This is the first Part in our special blog entitled Eight Steps to a Successful Project by Russ Barr, our Professional Services Operations Manager. Russ has many years experience in overseeing a vast range of successful projects. In this blog he has written an extremely comprehensive guide for anyone embarking on implementing a DAM or Marketing Resource Management solution.

1. It takes two – The Importance of a Good Fit

Any successful project must begin with finding a supplier and solution that can elegantly solve your problem.  As obvious as this may sound, it’s a simple truth often overlooked.  The right fit does not necessarily mean the implementation will be simple or not require any challenging integration with an external system.  On the contrary, the right fit can involve over-coming technical hurdles or further tailoring the software than has previously been carried out.

A good technical fit: does the software solve the client’s problem as it is? If it doesn’t, then do the changes that are necessary to enable it to fit make sense for the product?  On the other hand, other projects may fit well due to the wealth of experience in delivering similar sorts of solutions to similar clients.  This means that there is a lot of domain knowledge that doesn’t need to be learnt during the project.  If the problem and the solution are both well understood, it’s easier to determine how to best implement the product to meet that challenge. 

A good cultural fit and a joint or team effort between the client and the vendor are also essential. This is not always easy to assess, but throughout the tender process taking time to visit the supplier and digging into who will be leading the team and the levels of personnel redundancy will reap benefits further down the line.

Where the fit is questionable it is important to analyse the gap between what is required and what can be achieved and decide whether there is merit in expending energy to close the gap for future opportunities or if this is simply not a viable direction for the product or the business.

There is an obligation on behalf of both the vendor and the buyer to ensure good fit and there will be another blog piece coming soon on how that can be achieved.

2. Enthusiasm Counts - Stakeholders / Sponsor Buy-in

The enthusiasm and involvement of the right stakeholders is critical to the success of any project and Unify projects are no different.  Clients often have real business problems that can be solved with effort and commitment, but without the buy-in of the right sponsor (and by right, in most cases means the required level of seniority) the project is doomed to failure.

Unfortunately, it is often very difficult for the vendor to know who the right stakeholders or sponsor should be and it is even more difficult for a vendor to influence the selection of such people.  It is, however, immediately clear when the wrong people are involved and this realisation can often be the beginning of a long, up hill slog to gain the engagement of the participating parties.  It will almost inevitably lead to a more difficult and demanding implementation.

3. Delve + Dig - The Discovery Phase

The key to delivering a successful project to the client is to understand exactly what a client needs to achieve a successful project.  This is often challenging, but a good business analyst must separate the ‘want’ from the ‘need’ and dig deep below the surface to extract details of the business problem that people who are involved with it on a day- to- day basis may overlook or may not even be aware exists.

To mitigate the risk of failing to understand the full extent of the problem, it is always recommended (if not essential) for a thorough discovery phase to be undertaken by an experienced business analyst.  During the discovery phase the analyst must embed themselves within the clients organisation, only through personal, hands-on experience of the business can the true nature of the problem be understood and solutions found.  

The discovery phase should be split into two distinct phases, what I call the ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ phases.  During the Problem Phase the analyst must use any and all necessary techniques to gather as much information about the current process or system as possible. When moving in to the Solution Phase, the analyst will begin to build up a picture of how to provide a solution that will improve the working lives of the people who are going to be using it in their daily activities.  Only from this kind of deep and detailed analysis of the problem can a suitable and viable solution be determined.

4. Involve, engage, adopt - User Engagement

One thing that project participants should never lose sight of is the purpose of all projects; that is to deliver a beneficial, user focussed solution and produce a return on investment for the business.  Business analysts, project managers and developers cannot operate in a vacuum.  For all their collective experience of delivering (sometimes very similar) solutions it is VITAL to engage with end users at every stage of the project.  Without engagement with the users, a project is doomed to fail in a number of ways.  The first, and most obvious risk is that the final solution will not meet the need that the users had in the first place. Engagement with users during the discovery phase and then during the implementation of the development phase will ensure that the final outcome delivers to the users satisfaction.  

Failing to engage with users can also lead to another, more difficult to remedy problem of adoption.  A nightmare scenario for users is to be given a system that they didn’t help to shape and subsequently have no stake in or even resentment towards.  It is rarely the fault of the system that the users were not asked what they wanted but it will be the system that the user frustration is directed at.  Inevitably, a lack of adoption will lead to a failed project (or one that must be remedied with lots of user engagement and money).

Users who have been involved in the definition and direction of a project will feel a part of it and want to ensure that the final solution is a success.  They will act as champions of the system to their peers and advocate its’ use by pointing out where it eliminates bottlenecks or repetition in processes by relating it to the real world context of the original problem.  It is very unlikely that all end users can be involved so it is vital that there are user champions who feel the sense of ownership and will increase the chance of adoption and ease the troubles of change management.

Later this week we will post the next stages in our guide to project success…stay tuned.