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The Investment of Time

By Andrew Crowder on August 23rd, 2012 // 2 Comments

Custom Application Development: The Investment of Time

This is the first of a three-part series on “The Hidden Elements of a Successful Project.” In this post we will look at the investment of time. The next post will concentrate on “The Alignment of Cultures: Why RFPs are Bad for the Customer.”

When a company embarks on a project with a consulting firm they usually understand the dollar investment they will need to make. This is because most companies have a robust process for prioritizing and selecting which projects they will undertake each year. For some companies, this process – including acquiring budget – can be quite time consuming. Once the project has been selected most companies again have a defined model for selecting a vendor. This may be an informal selection process or a highly formal RFP process. Once a vendor has been selected there is usually a huge sigh of relief as the “hard” work has been done. The project is going to happen.

What many companies don’t prepare for is the time and effort it will take to execute the project once the vendor has been selected. This is particularly true of the individuals outside the IT organization that need to be involved to refine the business requirements. It is understandable that these business users are not prepared for the time and effort they will need to spend planning, prioritizing, and reviewing a solution because they still have their normal day jobs to fulfill. Often the very reason the project was undertaken is because these folks were overburdened to begin with and now they have extra duties to help with the new solution.

The easy answer to this problem would be to just pull one or more business people from their normal day jobs and have them work on the project full time. However, for most companies this isn’t realistic. Therefore it becomes the responsibility of both the consultants and the business users to find the correct balance, which is not an easy task.

RDA’s approach to handling this is to have staff that is cross-trained in handling both business requirements and development. By removing a layer of dedicated business analysts, our teams are able to gain the critical business understanding we need with fewer and shorter meetings. RDA also works with our clients ahead of time to set expectations around the types of individuals that we will need to interact with from the business and the amount of time we will need. By providing this detail upfront, the customer can better plan their schedules to accommodate the new demand on their time.

If you are looking to launch a custom application development project and would like some help with the planning to make sure all the necessary details are all covered, contact us and we will be glad to talk through the project with you.

 

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About the Author: As Technical Development Director, Andrew is responsible for aligning RDA’s technical capabilities with new clients' needs. His diverse business and technical background allows him to plan, scope, and estimate projects to ensure customer success. He has been with RDA since 2006 and has over 18 years of experience designing and building custom IT solutions for customers. Andrew has contributed to RDA as a Senior Project Manager running multiple large customer engagements in the areas of SharePoint, business intelligence and custom .NET development. Prior to RDA, Andrew worked at Northrop Grumman as a Section and Project Manager supporting a $500M dollar contract with the U.S. Army, as well as running the division research and development projects. Outside of work, Andrew enjoys spending time with his family and playing golf when he can.

  • http://www.facebook.com/michael.p.boyes Michael P. Boyes

    Andrew,
    It is hard to emphasize the issue of client commitment and internal alignment enough. Information systems that don’t affect the way work is done have limited value. Valuable systems alter work processes and even the way functions are organized to make the organization work better. They introduce change into the organization. 

    It’s a lot of work for the client to understand how a system could affect the organization and secure commitment from leadership to adjust. I’ve found that major implementations go best not only when leaders and staff are engaged in not only in training efforts, but also is efforts to realign work process and functions.

    • Andrew Crowder

      Michael,

        I can’t agree with you more.  I always tell my clients that the technology is the easy part getting the culture to change is the hard part.