Finished Internal Project? But We Aren't Done Yet!

Your organization has just finished a project for rebranding, or setting up a new manufacturing plant, or an IT project for establishing business analytics. ? Sometimes, formal closure is not done, except for closing a project’s budget.?

In the first example, you launched a new brand logo, youtube videos, and informed customers. In the second case, your new plant is operational. In the third example, managers have new analytics dashboards with great infographics. Everything seems to be done. So you get done with your project.?

But, you aren’t done yet!

Spoiler alert!

A project’s go-live is not its end station.

Let me explain in detail with the help of a few examples.?

Production capacity enhancement

Some time back, your company decided to triple the production capacity for a product line to meet higher demand. You can now see that its volumes dispatched are nearly three times of that before the project. Looks like a success.

Let’s go back in time. Your management sanctioned the project budget with these expectations: 1) Unit cost must go down by 5%? 2) Production yield must be improve from 95% to 97% (You invested in better machinery)3) Returns from field due to quality issues must come down from 10% to 1% (also due to better machinery)

Better production machinery and processes were also expected to reduce worker fatigue and higher trade and customer satisfaction due lower returns due to defects. In other words, the stakeholders were expected to adapt to the change well and accept it.

Did you achieve the numbers and obtain the above qualitative benefits? Do you have an action plan to close the gaps between expectations and achievements?

Implementing PSA software

As an IT service provider, you implemented PSA software to improve your resource utilization and profitability. You have migrated your deal pipeline and orders to the PSA. You are now billing via the PSA.? Your IT department is wrapping up the remaining loose ends. The PSA is live now.

Your management had approved the PSA implementation budget with these goals 1) Improve billable resource utilization by 5% 2) Improve project profitability by 8% 3) Reduce DSO by 20 days.

The new PSA software was also expected to improve employee and customer experience.? You expected timesheet filling, change request management, and customer query management to improve.

Did you achieve the financial objectives? Have employees and customers experienced the benefits? Has your investment paid off as expected? Do you know the answers and do you have an action plan to make up for any shortfall?

Organizational restructuring

From a successful startup, your company scaled and became a well known market player. Your employee headcount went up in the process. But the organization became a fluid mass that was growing and getting more complex.You hired an experienced HR consultant to suggest solutions. You undertook? an organizational restructuring project based on the consultant’s recommendations. You recently completed the project. Your people have new designations and pay grades. You have clearly marked lines of command, and separated functional roles. Your HR head and the consultant have declared the project to be over.

The project took over one year and significant investment. It caused disruptions in people’s work several times during the period. It means you made financial and non-financial? investments with the objective: 1) Bring uniformity in pay grades across various departments based on individual qualifications, experience, and criticality of an individual's function. 2) Improve talent hiring and onboarding? 3) Increase the contribution margin ( revenue minus cost of goods sold) by 10% . You also aimed to improve the employee morale.

Have things panned out as intended? More importantly, have cross-functional communications improved? Has the employee attrition rate fallen to the expected level?

Go-Live is the start of a project’s evaluation phase.

Full value realized is its end-station

Organizations undertake internal projects like the above with a set of specific goals.?

But once a projects’ visible part is over, people involved in it move on to other work. They are rather quick to abandon an internal project because it is seen as ‘extra work’ in addition to their regular jobs. The extent of value realized remains invisible to the management even, which is a pity.

In case of external projects, customers insist on a proper project closure. In case of internal projects you need a formal process.

Advanced PSA helps you assess value realized in internal projects’.

An advanced PSA software has a project set up workflow and templates which lets you define the charter of every internal project. You can set up quantitative metrics and configure how they are calculated - automatically or manually. For example, metrics like yield, field returns, billable resource utilization, DSOs, timesheet filling compliance etc. can be configured to be automatically calculated.

Qualitative parameters related to adaptation and acceptance can be ascertained through internal and external surveys and entered manually. Metrics like time-to-resolve complaints, frequency of using new features, or billing error rate can be obtained from PSA to validate the qualitative or subjective data.

PSA with embedded AI can help you tap into the above qualitative and subjective information and improve your understanding of value realized.

PSA helps you track action points to realize full project value.

Once the management has a complete visibility of the project's value realized, it can decide on action items and assign people to them. PSA helps you track all actions and reassess the project’s value realized. PSA has project closure workflow and templates to capture everything that matters. It’s an invaluable learning tool.

Conclusion

Organizations undertake a variety of internal projects with specific goals.Modern PSA provides project setup workflow to capture all the goals and to set up related calculations. PSA helps them? achieve complete visibility into tangible benefits like ROI, profitability etc. and adaptation and acceptance by stakeholders. PSA helps them estimate the gap between promise and performance and plan interventions to realize? the full value of project investments. PSA helps top management to track the completion of the planned? actions and achieve a formal closure of the project using project closure workflows.

Kytes, an AI-enabled PSA has all the above capabilities. Would you like to know more or witness a demo? Contact us at [email protected]