Many organisations seek to digitally transform their business with Microsoft Dynamics NAV to improve productivity and enable growth. However, instead of the promised leaps in innovation and efficiency, many projects fail. A meagre 29% of IT software projects succeed according to the Standish Group Chaos Report. One reason for this is not engaging or managing key stakeholders in a planned way. Stakeholder management is critical to the successful delivery of IT software projects.
Below are five signs that will help you to assess whether your project is managed well:
- Your expectations are managed and objectives agreed from the outset.
- No one wants to set unrealistic expectations, but it happens often. As a client, you want your project delivered fast, at the lowest cost and highest quality. Consultants don’t want to disappoint, so they assure you that everything is possible, including delivering yesterday!
- Clarity on what you will get for your buck should be made clear from the outset to avoid surprises during or at the end of the project.
- Being challenged in a constructive way is a good thing. An effective Consultant will review your business processes and uncover what you really need rather than what you want.
- Your project is planned with key milestones, and roles and responsibilities are well defined.
- You need to be made aware of the key stages of the project so that testing or ‘go live’ does not clash with your critical business periods. Always ask for a project plan if you don’t have one.
- Your organisation’s responsibilities on the project need to be well defined. Ensure that your team meets them to avoid delays.
- Being aware of the IT Consultant’s tasks means that you can hold them to account.
- Risks are properly assessed and pre-empted or addressed.
- A good Consultant will highlight factors that could derail the project. A thorough review is essential, including the causes of risks and the impact if they are not addressed.
- Risk factors could include, users not being available to test the system on time, unengaged stakeholders, business issues not properly analysed and so on.
- Once highlighted, the Consultant should work with you to either pre-empt or address the risks before they become a show stopper.
- All key stakeholders are known and engaged in the project.
- Stakeholders can be individuals or groups with an interest in the project, because they are involved in the work or affected by the outcomes of the project.
- Most projects will have a variety of stakeholders with different, and sometimes competing interests. These stakeholders can have significant influence over the eventual success or failure of the work.
- Conducting a stakeholder analysis using the grid below will help decide on who is a stakeholder and how best to manage them:
- Creating a partnership in which both parties jointly own and resolve issues.
- Edgar Schein, an eminent Business Psychologist, examined three types of relationships between a client and a Consultant, including Doctor/Patient, Expert and Process Consultation.
- With the Doctor/Patient relationship, the client tells the IT Consultant their organisation’s issues/’symptoms’ and the Consultant ‘prescribes’ a solution. With the Expert relationship, the client articulates the issue and seeks external help to fix them. Finally, the Process Consultation approach is when both the client and the Consultant jointly ‘diagnose’ the issue and then work together to resolve it, each playing to their respective strengths.
- Schein advocates the Process Consultation approach for projects to be successful where both parties take equal responsibility. The focus is on a deep understanding of the business issues and deriving a solution jointly.
Identifying and managing stakeholders from the start of a project and working collaboratively with them will prevent the project from derailing, which unfortunately many do.
If your Microsoft Dynamics project isn’t going as well as it could be, why not speak to the team at CBIZ? We’re happy help so please don’t hesitate to give us a call or drop us an email.
