This is a series of posts, if you haven’t read the earlier ones, please read it here.
The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 1: Overview
The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 2: Nuts and Bolts

Business Templates

These are the standard business language that is used for documentation, agreements, system generated emails, etc.

• What kinds of templates are usually used in conjunction with the business object?
• What sections of these are modified often? List out relevant sections here.

Master Data

This topic would, in some cases, include vendor master, supplier master, clients, personnel information, etc.

• Please list out sources or systems that are currently used to maintain master data. Examples will include vendor master, supplier master, clients, products, etc.

Integrations

This is a common feature of a large project. Invariably you will end up with integrating data to various other systems within the company.

• What are the integration points for the new system to talk to? The integration includes information exchange that could go in to the new system and/or out of the new system.
• What is the company standard for directory services?
• Is there a single sign-on currently implemented within the company?

Products, IP, etc

• Do you maintain a list of products, services, or solution offerings?
• Do you maintain any knowledge or IP-related information?

Legacy Data

This section covers the already-existing data for the business objects. The data can be located in legacy systems, in various spreadsheets, documents, or even hard-copy information.

• What is the volume of the legacy information for the business object?
• What is the volume of the legacy information for associated objects?
• Is the legacy data in a mix of stages in the lifecycle? Do they include objects in creation, review, approvals, executed or published, etc?
• What is the format of the legacy data? (Examples could include Excel, PDT, etc)

Search and Reporting

• Is there a currently a report that is used by your organization?
• If yes, what are the data points being reported on?
• How frequently are these reports run?
• What is the report format? (Examples could include Excel, pivot tables, etc.)

Next week on these pages : The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 3: Take aways

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About the Author

Arun Nithyanandam is a Strategy and Management Consultant based in Silicon Valley. Arun has managed multiple multi-million dollar IT projects in US and Europe across verticals. His current focus areas are Enterprise Contract Management Systems (deploying Nextance proposal-to-revenue and source-to-savings solutions to help companies improve financial performance and lower risk) and Enterprise Content Management Systems. Arun works with CIGNEX Technologies, a provider of Open Source based enterprise content management solutions.

During his spare time (if any) Arun enjoys hiking and reading.

Arun is currently working on a book (co-authored with Bill Sherman) code named “Managing Multi-million dollar projects” to be published in 2008.

For the collection of all Arun’s articles, please visit Squidoo Lens Arun Says

This is a series of posts, if you haven’t read the earlier ones, please read it here.
The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 1: Overview

A Four-Part Cook Book

While every cook book will be different, we find that they generally share common core elements.

Below are some of the sections and questions that we have used in the past. Time and again, these tools have proven really valuable for us. In this example, the cook book is organized into the following four parts:

• Contact Information
• Interview Questions
• Conclusion
• Interviewer Notes

You can certainly create your own cook book format. In fact, we encourage you to do so!

Section One: Contact Information
This section covers the stakeholder’s information. This information allows you to code and file the stakeholder’s responses.

• Name,
• Phone
• Date of Interview
• Department
• Organization Name

Sometimes, you will have some follow-up questions for them before you meet them. This is a great means to reach out to them via email or phone before you meet them in person. If you do have questions, or clarifications, you should reach out during the Pre-Analysis stage. This helps in getting the relationship going along even before you meet.

Section Two: Interview Questions

This section serves as the core of the cook book. It is split into sub-sections, based on the domain and the industry. Not every cook book will contain all of these elements. However, here are some common areas:

Technology Wish List

This sub-secton is targeted to the Shared Services or the IT Services team within the company. Typical questions will include:

• Database
• Application Server
• Web Server
• Email Server
• Clustering?
• VMWare?
• Content server

These questions will allow you to benchmark the current state as well as the desired or ideal state.

Business Objects
These questions focus on the core business object(s) of this initiative.

• What are the functional responsibilities of your group?
• Describe the current business object creation process.
• Described how the business object is published/executed.
• Describe how the business object is maintained/managed/purged.
• What types of the business objects does your organization deal with?
• What is the volume by type of the business objects created per month?
• How often do they get modified once executed or published?
• Do you currently have a system that manages this? Please explain.
• Is there any compliance risks involved with the business objects?
• What kind of meta-data would you like to capture about the business object? Please include details and list the fields that you will be interested in capturing.

These questions should be asked for each group impacted by the project. Remember that different groups may have radically different needs and expectations for the system.

We have also seen these questions uncover unexpected differences between how parallel groups use the current system. For example, two groups—one in San Jose and one in Mumbai—perform similar roles for the company, but they have developed different processes. When you capture these differences through the pre-analysis, you (as the project lead) can manage expectations more effectively.

Users

• How many users are currently involved in the process, and what types of users?
• Where are they located? (Provide a list of areas for them to select from).
• How many of these users are involved in creation of the business object?
• How many of these users are involved in maintenance or management of the business objects?
• What level of access would these users require in the system? Examples could be read, write, can access only basic information, can download information, etc.
• Do you need to share the information with someone outside of your organization? List out other organizations or functional groups.

Security

• How many user groups will you want in the system? Examples could be Managers, Approvers, Reviewers, Read only users, Administrators.
• Will some users be wearing multiple hats in the system?
• Will there be segmented users? (users who will only be able to see sections)

Workflow

• Describe the current workflow process. Typical examples could be creation, lead up to publish (review, approve), publish/execute, Maintenance, management, etc.
• List out the roles that you will see the users performing in the new system.

Next week on these pages : The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 2: Nuts and Bolts (Contd.)

————————-
About the Author

Arun Nithyanandam is a Strategy and Management Consultant based in Silicon Valley. Arun has managed multiple multi-million dollar IT projects in US and Europe across verticals. His current focus areas are Enterprise Contract Management Systems (deploying Nextance proposal-to-revenue and source-to-savings solutions to help companies improve financial performance and lower risk) and Enterprise Content Management Systems. Arun works with CIGNEX Technologies, a provider of Open Source based enterprise content management solutions.

During his spare time (if any) Arun enjoys hiking and reading.

Arun is currently working on a book (co-authored with Bill Sherman) code named “Managing Multi-million dollar projects” to be published in 2008.

For the collection of all Arun’s articles, please visit Squidoo Lens Arun Says

As he fades into the sunset of IT retirement Bill Gates definitely deserves to be remembered as a man of great philanthropy, rather than the IT visionary that many seem to give him credit for.

As an IT journalist for 15 years, I can’t recall one occasion where I thought Bill Gates said anything truly inspiring about IT. Definitely nothing that most of us who followed the industry didn’t already know. Certainly nothing that was exceedingly insightful – something I would have expected to hear from IT’s most famous founding father. The fact is that Bill was mostly pretty dull and seemingly uninspired when discussing IT. He certainly wasn’t dynamic and hardly the overtly passionate tech nerd that he’d often been portrayed as being. Yet Bill is an IT superstar, albeit duller than a butter knife. Over the years, Bill could pack them in like nobody’s business at keynotes, conventions and many other events happening around the globe. During most of his tech diatribes, however, Bill never really had much to say.

Most Bill Gates speeches sounded like Microsoft product commercials. Bill’s public discussions were typically pretty generalized – jibber about connected devices, connected people, connected ideas, a connected world, the power of the Internet, IT and innovation, empowerment. Blah, blah, blah! There was never anything too specific or revealing and mostly an espoused viewpoint that Microsoft was leading the way towards these vague notions. A good-sounding commercial but little else.

But Bill Gates is one hell of a human being and that’s where he’ll leave his most indelible mark.

The thing that most impresses me about Bill is his philanthropy and generosity. It’s the good social work that Bill and Melissa Gates do that’s truly inspirational. They’ve donated tens of billions of dollars throughout the years. Through his Foundation, Bill and Melinda provide enormous monetary grants for education, AIDS research and prevention, as well as programs that support global health and learning, and much more. His generosity is enlightening and has inspired others of such means to do likewise. Bill’s legacy as he moves into “retirement” will perhaps be as a civil-rights spokesperson and the greatest humanitarian in history. Something he’ll undoubtedly be focused on doing for the remainder of his years.

That’s something to be remembered for.

When you kick start a project, you’ll begin with the discover phase—sometimes also known as the requirements phase. This initial step frequently involves an exhaustive stakeholder analysis. In our experience, this first phase often determines whether the project will be a success or a nightmare. If a project launches without a proper stakeholder analysis, the system’s requirements will not align with the actual needs of the business users.

Asking Relevant Questions

The stakeholder analysis can be a tricky phase of the project. If you ask relevant questions, you will get the answers you need. More importantly, you will over the stakeholders, and identify the relevant requirements.

However, if you don’t ask relevant questions, you will come across as someone who doesn’t understand the stakeholders and their needs. People will perceive you as unsure of yourself. You may even come across as inexperienced.

During the stakeholder analysis, you have the potential to “discover” requirements which will really be in–tune with the actual needs of the business users. How do you get great responses from stakeholders? If you’re a naturally-gifted interviewer, you could use this skill to elicit great responses. Similarly, if you’ve got decades of experience, you could draw upon your experience with similar stakeholder groups; you might even anticipate people’s needs before they express them. Certainly, natural talent or experience would make your life easier as the project leader.

However, we’ve learned that the best way to craft relevant questions is through intensive and thoughtful prep-work. There are smart ways to prepare relevant questions for your project’s stakeholders. We call this tool the pre-analysis cook book.

In this section, we’ll discuss how to write a cook book for a project, and we’ll share some sample questions.

Creating Your Cook Book

Your cook book will be developed for each project, and it will contain a nicely-drafted list of relevant questions that cove all the areas the project is designed to cover. The questions will be specific to the domain or industry of the project.

After you draft the cook book, you will send it to your stakeholders and ask them to fill it out and return it to you. You’ll want to receive their responses before you do the actual stakeholder analysis. This way, you will have some time to go over the responses and formulate your analysis questions.

In the scope of this blog, you will see some questions which are specific to certain projects. Don’t assume these questions must be asked for every project. Instead, we’re giving examples of what you could do with the cook book.

When you create your cook book, you must apply it to your specific subject area and domain. Remember, the cook book will contain many questions. You should not expect any one person to answer all of the questions. So, when you send the cook book to your stakeholders, be sure to identify which questions each person should answer.

Next week on these pages : The Anatomy of a Pre-Analysis Cookbook – Part 2: Nuts and Bolts

————————-
About the Author

Arun Nithyanandam is a Strategy and Management Consultant based in Silicon Valley. Arun has managed multiple multi-million dollar IT projects in US and Europe across verticals. His current focus areas are Enterprise Contract Management Systems (deploying Nextance proposal-to-revenue and source-to-savings solutions to help companies improve financial performance and lower risk) and Enterprise Content Management Systems. Arun works with CIGNEX Technologies, a provider of Open Source based enterprise content management solutions.

During his spare time (if any) Arun enjoys hiking and reading.

Arun is currently working on a book (co-authored with Bill Sherman) code named “Managing Multi-million dollar projects” to be published in 2008.

For the collection of all Arun’s articles, please visit Squidoo Lens Arun Says

“Green is the new ethics.”

It’s hard to disagree. With messages from the likes of David Suzuki finally penetrating the moral conciousness of a large number of North Americans, “saving the planet” and “going green” are convenient mantras for the corporate world to hang its battered ethical hat on. Especially in the hardware market, whose products eat up huge amounts of energy, a green message allows companies to at least look like they care about something other than the bottom line.

Whether there is an earnest interest in the environmental movement amongst this group is cause for skepticism. But at least they are saying, and in many cases doing, some positive things around the environment. Let’s just hope that while they’re talking about planting trees and saving fish, corporate strategists are not forgetting about more traditional ethical matters around finances and good governance.

Speaking of his own experiences, Sheppard commented, “It may sound a bit manipulative, but in a sense, we often have made failures into succeses by readjusting expectations and good corporate communications.”

That means mentioning the deployment of 500 new laptops on time even though the new software deployment is a month behind schedule. It means sending the right message to ensure mass panic does not set in amongst decision makers. It means keeping partnerships as healthy as they can be. And it is a dirty little secret about project management that most managers have faced and which they must be prepared to handle in most situations.

Wrote one: “There is simply too much technology (supply) chasing too few buyers (demand) with need for the technology. Niche technologies offer opportunities for tuck-in deals for suppliers of truly whole product solutions with established distribution and market access.”

For more on the report, see this article from Thomas Wailgum in CIO Magazine.

The report, “Strategic acquirers to ramp up M&A activity in the coming year”, is available to 451 Group clients at the company’s site.

This is a series of posts, if you haven’t read the earlier ones, please read it here.
Sell Business to Business Users – Part 1: The Need
Sell Business to Business Users – Part 2: The Design & Execution

When All Else Fails

There are times when, despite your best efforts, you can’t get buy-in. People miss meetings; they show little interest in the solution; they find excuses to evade their commitments. If this happens, there are probably underlying tensions within the company and its groups.

Be especially careful when relying on executives to provide a top-down message for change without an underlying consensus from the user community. For example, the COO can send out an e-mail to all of the stakeholders that dictates the company’s vision and direction for the project. Such a message will dutifully be addressed by all of the communities within the company; however, you’re likely to see begrudging resistance.

Your project may be caught in a deeper undercurrent. For example, the stated goal and vision for the company may be different from the goals people perceive. An executive might say, “this project will save us 20% of our time spent on this process.” If people in the user community question the company’s growth prospects, they may wonder if this new project will put their jobs at risk.

If during the project you start to see tension or dissension among the stakeholders and user community, it’s good to take a step-back. Look at the world through their eyes:

• Does the group perceive the project’s relevance (to themselves and the company)?
• Does the group sense a value misalignment (between the company’s stated and perceived objectives)?
• Does the group feel that they will have sufficient organizational support (during and after launch) to be successful?
• Does the group believe the changes are too difficult?

Remember, when you’re introducing new systems, you’re not just dealing with hardware, software, and middleware. You’re impacting people.

Next week on these pages: Pre-Analysis Cook Book

————————-
About the Author

Arun Nithyanandam is a Strategy and Management Consultant based in Silicon Valley. Arun has managed multiple multi-million dollar IT projects in US and Europe across verticals. His current focus areas are Enterprise Contract Management Systems (deploying Nextance proposal-to-revenue and source-to-savings solutions to help companies improve financial performance and lower risk) and Enterprise Content Management Systems. Arun works with CIGNEX Technologies, a provider of Open Source based enterprise content management solutions.

During his spare time (if any) Arun enjoys hiking and reading.

Arun is currently working on a book (co-authored with Bill Sherman) code named “Managing Multi-million dollar projects” to be published in 2008.

For the collection of all Arun’s articles, please visit Squidoo Lens Arun Says