Turnaround Experiences: How to Rescue Struggling Projects

Are you scared of the f-word??Don't be scared, I am discussing the 'f' for ‘Failure.’?

Is it just me, or?you also think of success or failure concerning all your work or initiatives??

Today, let's discuss my experiences with Rescuing Failing Programmes. But let's first understand what we call ‘Success’ or ‘Failure.’ My definition of success is when a program delivers tangible business benefits, or ROI or KPI impact. Therefore, failure can happen at different stages, even after going live.

Today, I pick 3 case studies of different stages and share some simple principles applied to rescue the programs. Some of my past colleagues agreed to join me in sharing their experiences about failing and then bouncing back. Not that I did everything – the case studies here are about doing the basics right as a team and organization. The role of the leader is to keep the teams focused on these basics.??

Here are the 3 ideas worth sharing from the conversation:???

I invited some of my past colleagues to join me in sharing their experiences about failing and then bouncing back while Rescuing Failed Programmes (RFPs).?????

?Solutions lie in getting the basics right. Taking responsibility, managing risk, and rigorous governance from the ground level to the top level.??

Case study - 1??

The First Case study Guest is Seshu Mangalapalli (OTC Lead, Solenis).??

We worked on Warranty programs in an automobile company - Seshu recalls the leadership expectations, rollout challenges, and rescue measures.??

The old warranty program was neither scalable nor sustainable. There was a plan to migrate the traditional homegrown Warranty functionality to the company’s ERP.???

4 Major Challenges in the migration program?

• Expectations from businesses: - Migrate functionality from the current system to a standard ERP. But then, the ERP platform had its own processes based on best practices. The insistence to map like-to-like functionalities resulted in??
• Missed deadlines.?
• Lack of trust due to missed deadlines.?
• Demotivated team: - Feeling no support.?

3 Action Plans:??

• Question specific requirements: - Understand the complete requirements. E.g., why something specific is there in our software. Why is it different??Why can't it be re-engineered?
• Supporting demoralized teams:??

1. Protect the teams - Ensuring they make only those commitments that you can meet, not the ones they feel pressured to make.??
2. Shape up your performance and meet commitments.?Build confidence.
3. Emotional support?

• Streamline the entire cycle of commitments: -???

1. Do requirement analysis - Evaluate the existing pipeline of work, plus new requirements, plus changes, etc. holistically. Build a complete backlog.?
2. Set commitments right - Don’t make commitments without thorough analysis. Prioritize commitments.? Have you done rigorous effort analysis?
3. No commitment under pressure.??

Seshu then reminisced about the war room process that was set up to manage the cutover and transition. It was required due to major changes between the existing and new applications.

Listen to the War-room strategy - All teams (Service team, business team, IT team, etc.) work as One team-one purpose to carry out Dry runs, go live, or cut over from this control room.??

• Real-time response - Expert teams from the war room may address any urgent issue.???
• Always-on 24x7 support system - Anyone from anywhere can join the relevant online link.???
• Touchpoint calls - To ensure feedback from all places of work.?????

The discussion then moved on to reflections on a program gone live successfully but did not deliver benefits.

Case study - 2??

The second case study Guest is Gururaj Bagali (Automotive Supply Chain Consultant), with 30 yrs. of multifunction experience in Tata Motors.?

He recaps the expectations, challenges, actions taken, and outcomes during the rollout journey of the Service Parts Planning system.???

Leadership expectations: - To ensure availability, high fill rates, and low inventory of service parts - generating increased revenue and profits- achieve ROI target. ??

2 Major Challenges to Realizing ROI

• Low awareness level: - Niche area - Limited knowledge of technology and what it does.?
• Manpower: - The technology required a new role for Parts Planners. A requisition was given but got into HR bureaucracy (creating new roles is always a challenge).?

3 Action Plan:??

• Set the Target: - Set business outcome targets. In our case study, these are available, fill rates, inventory levels, etc.????
• Check your business metrics: - Against your target numbers.??
• Brainstorming: - Root Cause Analysis to answer questions like 'why are we unable to meet the expected numbers?', 'why are we not able to create an impact on the business?'?

We are not able to derive benefits from technology because the right roles are not in place to utilize that technology.??Bureaucracy hit us.

Winning outcome:??

Once the corrective measures, especially planners, were done, ROI target was achieved in 1 year and three months, two years earlier than the written commitment to the CFO.??

Case study - 3??

The third case study Guest is Sachin Kotasthane (Senior Solution Director, HCL Technologies), then IT in charge of the Plant team. He explains rescuing a high-profile Manufacturing Execution System (MES) program with multiple complexities and missing timelines by nine months.?????

4 Major challenges:??

• Humongous team: - A lot of people were involved, like the plant teams, implementation partner, in-house product partner, and IT team. This project was huge and complex.???
• Not in sync with changing business priorities: - MES was designed to acquire distributed information and allow optimization of production activity. It had undergone a lot of changes by adding a lot of functionality.??
• Large-scale roll-out: - System synchronization and redundancy. Switching over about 100 assembly stations with the plant running in three shifts.???
• Huge risk of business outages: - the massive task of developing additional interfaces of data bridges. Integration of new MES with old MES needed to be done for risk mitigation.???

?

5 Action plan??

• Organizing clarity sessions: - Discussions undertaken about roles and responsibilities and discovery of overlaps and conflicts. Introducing formal RACI across multiple players helped gain clarity.??
• Bringing success together: - Regular daily teleconferences - for observation, intervention, and coordination to bring people together.??
• Don’t compete but collaborate: - One-to-one meetings were done to make the project succeed. We established that escalation is not taboo. We have to speak out if anybody is coming in the way of success.??
• Re-baselining the entire program: - Reset and stop tracking the old timeline - set up a new time plan. Communicate to the teams and let people come out of the red past and focus on new timelines with green possibilities. Keep past behind and move on.??

But we arrived at a decision fork. Listen to it Managing risk- Meet leadership- advance timelines- give assurance- pull together.??

These were the 3 tier outcomes:??

1. Teams got motivated.?
2. Partners became risk-ready: - IT assurance induced encouragement in the leadership to take transition risks.???
3. Backstage support for fail-safety: - Positioning the critical resources, double-checking functionalities, and mock drills, made the difference.???

Overall impact - Go-Live was advanced by 2 months, well in time to meet the peak festive load on production.??

Conclusion:?

There is one leadership lesson in today’s ClariTea Chat Newsletter. It’s that ‘the solutions lie in getting the basics right.’??

Building trust amongst multiple teams & creating a growth mindset goes a long way in ensuring success. Rigor in execution & documentation is an absolute necessity.??

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