The Project Team - Project Series

I know that I have moved away from this series for a little while, but there are certainly still a few areas that I want to examine, comment on, whatever it is I'm doing here.

The next one is the structure of the Project Team, and more particularly, the business representative(s) on the project team.

Unfortunately projects involving IT can take a while to get in place, and organisations are not usually staffed to be able to lose valuable operational staff to a project for a long period of time. This brings another tension into projects that have IT components, since the business is reticent to lose skilled staff for long periods, so they will pressure the project team to deliver earlier, or make their staff member(s) available 'as required', or in the absolute worst case give the project team a staff member they are willing to part with for a long period.

Rule #1 for the business unit should be when choosing the business expert to give to the project team it should be a person that you really can't do without. Or put another way, if you are happy to let a person go to the project they are the wrong person for the project.

This is not rocket science. The role of the business expert in the project team is to inform the project and development staff about the business processes, and make decision about the product that the business will have to live with. So think about it, surely you don't want to give them a staff member who is less than effective in their role? You want to give them the person who understands everything, you want to give them the person that everyone else relies upon for support and assistance, you want to give them the person who you trust to train new staff in the business processes. It stands to reason that this would be the case.

However, as mentioned earlier you can't afford to lose this person for a long period of time, so what does the business do? This is where a lot of projects fall down. We had a project in Defence that was developing a system to support a particular business process. A position was chosen as the liaison point, which was not the best position but the business couldn't spare the people who actually did the job. The person in that position had their own thoughts about how things 'should' work in the space, and had the system designed to support their view of the world. Needless to say that there was a significant redesign task when other people finally saw the system.

The thing that I have learned is that you cannot rely on one person to inform the project of how the business works, and most projects seem to understand this. There should be a business person on the project team, someone to keep the IT people on the straight and narrow when they get too focused on the technical aspects and lose sight of what the system is being designed for (it happens). The business person is also an important role to assist with the communications and training development. But it is even more important to ensure that the project team has a stakeholder group with your best staff, and that they are engaged appropriately in the process of developing the system.

There should be a Goldilocks approach to this consultation - not too little, not too much, just enough.  The stakeholder group should not be asked to validate everything the project business member says, but they should be asked to validate processes early on, they should be shown the developing system at key times in the process and of course they need to be part of the test and trial process before full UAT is commenced.

A note for Project Managers and BAs - when you are developing the business case and doing process mapping ask the question 'who do you go to for help?' and ensure that the 1 or 2 people that the majority of staff mention are requested to be part of the project. Put the business on the spot to say that they won't give these people up and identify the risks involved. In my experience the business seldom thinks of the actual impact of giving you less than optimal staff.

Information environment presentation - progress

The presentation for the eDiscovery conference is coming along fairly well. I have decided to do it in Prezi, but I will have a backup in faithful old powerpoint just in case technology fails me.

I've come up with a closing quote for the presentation that I'm pretty happy with:

When we know what we know and where and how we keep it then we know how to discover it

It's only recently that I added in the "and how" part, but I think that is one of the most important parts in an eDiscovery sense.  I'm pretty nervous about this presentation actually, since it is the first time I'll be presenting at a conference that is not focused towards records and information managers, but we'll see how it goes. Surely lawyers aren't that scary :-)

And now for something completely different...

I usually don't do posts that are simply links to other people's blogs, but I really need to make an exception for this one for two reasons:

1. This is one of the most romantic things I've ever seen (read), and not just what Sid did but also the song - which is free for download from the Heartless website (the movie is really lovely too.)
2. It not only has muppets in it but I have learnt from this post that it is possible to design and purchase your very own muppet Whatnot!!! Which I must say is a super-cool concept, even if the online store doesn't ship to Australia.

The post is about a wedding proposal with a difference, and it is lovely to think that after ten years together he would still go to so much trouble to propose. The cynical part of me thinks he wanted an excuse to make a muppet movie, but the effort to get it into a cinema belies that :-)

Maybe it is just the Krismas spirit, maybe it is the hopeless romantic in me, but I just had to share this one - enjoy.

Conference presentation on the information environment

I've been asked to present at an Ark Group conference on eDiscovery next April in Melbourne.  After considering it for a day or two I have suggested that I could talk about the information environment, documents and frameworks involved and how setting this up can assist in the eDiscovery processes.

I've started working on the presentation, and will hopefully get to use my current working environment as a case study, since we are progressing the artefacts for the information environment.  One of the things that it has reinforced for me is the importance of Security Access Models for all IT systems, which I presented at an information management policy conference three years ago. I have developed this further over the last few years and will be including this in the new presentation as well.

I've also come up with a much more refined image of the artefacts of an information environment. It's like a building blocks structure from bottom to top and I think it is a little more succinct and accessible to management. I'd be interested in any feedback on it.

Once I've done the new presentation I will post it up into Slideshare as well, unless of course I do decide to use Prezi for this one (I'm seriously toying with the idea but don't know if it will be too distracting).

Personal reflection

Do you ever have those days when you go into work and think "today will be the day they work out I'm a fraud"? I don't know why we do this, and I say we because I actually learned in a coaching training (don't ask) that this is an acknowledged condition (mainly in women not surprisingly).

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed at work this week, so much to do so little time, and so this feeling has been allowed to creep into my daily thoughts. This completely sucks, because usually it is when I have a really heavy workload that I'm more prone to these thoughts, but this is when I just need to kick in and get things done without any self-doubt.

Maybe this is just a little glimpse into my psyche that I shouldn't really share, but at the end of the day I am not a fraud, I know my job and I do it well - either that or I'm a much better bluffer than I ever thought possible. Next post will be more informative and not just about my mental processes - promise.