Journyx Project Management Blog

3. Find Out Who Will Be Configuring Your Solution

Is your vendor claiming that its solution does it all? Common sense tells us that those who do it all don’t often do it well. Those who specialize in a few core competencies, however, are in a much better position to excel. When a vendor claims it can do it all, ask specific questions about the functionality you need most (e.g. tracking actuals against project plans, resource allocation, etc.).

You should also ask about the team that will be implementing your solution. Many vendors will send IT staff, but do you really feel that an IT person with no experience in project management can implement and configure the solution to meet your specific needs? Ask vendors about the staff who will be providing professional services, and select one that has experts in both technology and project management on the team.

4. Don’t Be Fooled by Functionality

Functionality is another area where asking for customer references is key. A PPM vendor can promise you all kinds of fancy functionality, but when it comes down to it, will you really have 100 percent of it rolled out and used throughout your company?

A conversation with a few of the vendor’s clients should be able to answer this question for you. You shouldn’t be paying 100 percent of the price for a solution unless you know you will be getting 100 percent of the functionality.

Due to the economy, many businesses are now looking at project portfolio management solutions to help them isolate and execute mission-critical projects more effectively.

These businesses have also found that Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are both more affordable and easier to deploy than traditional ones. Choosing the right solution, however, can be challenging. Here are several ways to ensure that you choose the solution that is right for your business needs.

1. Consider Price

One of the first issues to consider with a PPM solution is the cost, especially during a recession when budgets are either tight or frozen. Larger PPM vendors have a cost of entry, and it may take a considerable amount of time to see a return on investment in such costly solutions.

What many organizations do not realize is that there are also strong vendors in the market with competitive pricing on project portfolio management solutions. Do your homework on all competitors in the marketplace before making a final decision.

2. Plan for Implementation

Did you know that it often takes as long as one to two years for a large PPM solution to be fully implemented? This means that the financial investment you are making right now will probably not bring in an ROI for a very long time.

Savvy buyers must press vendors for real answers on what the implementation time frame will be. It is also a good idea to ask to speak with other clients about their implementation experiences to ensure that the vendor delivers what is promised during the sales process.

• The Right Fit

Check the reference company’s website for business model appropriateness. Is this reference company similar to your business? For
example, software used by restaurants may not be appropriate for your project management consultancy. Are you a company that mostly sells to other businesses, or do you sell directly to consumers? Does your company handle many transactions and customers per year or just a few? The references that the vendor provided you should be as much like you as possible.

• Know Who You’re Dealing With

Call the reference company’s main number rather than the direct number of the person you were given. Find out if this is a real company with an automated company directory. When possible, get a receptionist to confirm that the reference executive works there. Tell them why you’re calling, and ask if they know who else might help in this matter.

• Double Up

Leave a voicemail message and send an email as well. For example, you can follow up your calls with a thank you email, sent to the address given to you by your potential vendor.

• Further Research

If you have any suspicions that the company isn’t real, use this website to see how long their domain name has been around, and who created it. You can also match up locales to area codes on Wikipedia in order to ensure that the reference company is really located where they say they are.

Beyond this, you need to find out how many phases the potential vendor had in the rollout of the software, what problems they encountered and what would have made things easier. Were all the people in the company as professional and easy to work with as the friendly salesperson? Were there any expectations set during the sales process that were not met during rollout and product usage? Are all of the functional areas of the software being used that they expected? Why or why not? Gleaning this data from the reference will help everyone involved to communicate properly, and it will probably convince you that you’re talking to a real satisfied customer – not a plant.

Any company can have one or two reference customers that are “friends of the family” – business owners that are too close to be objective about the performance of the vendor. This is why insisting on references in your location or industry is important, and why you need several to check up on.

If you follow these steps you won’t be hoodwinked by an unscrupulous vendor, and you’ll be much more likely to get a project management solution in place that will lead your company to greater business success.

And that’s a legacy we’d all like to reference.

So what steps can be taken to ensure that you’ll be learning what you need to learn about the entity you’re checking up on? How can you know their references are real and not somebody’s mother?

8 Simple Steps to Confirm Reference Validity

• Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

If the reference calls you, be suspicious – who has time to do that? Tell him you are unavailable at the moment and schedule a time to return the call when he’s at his desk, at his company.

• Just the Facts

Make sure you are given a full name, title, company phone number and email address for all of the references that you will be contacting – at least three per vendor. Do not settle for Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email addresses, or other temporary email addresses not indicative of a real company.

• Make the Call

You actually have to call all the references and talk to them. Sounds obvious, but most people don’t do it because it takes time and it is work. It is a very important step in the process, though, because you may be averting wasted money, time and effort for your company.

• Do Your Homework

Search on Google to ensure that the reference company is real. Does it match the Internet domain name of the email address given to you by your potential vendor? For example, if the reference company’s name is “Altman Architecture” and the email address is
bryan@altmanarchitecture.com, then do a search for that company name and see if www.altmanarchitecture.com is one of the top results you find.

When you’re making a large investment in a project management product or solution, you need to be sure that you’re making that purchase from a reputable vendor that will be there to support you in the future.

Obtaining a short list of happy customers that your vendor has helped – in other words, some references – is a common part of the buying process of many businesses. There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to check references. Are you doing it right? Are you getting the data you really need to make this critical buying decision? Or are you talking to one of the vendor’s own employees who is just pretending to be a happy customer? Sounds farfetched, does it?

As CEO of a software company, I have actually come across other software companies (one of our competitors, for example) that are guilty of pulling the references scam. The web allows companies to appear bigger and more successful than they actually are, because professional-looking websites can be created quickly and easily. They do not prove, however, that a company has been in business very long, or is reputable within its field.

Once again, checking references is extremely important because it enables you to verify that your vendor has had successful rollouts of their product rather than selling shelfware that will never be used. You also need to know that this vendor has experience helping customers like you – of your size, in your region and in your industry. If they have a customer similar to you in your city that you can
actually meet with, that can be the perfect reference. Think about it – if your potential software vendor is willing to lie to you about references, what else could they be lying to you about?

- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO

How to Work Together

The best way to help your PMO to become more agile, and vice versa, is to get these groups together and focus on their similarities instead of their differences. For example, both groups are interested in prioritizing projects to ensure that the most important ones receive adequate resources and budget. They are also concerned with project execution, though their definitions of success might vary between staying within budget and time constraints and meeting customer expectations.

When it comes to a difference of opinion, compromise is necessary. Creating an agile PMO in your organization will take a bit of diplomacy and mediation. It will be necessary to find ways to get each team to give a little ground for the greater good. For example, the PMO can compromise by being flexible and open to altering plans and schedules as needed, while agile developers can compromise by tracking their time in order to keep everyone updated on their progress.
Organizations with both PMPs and agile developers should not hesitate in getting these two talented groups to work together. With the right kind of management processes in place, managers can capitalize on the strengths of each group for successful project execution and increased return on investments.

Agile Development Is Here to Stay

Agile development continues to gain popularity in the IT world for a number of reasons. One of its key principles is constant communication between developers and customers, which helps in maximizing customer satisfaction and managing scope creep intelligently. Recently, an executive at a well-known financial institution told me that agile is important because it allows developers to build and demo often, enabling customer advocates to note when something needs to be corrected.

Agile allows companies to keep their fingers on the pulse and adapt themselves to the needs of customer or the market very quickly. “Agile teams are cross-functional, self organizing and self managing,” Sulaima asserts. With principles such as these, it’s not difficult to see how agile development teams can be extremely effective.

Joint Business Value

Combining the strengths of the PMO and the development team is a smart move. With a PMO to keep an eye on things, project risk can be managed much more effectively. Problems along the way are recognized and often resolved in a timely manner. In addition, the agile group can help the PMO to become more flexible and customer-oriented. Recently, Evan Campbell, CTO and agile devotee, was quoted in a project management article as saying,

“A strategic PMO can be a great asset to agile teams,” notes CTO and agile devotee Evan Campbell in a recent article, “[... by] keeping an eye on performance of company assets in the portfolio and working with the product owner and scrum master to make sure the metrics of projects are assessed and value is delivered.”

Agile development is often interpreted as completely at odds with the structure and constraints of the project management office (PMO). Yet it does not have to be this way. Creating an agile PMO that bridges the gap between these two significant groups can help organizations to prioritize projects and allocate resources much more effectively. Here’s how to keep both project managers and agile developers happy while leveraging the strengths of each for successful project execution.

Who Needs a PMO Anyway?

The PMO brings significant advantages to the organization. For one thing, its focus on metrics is often crucial to the health and success of a project portfolio. It can also facilitate communication between project team members, project managers and those higher up in the organization. Tamara Sulaiman, a project management consultant, explains it this way:

“Let’s say you are a manager or leader in an agile organization. Your development teams have implemented Scrum and are now working toward release. You’ve got the Scrum of Scrums working so that teams can communicate with each other about cross-team dependencies and impediments on a daily basis. But there’s a gap, isn’t there? As a manager, how do you effectively and efficiently measure progress, manage risk and keep your eye on the big picture across these agile teams? Wouldn’t it be great to have an easy way to communicate budget and schedule information at the program level to the organization?”

While the agile worker is focused mainly on development at a fast pace, the PMO can help to keep the rest of the organization informed about what is going on. Scope changes, delays or quality issues can arise at any time, and when they do, they must be communicated to all of the stakeholders who can adjust expectations accordingly and take the appropriate course of action.

Let’s finish off our week of focusing on IT Projects with a CIO article that offers some keys to success that might be overlooked by project managers.

What’s the recipe for project management success? Many IT professionals agree that buy-in and support from top management, clearly defined scope and requirements, good communication, and the right project resources top the list of key ingredients.

Those aren’t the only factors influencing the successful outcome of a project, of course.

According to 83 members of the CIO Forum on LinkedIn, here are some “less-considered” keys to IT project management success:

1. A Clear Definition of Success
2. A Willingness to Make Unpopular Decisions
3. End-User Training and Hand-Holding After Go-Live
4. Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities
5. Transparent Workflows
6. A Process for Managing Scope Changes
7. Risk Management
8. Adequate Documentation
9. A Good QA Process
10. Project Governance

Can you think of any other factors that are often overlooked, but impact the success of projects nonetheless?

In continuing the series, here are the highlights from Schultz’s newest article on change management and technology for managing IT projects successfully.

11. Change Management

Good – I lead the project team in addressing the introduction of new business processes and their impact on staff.

Bad – The project team is not introducing new business processes, despite my encouragement as project manager, to place more emphasis on this topic.

Ugly – The project team doesn’t believe change management is required.

12. Project Technology

Good – The project consistently uses a short list of technologies. I can conceptually describe the technology.

Bad – The project uses an extensive and changing list of technologies. Initially it was Microsoft; some months later it’s Java and more recently something called LAMP is being discussed.

Ugly – I observe the project team using lots of technology buzzwords in discussions. It’s not clear what technologies the project is actually using.

Anything you would add to Schultz’s lengthy list of factors that go into IT project success?