When I joined Pacific Blue Cross in 2003 as VP of IT, the CEO and I agreed on two foundational principles: 1. Technology has no value by itself, and 2. Technology management must switch its focus from operational to business enabler. These principles may seem self-evident, but the truth is, when there’s a flurry of projects, all of them important to some aspect of the business, technology management can all too easily get swept away in putting out fires. This seemed to be what was happening at Pacific Blue Cross when I arrived. With nearly 2 million members covered, Pacific Blue Cross is the market leader in providing health-care and dental coverage to residents of British Columbia. Our subsidiary, Blue Cross Life, also offers life insurance and disability income protection.
While I understood my mission - turning the IT department into an enabler of business - the journey has been far from straightforward. It’s been a long road with many bends and even a few dead-ends. Even so, there’s no doubt we’re making progress. How did we do it?
Project Management to the Rescue
First and foremost, we began to align every project to Pacific Blue Cross’s Balanced Scorecard. The Scorecard shows and measures the organization’s performance from six perspectives: qualitative, quantitative, infrastructure, clients, people and community-related goals. Every project is now justified in terms of how it supports the goals described in the Scorecard. That keeps the company’s goals clearly in sight for all and shows how technology relates to and enables the business.
After assembling a list of all the projects we were working on, I introduced the project management office (PMO) function. This office oversees all projects of more than one month’s effort - from the business case to a post-implementation review. We fashioned this as a corporate-wide PMO, because all projects require disciplined management and almost all projects at Pacific Blue Cross have a technology component.
The business welcomed the PMO, since it gave it an overall view of all projects (in the planning, execution or close-out stages) as well as monthly updates on their status.
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