Peer to Peer Magazine

43 WWW.ILTANET.ORG The Art of Implementations: The Purpose and Process of Projects FEATURES SEAN LUMAN Sean Luman, Director of Knowledge Management, has worked for Bracewell & Giuliani LLP for more than 19 years. He currently manages a team of database and systems analysts and the firm's web developers. Sean also leads the knowledge resources and records departments. During his tenure with the firm, Sean has implemented various system and process improvements to benefit attorneys and administrative staff. He can be contacted at sean.luman@ bracewelllaw.com. Creating a charter helps establish the goal of the implementation. Simply put, the charter is the mission and the deliverables of the project (the purpose). In any good implementation, the team should continually come back to the charter to make sure they're on track and working toward the stated goal. Once developed, the charter will help shape requirements, goals, the project team, timelines, the implementation plan, expense budgets, etc. How much thought is put into creating and maintaining a project plan before, during and aer the work is done? Proper planning and management of any implementation is the key to its success, so devote some quality time to this effort in advance. In addition, any good vendor will utilize some form of PM. Ask them for their standard project plan, which will help keep everyone on the same page. It's a red light if they can't provide some sort of project plan skeleton for the team (internal and external) to fill out together. Product Evaluation Always consider alternatives to processes, soware and hardware. Even if the alternatives appear too expensive or don't meet other requirements, they will give the team a broad knowledge of who the players are — big and small. This process will reveal essential information related to costs, implementation time frames, product complexities, integration possibilities/ complications and more. An easy and effective way to evaluate possible solutions is to create a small product comparison matrix that contains organized information. Creating a chart with multiple ideas also lets management know significant thought has been put into this project. When evaluating solutions, it might be helpful to consider the triple constraint model. Some solutions will have fewer features, and cost less, which translates to simpler, shorter implementation time frames. Greater functionality oen means greater complexity and a longer timeline. The point of the model is to show the effect each of these parts has on the other; e.g., if you increase scope, you affect the timeline. Once costs, scope and timeline have been evaluated, there will be a beer understanding of the overall impact to your firm. Communication The best way to have a successful implementation is to communicate with and involve the those who will ultimately be affected the most by the solution. Involve your technologically savvy, "positive aitude" administrative staff (and it doesn't have to be assistants/ secretaries). Implementations more oen become failures when IT doesn't involve anyone else. Having an advocate who's not part of the department involved in a project is a great way to increase the chances of a successful implementation. With management, it is important to use the product matrix in supporting your decision to move forward with soware selection. Nobody likes a techno-jargon-filled presentation by IT. Creating a matrix with short descriptions, pricing, maintenance obligations, hardware specs and rollout timelines is very useful. Communicating in plain, easy-to- understand language is critical. Everyone dreads meetings, but they are necessary to keep things on track and keep management in the loop related to process. "Stand-ups" are small meetings limited to a very few minutes, and (for Bracewell) revolve around short verbal updates on team member progress. These meetings will have participants talking through each of the tasks and progress/issues/adjustments. Any meetings with management should include handouts with bullet lists, tables/matrices, timelines and any other visual aids. Paragraphs of text are a waste of paper. TRIPLE CONSTRAINT MODEL: COST/RESOURCES SCHEDULE/TIME SCOPE/QUALITY

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