlight potential pitfalls in these initiatives which create
disappointing deliverables. Additionally, it discusses key issues which must be addressed before,
during and after a scorecard or dashboard initiative. Driving a scorecard initiative with clearly
defined executive and user goals, quality and timely data, appropriate tools, adequate support
resources, and ongoing iterative improvements will create satisfied and appreciative users who are
able to take meaningful actions from the information presented.
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In previous articles, we have introduced the relevance of governance in Data Management initiatives and in Master Data projects particularly. SEI’s governance approach takes into account the balance across People, Process, and Technology within an organization. This article concentrates on the People aspect of the governance program, articulating how to create a team to ensure a successful implementation.
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We discuss what a typical Data Governance for a Master Data Management (MDM) initiative entails
from the people, process and technology perspectives, and best practices for managing the
organizational changes required. With MDM coming to the forefront of both the operational and
business intelligence space, it is essential to be aware of the benefits and risks involved in
this discipline. Having to agree upon a standardized view of information across multiple business
areas, and on the accompanying processes and procedures for the utilization of that information,
can appear to be an overwhelming task. Without an active management strategy in place, this could
be an insurmountable undertaking.
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Master Data Management (MDM) is quickly coming to the forefront of the IT project pipeline for almost
every corporation. As companies look to
invest in such a potentially broad, risky and significant corporate initiative,
SEI offers our insights on the business case, various approaches, and potential
challenges to engaging in such an effort.
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In this article, we begin to examine the spectrum of MDM Implementation strategies, while
providing a set of common questions that will help guide you in selecting the correct
implementation strategy for your environment.
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In this article we offer a review of some common challenges that any organization
will face in a large scale MDM initiative, along with tips to avoid or minimize
the opposing forces in your efforts.
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SOA's goals are to build business applications by reusing existing software services,
to increase consistency and to reduce errors. The goal of SOA governance is to manage
changes to consistently support business objectives and to deliver return on investment.
Successful governance immunizes the organization against the symptoms of an uncontrolled
environment. So what makes a SOA governance effort successful? And when do you move beyond
people and process to implement a tool to manage the SOA governance activities?
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SOA represents a fundamental change in the way technology is implemented within the
enterprise. In an SOA, business is the key driver and technology is secondary. BPM and
Workflow drive business processes which interact with services as required. The result is
a dramatic increase in business agility and flexibility. Our SOA experts analyze the role
SOA fulfills within an organization including the benefits and advantages of transitioning
to a SOA.
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When was the last time you considered using PHP for your business solutions? PHP, an open
source tool, has grown into an enterprise level application delivery toolset and is currently
being used by some very popular social web sites that you may be using today. An experienced
developer can quickly get up to speed with PHP, positioning you to increase your speed to market
and reduce your delivery cost.
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Looking for new functionality? How about improved performance tuning and monitoring tools?
Or do you prefer the stability of your already fine-tuned environment but merely want to
stay current on a supported version? With support of 9iR2 already ending and the recent
release of 11g, should you consider the direct jump to 11g? These are only a few of the
questions to be considered when planning your Oracle 10g upgrade. There are some well-advised
tasks to consider and risks to evaluate prior to launching your upgrade project. In this
article, our Oracle database experts explore inputs to timing and strategy decisions like training
of your technical staff, evaluation of related infrastructure upgrades, and coordination across
application owners and end users.
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In this article we will explore four technical approaches for executing your migration, support
offerings to leverage, and a collection of our lessons learned and best practices from past migrations.
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