What are the Top 5 Critical Ingredients in Making a Large IT Program Successful?

Image By: Maarten van den Heuvel

December 15, 2017: Question Series #2

Written By: Marc Moskowitz

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Is it safe to say that all Program/Project Managers are in search of a repeatable magic formula to ensure that they are successful? In particular, when it comes to large technology or operations programs over 5MM+ in budget? I think it is very safe to say. This is especially true when we are trying to repeat that success over and over again. That repeated success is one of the most difficult things to achieve in our field. There are plenty of “one-hit” wonders out there, but very few repeat champions. One can surely draw a parallel to sports, where winning the championship the first time it tough, but repeating it again the next year is even tougher. This premise is what Question Series #2 is all about. I want to make us all repeat offenders when it comes to large program success.

I could list 100 things that will help make your programs successful. However, my formula for this Question Series is to keep these articles pithy and useful, so we’ll make an expanded Mount Rushmore list (five instead of four) of what I believe to be the most critical ingredients for repeatable, large program success. The list is in no particular order, as I believe they are all equally important.

Ingredient #1: Name and Logo

There is a lot to be said for a name and logo as brand marketers know, but the same holds true for large programs. After all, you are creating something new and likely better than what you have today, right? Further, you’re going to “transform” something within your company, be it a software package, business processes, or how you do business overall. With the complexity that naturally comes in doing these things, you will want to build trust and familiarity. This is where the Name and Logo will come into play.

Naming your program is never easy, as everyone usually has an opinion and there are many directions you can go with it. In my experience, you’ll want to go with something fairly simple that is either motivational, means something to the company, or briefly describes what you are trying to do with the program. The key point is you want to be able to explain it and have people understand it in less than 30 seconds. Further, you’ll be using the chosen name later for basic communications, posters, and program “brand” recognition. Make it count by keeping it simple, short, and catchy!

Along with a good name should be a good logo. Pick one that relates to the name, incorporates the company or division the program is for, and tells an outside person what the program is all about. The long-term goal here is to have people recognize the program just by seeing the logo. The best logos can and should incorporate the top ‘N’ areas or accomplishments of the program over time. This will not only let people know what program is happening, but some of what it’s accomplishing.

Take the example logo to the left, with only two words, a year, and a simple picture. You already know a lot, even if you’re not a baseball fan. You immediately know it’s a baseball team (the two bats) from St. Louis (the two words at the top) named the Cardinals (the cardinal shaped/colored bird) where something important happened in 1946 (a World Championship to be exact). Not bad for something so simple. This happens to be the official World Series patch of the 1946 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.

Besides the name and logo building program recognition, there are a bevy of side benefits that might not be immediately clear. These benefits can include:

  • the ability to create branding posters to put up in every corporate office
  • recruiting top talent to your program (people want to be associated with something that represents success and the future)
  • ability to ask for funding more easily
  • ability to create a standard look and feel to your program communications and websites
  • ability to communicate externally, if needed, to investors, shareholders, or vendors
  • long-term morale booster for your program staff

As you can see, there are many reasons to take the time and properly name/brand your program. The best companies in the world do this well (think of all the code names used by Microsoft, Google, and NASA) as it helps them achieve a higher level of success. You and your company can do the same. It’s worth the time and effort.

Ingredient #2: Unwavering Executive Sponsorship

This might be the hardest of the five critical ingredients to find and sustain, but getting steadfast executive sponsorship will be a key to your large program success. The bigger the program, the more rare and critical this ingredient will become. Every Program Manager worth their salary knows they need executive buy-in and sponsorship, but few spend the time to ensure it’s at the right level to start with and manage it long-term. I’ve seen too many projects and programs where the level of executive sponsorship is either too low to start with or fades over time for various reasons. In either case, this is a leading cause of program failure, regardless of how well you think you are doing. Keep in mind executive sponsors can and should help with making key decisions (when the team is stuck), selling the value of the program to other executives, removing corporate roadblocks for line managers, and helping with budgets. Pretty important stuff!

One of the keys to getting the right level of executive sponsorship to start with is understanding how big (strategic) the program is in relation to the size or nature of your organization. You can’t just use a dollar amount in most cases. A 5-million-dollar program to a 20-billion dollar company is not the same as a 5-million-dollar program to a 200-million-dollar company. You would likely only need a Director/VP/Department level champion at the 20-billion-dollar company, but would need CEO level support at the 200-million-dollar company. Further, you will need to explore the different areas of the company that the program will be affecting. You will need the same level of support from all areas to increase your chances of success.

Once you know how high up the ladder you will need to go for your executive sponsorship (assuming you will get it), the next step will be to keep it over the expected life of the program. This will be a steeper challenge than getting it initially, as most executives are happy to give initial support to strategic projects in the early going. Making the support last is a far bigger failure point than aiming too low on the organization chart. There are many reasons for this including: failure of the program team to manage it, executive sponsors leaving the company or affected area, tighter budgets, and program apathy.

To combat the potential failure points, there are several things a program manager can do proactively to ensure unwavering executive sponsorship. These things include:

  • make it an on-going program activity to check-in with and report out to the current executive stakeholders
  • always have a plan in place to deal with executive sponsors leaving; identify who might be next in line, how would you present what’s already been done to a new leader who knows nothing, and build broad support with other executive stakeholders who can help you in changing times
  • manage your budgets well and continually have a “one-pager” ready to show real-time program ROI; programs that return higher than normal benefits tend to survive budget reductions and changes
  • continually market your program as if you are reinventing it every year; consumer products do this regularly and programs should, too. Even if it’s the same program in year 3 as it was in year 1, make it look shiny and new. Executives will appreciate it, and buy into this along with your entire program team

Just like spending time on the project name and logo is critical, so is maintaining your unwavering executive sponsorship. The benefits to doing this well are enormous and long-lasting, so make it an on-going priority.

Ingredient #3: Quick Wins (Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!)

One of the most overlooked ingredients to making a large program successful is the quick win. Even though the focus of this particular question series is large programs, that will likely last several years, it doesn’t mean quick wins are unimportant. In fact, my experiences tell me that it’s an inverse relationship. The bigger the program, the more important having quick wins are to long-term success. Funny how this works.

Traditionally, the waterfall program management methodology led us to have a long runway before we saw liftoff or something of value that we delivered. However, with agile methodologies becoming the norm, it’s much easier for us to focus on smaller, quicker wins, regardless of program size. That said, it’s still too easy to forget about this and wait too many sprint cycles before delivering something truly tangible. For the purposes of this article, I define “tangible” as something deriving value for your end users or company. In other words, it will have a ROI. Having a few sprints worth of code ready for production doesn’t meet our definition unless it meets the criteria above.

I’m guessing you might be wondering what is quick? That is a fair question. There are no hard and fast rules in my experience, but a good rule of thumb is once a quarter or every 100 days. Every project and organization is different, but I don’t think you can go wrong by delivering value/ROI every quarter, especially towards the beginning of your program. The benefits of on-going quick wins are numerous and include:

  • building immediate trust with your stakeholder community
  • immediately starting to see ROI flow in, even if in small chunks, is similar to the most basic savings advice; 100 dollars invested today is worth a lot more 20 years from now than 100 dollars invested next year
  • starting any change management processes sooner than later
  • building a program foundation and history of delivering on a regular cadence that developers, program managers, and stakeholders can get used to
  • helping continually improve program communications to all of your stakeholders; who doesn’t like to win? Communicating wins is also much easier than communicating progress that you can’t tangibly see or feel.
  • helping reduce the risk that Ingredient #2 (Unwavering Executive Support) becomes hard to find; executives often times have a short leash with the board of directors or the CEO. Quick wins are their best friends.
  • getting new or expanded budgets; you are more likely to get on-going and new funding when executives see continuing wins and early ROI. It’s as simple as that.
  • helping with program apathy; repeated quick wins keeps everyone happy and engaged

Everyone loves a winner, and you should, too. Quick wins are a key ingredient to large IT and operations programs, and all program managers should focus the team on how to make them happen as often as possible. It’s ok to have long-term goals and projects that take longer than 100 days, but in-between those deliverables cook that chicken dinner!

Ingredient #4: The Right Mix of People on the Program Team

One of my favorite things to say when coaching my teams is that 90% of all success is related to having the right people working with you. I believe that to be truer today than ever before, and it’s no different when talking about large program teams. Building a successful program team is not easy, but it can be done with hard work and attention to details.

As I mentioned in Question Series #1 (Are we asking too much of our Program Managers?) building a strong program management team requires a mix of skillsets, personalities, educational backgrounds, experience levels, etc. The same holds true for the overall program team, just at a larger scale and with more challenges. The overall key is to first get as many great people on the team as possible (using a formula that is tailored to your specific program needs and organization) and then ensure you have them in the right roles. It’s a similar analogy to that in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins (one of my favorite business books of all time; I highly recommend reading it). First get the right people on the bus and then figure out where they sit. It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?

There are some additional challenges that come with setting up a large program team that might not exist when building other kinds of teams.

  • You might not control all of the people placed on the team. This is especially true when it comes to other departments you’re working with and your stakeholders. Further, it can also be true within your IT teams, as there are always existing resources that the organization and leadership want you to utilize.
  • You won’t have unlimited budgets to hire everyone you want, and will likely be restricted to the seniority level to which you can bring someone in.
  • You won’t find exact fits for every role, as that would likely take too much time or too much money.
  • People on the team will continually leave, move around the organization, or want different roles.
  • You will likely be working with 3rd-party vendors to staff your development teams. They will have restrictions, less experienced resources at most positions, and issues sustaining their staff; turnover rates are likely to be high.

These challenges are inevitable, large, and hard to overcome, but if you keep it real and know that these things will happen, you can mitigate your risks to ensure more success. I know I’ve hit every one of these challenges when managing large programs throughout my career. Here are several strategies you can try to improve your odds of success in building your program team:

  • review the landscape early to see what you can and can not control in terms of staffing your team
  • work with HR or other organization leaders to see what’s possible
  • create and iterate through several program organization models to see what shines the brightest for you; pass it by several close confidants for their opinions as well
  • establish excellent relationships with your 3rd-party staffing vendors; I suggest visiting their offices to get a feel for their organization, and meeting the key executives your teams will be working with day in and day out (if they will be located overseas, this is even more important). Meeting the traveling sales representative at your office is not enough.
  • continually spend time on reviewing staffing; the larger the team, the more time you need to spend. Talk to every type of resource (FTEs, contractors, vendors, etc.) on a regular basis to get a point in time pulse of how they are doing.
  • remember that it’s acceptable, and a good strategy, to rotate people across roles where possible, especially on a multi-year program. It keeps people challenged and prevents role fatigue.
  • take on-going action to make people happy and ensure their long-term growth, including vendor staff

Building a high-quality program team is not easy, but with the key strategies above and an eye toward overcoming the challenges, you can make it happen. It will go a long way towards your program’s success.

Ingredient #5: Excellence at Reporting your Program KPIs

Last, but certainly not the least valuable ingredient to your program success, is being a master at reporting your large program’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). This ingredient sounds like it should be plentiful and cheap, but it is not. Most programs do not do a good job of defining or reporting on their KPIs. Sadly, I’ve seen well-executed programs suffer because of this. It’s the great product, poor marketing syndrome. I’m sure you can think of a few products (especially in the technology space) that were better than their competition, but failed to catch on because of poor marketing. The good news for all of us program manager or leader types is that we can save ourselves from falling into this trap.

When most Program Managers think of program KPIs, they naturally think of program plan % complete, sprint velocities, burn-down charts, forecast to actual spend, earned value (though I’ve never seen this used successfully in the IT space), etc. While those are all well and good, they will not be that useful in defending or driving your program with executive leadership. Your KPIs need to be more business and user-specific with a focus on ROI. You will need to define them specifically to the nature of your program, but there are some common strategies to follow.

Before I get into the strategy of how to define your KPIs, I want to tell you why you need them, and how you will use them. Keep these in mind as you are defining them.

  • You will use them to defend your program when things go off-track.
  • You will use them to market your program successes across your organization.
  • You will use them to justify your budget ask.
  • You will use them to help your program team push for change management as you deploy your product/software.
  • You will use them to apply for organization or industry awards.

Now that you know what you might be using these KPIs for, let’s talk about how to get better at defining them. As I mentioned, there is no secret recipe, but there are common ingredients and questions that we can start with:

  • what is most important to the executive stakeholders funding the program? Do they care about revenue generated, cost reductions (expenses, staff, travel, etc.), cycle-time reductions, users on the system, patents created, or time to market? The list goes on, but figuring out what the key executives care about should shape most, if not all your KPIs.
  • make sure to capture usage statistics. There are many reasons why capturing usage statistics are important, but most importantly it’s something you can use when your stakeholders say your system is broken or not working properly because they fear change. If you can show them that groups X, Y, and Z are using it, you have a much better chance of moving things forward with group A. This is especially important if you’re deploying something region by region or country by country. Further, showing growing usage statistics to your executive stakeholders helps to justify your costs/ROI.
  • define several ways to show ROI. ROI is king when it comes to getting funding and keeping the program moving. There are many ways to show it, so spend time thinking of what is most relevant to your organization and program. It’s always best to have a least three different ways to show ROI, as not everyone has success defined in the same way.
  • don’t ignore the soft benefits. Sometimes the benefits of a program are not all calculable with numbers. These benefits are what we call “soft benefits”. They are sometimes hard to see and often get ignored because everyone is interested in the numbers. However, if you can find these benefits, it is extra gravy on top of the hard numbers, and can make a difference in your success with a broad group of stakeholders and employees. Some examples of soft benefits include: retiring legacy applications (regardless of on-going cost and technology stack), improving a broken process that causes frustration with your customers/employees (even if it doesn’t generate revenue or costs savings), removing 3rd-party software, improved employee morale, or stretching your budget dollars further (but not necessarily reducing them).
  • don’t forget the technology or operational aspect of your program. Define some KPIs that represent what you are doing behind the scenes. This can take you in many directions depending on what your program is doing, but mix in a few of these KPIs that aren’t specific to ROI (usage, and the like).
  • make them easy to understand. KPIs that are too hard to understand aren’t as effective. The KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) theory is definitely at play when defining KPIs. Keep them simple and easy to understand, and they’ll be more effective, especially at the executive level.

Finally, now that you know why you need KPIs and how to define them, let’s talk about how to report them. Again, no hard and fast rules, but some pointers to help you out.

  • Understand how fast your organization moves and what that means to your program; if you’re in a fast-moving organization you’ll most likely need to do report outs more often than if you’re in a government organization. There are exceptions of course, but I wanted to point out that not all places operate at the same pace.
  • There are likely established cadences based on the size of your program relative to your organization. Find out what they are and figure out if that is enough. More often isn’t always better.
  • Figure out what the best medium is to report out on. Is it via email, phone call, PPT deck, google+/SharePoint site, or do you want to create a simple mobile application?
  • Figure out what should be reported all the time and what can be saved for difficult times. Just like playing poker or reading a stock review report, sometimes less is more. Further, there are certain KPIs that might make sense to only talk to or report on if certain triggers happen (good or bad). Figure out what they are and save them. If they are not that informative in normal times, don’t waste your stakeholders time.

There are many critical ingredients to program success, but in my experience the five that we’ve discussed in this question series will help you achieve long-term success on your next large technology or operations program. In review, these are:

  1. Name and Logo
  2. Unwavering Executive Sponsorship
  3. Quick Wins
  4. The Right Mix of People on the Program Team
  5. Excellence at Reporting your Program KPIs

Do you agree? What are your Top 5 ingredients for success?

Thanks for reading!

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