ramesh ganiga

Successful Program Management enables Business Transformation

How successful Programme Management can enable

Business Transformation.

PMI National Conference 2013 Paper Publication

Ramesh Ganiga

Consultant, Insurance Service Unit

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd


[email protected]

Abstract

Any transformation journey to achieve its goal with flying colors impacts business costs and is dependent on its risk appetite, speed to market and overall approach for delivery. In this competitive environment, today’s leaders are pressurized to cut costs, tighten controls, improve performance and capture large market share while tackling the challenges head-on and introducing more innovative thoughts to achieve outstanding results in its march to stay ahead in the race. How successful programme management can enable effective business transformation and achieve business outcome within budgetary constraints depends on the application of key drivers such as “work as one team (Supplier & Customer) with partnership approach in all relationship level initiatives along with seamless collaboration and effective communication”. The application of these key drivers are incorporated through the concept of “Staying Relevant” and structured implementation model of “Partnership Approach” to leverage maximum benefits. This approach has been adopted to successfully deliver one of the key strategic large programmes, wherein the current scenarios were using external driving factors like regulatory opportunity to:

capture more than 50% of market share

enhance capacity of legacy applications to cope with projected new business volume

realize more than GBP 700K benefits in IT and operational efficiency and

achieve 200% increase in APE post implementation This was a big stepping stone for the business transformation journey across the board at enterprise level. Introduction

In any industry today, most delivery approaches are trying to incorporate intensive processes, hoping to

maximize benefits. In doing so, they fail to concentrate on basic principles such as working together as a

team, building relationship with Customer and trying to improve the collaboration within/outside the team

to address the current and emerging business needs. Tailoring the delivery approach by applying

standardization, Customer centric approach and with appropriate amount of innovation, is necessary to

make dramatic improvements in the ability to execute and deliver the results.

The “Partnership Approach” is one of the best suited approaches to demonstrate such improvements.

This is highly collaborative, disciplined and has a quality focused approach to achieve the desired

outcomes - potentially producing the outcome by suitable concept called “Staying Relevant” and

structured implementation model of “Partnership Approach”. Also this approach goes along with the

concept of Fusion Process Theory – Organizations are finding that this leads to increased confidence,

higher success rates/quality, greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction, better return on investment (ROI),

and reduced time to market for the deliveries.

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Also bringing certainty in difficult times is atmost important factor of Programme Management. The three

cornerstones that determine success or failure are Culture, Leadership and Communication. How

Programme Management would make the difference through Diversity sessions, Building Human Capital

programme and Communication Enhancement training to bridge the gap in Culture, Leadership and

Communication respectively within Customer and Supplier environment and to achieve the ultimate goal

ONE TEAM and Partnership Approach.

The goal of this paper is to share experiences in our application of this delivery approach to one of the

strategic large programmes, enabling us to deliver the desired outcome through realization of synergies

within the teams involved.

Approach

For any organization, Business transformation journey is a phased approach. This unique approach is a

combination of adopting ‘Basic Principles’ and using available ‘Enabling Services’ in order to get the

‘Optimal Results’ such as “Partnership Approach” at all relationship level initiatives. A typical adoption

approach is depicted in figure 1.

Basic Principles

Enabling Services

Optimal Results

Execution

Orientation

Together

Norming

Everyone

Achieves

More

Effective

Communication

Seamless

Collaboration

Partnership Approach


Figure 1: Approach

(O)rientation: The concept of Orientation emphasizes on providing first step guidance and direction

to achieve goal. Orientation will play a key role in alignment of individual potential to team objectives

and therefore promote “ONE TEAM” a single team behaviour. The programme should inculcate

positive appreciation of their respective role and acclimatization to total social, intellectual and moral

project environment. Orientation programmes are the foundation that imbibe the following

components.

o Awareness of Stakeholders of a programme and necessary linkages

o Philosophy of the overall programme

o Resource induction and knowledge generation

(N)orming: Identifying suitable resource, team composition and task assignment to ensure that

everyone involved knows and understands the basic principles through which organizations can

achieve maximum enterprise level outcomes. After sufficient Orientation, the team should move on

to a phase of stronger commitment with much deeper understanding of programmes. This is the first

step in the future high performance stage which will include the stakeholders in sharing, trust building

and creative activities. Though the “actual real work” does not happen here it is essential to set the

context of the work as part of this phase.

(E)xecution: After setting a robust stage in previous activities, setting the right expectations and

building the required skills is an important aspect for “succeeding” with this approach at an enterprise

level. Using proper analogy, illustrations and element of innovation, execution requires a dynamic

decision making. The team will be sufficiently nurtured for such challenges by this stage.

(T)ogether: We always say we work “together” on the programme or project. Every successful

individual knows his or her achievement on a team only by working together. As the saying goes

‘many drops form an ocean’. It is important to have “togetherness in ‘individual efforts’ ”. Both are

symbiotic and non-separable. Communication and collaboration are handy tools to achieve this..

(E)veryone: “ONE TEAM” approach institutionalization is not a goal, it’s a journey. Teams from

Customer and Supplier are built into the group irrespective of the diversities involved. The team

behavior is the backbone of this thought, and team means “EVERYONE”

(A)chieves: Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. So

promoting one team approach and continuous focus to achieve the outcome is extremely important.


Achievement is the ‘end’ of the goal while team is the ‘means’ to the goal. Marriage between ‘ENDS

and MEANS’ will ensure achievement.

(M)ore: more, more and more. Ensure that everybody, right from the senior management of the

company to the developer knows and understands all about the new methodology and have their

expectations set to achieve and drive through the anticipated benefits beyond the originally defined

targets.

Using the above mentioned ‘Basic Principles’ along with ‘Enabling Services’ such as “effective

communication” and “seamless collaboration” will derive successful “Partnership Approach”. Following

points are the key elements of “Partnership Approach”:

o Building consensus of a common vision, and communicating it

o Structuring and mobilizing the right work streams to deliver outcomes

o Gaining buy-in and commitment of all stakeholders

o Marshalling proper resources to engender a can-do culture

o Aligning people, process and technology challenges

o Ensuring a coordinated and controlled change program

o Driving anticipated benefits post-implementation

o Adopting and implementing innovative ideas and thought leadership

o Promoting partnership approach at all relationship level initiatives

o Following adequate and structured governance framework

Along with above mentioned key elements, cultural orientation, working cross cultural workshops and

understanding Business culture sessions jointly with Customer and Supplier will help to achieve cultural

integration. With respect to Leadership - Building Human Capital workshop will add immense value in

understanding different style of Leadership which needs to be adopted depends on the situation, also

how important emotional intelligence and understanding once personal EQ profile at Leadership level. To

improve the communication, the structured approach of enhancing business communication through

structured communication training and mentor/mentee approach. These initiatives will create good

working environment within all stakeholders to promote “Partnership Approach”.

Staying Relevant

‘Staying Relevant’ to all stakeholders is a contextual framework for effective adoption. This framework is

to understand the big picture and tailored practices to meet the unique challenges faced by a system

delivery team of any size. Figure 2 Staying relevant to all stakeholders represented by single view:


Figure 2: Staying relevant to all stakeholders represented by single view

The ultimate goal is to create a close-enough option to all stakeholders, the “must know” and “nice to

know” elements of the big picture. This would benefit all parties in understanding the relevance, and add

value to derive maximum benefits. In figure 2, the left hand column highlights the key elements that are

very important for this business outcome:

o Function footprint

o Timelines

o Process

o Applications

o Projects

and subsequent columns with boxes are for illustration purposes only.

Projects

Applications

End user

Provider

Customer

Pr

oc

es

s

Scalability

1,2,3,4

Function

Footprint

Timelines


Function footprint – The top most row that illustrates the overall functional life cycle of the product or

business process in relation to the timelines, process, application and projects. This will also reflect

the business domain, the big picture and final business outcome expected. This would help

understand how closely coupled business processes and dependencies are.

Timelines –Timelines are predominantly for the product or business process to evolve. This can also

be used for the programme delivery timelines in case there is a time bound dependency e.g.

regulatory change programme. This focuses on clearly defined business requirements and reflects

activities, under the timescales that need to be carried out.

Process – The process would have quite a few layers based on the business case, business process

& B2B etc. Here in this illustration above, processes are categorized as Customer, Provider and End

User. The end to end business process model and its high-level flow needs to be drawn to keep all

the stakeholders in a single page.

Applications – This will showcase all applications including green field applications and the existing

legacy applications that need to undergo enhancements. This would also reflect the

interdependencies and total percentage of change required and complexities.

Projects – List of projects cut across all the applications, business processes and function footprints

along with the timelines. This would showcase the number of projects involved, the potential risks in

terms of delivery timelines, dependencies and technology. It also helps to bring the synergy with

other elements and projects across the board.

By using the “Staying Relevant” approach, one can ensure all stakeholders are in a common view and in

a single page in terms of scope, delivery and outcome. This would also highlight the key risks and assist

in finding best resolution for issues, concerns and dependencies. Based on the need, the micro level

details can be illustrated in different levels, e.g. Level 1 (figure 2), Level 2 and Level 3 etc.

This can also help in putting in details into Business capability model, project charter, delivery plan, etc. In

this case project team has extensively used above framework for onboarding new joiners, deriving the

detailed plan for development and implementation. This played a major role in training application support

team and handover for warranty and interim support. This also helps in adding a lot of value to the

programme delivery and business process optimization.

The above single page view (figure 2) really added value to customer and supplier with concept of

“Staying Relevant”; each and every stakeholder understood the importance and realized how powerful

tool it was; to present the circumstances in very dynamic and challenging situation in order to achieve

successful delivery.


This approach also classified based on the Fusion Process Theory - to deliver increased confidence,

higher success rates/quality and greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction.

When the usage of “Staying Relevant” concept in real time, can be made more effective through well-

organized joint Business workshop (Customer + Supplier) to have a walkthrough of single page view

(figure 2) to add value and make the difference. These workshops develop a stronger sense of single

team, opening up the lines of communication and identifying the practical ways of in which we can work

differently in support of improving collaboration. This is also best suited concept to bring certainty in

uncertain times from Programme Management point of view. This will also provide the right platform to

take the debate further and even find right salutation. Overall it is a very well proven concept to become

more open and honest and help identifying number of challenges and best suitable solution to achieve

the ultimate goal specially to bring certainty in uncertain times.

Implementation

This implementation model is relatively straight forward and very effective. This is focused on two key

areas; Business Strategy and Solution. Figure 3 illustrates the entire implementation model in detail.

Figure 3: Implementation Model

Supplier Development Challenges

& Solutions

Customer Business Strategy

& Proposition

Time

Quality

Cost

Scope


The two key important aspects that the model evolves around are:

o Customer – Business Strategy and Proposition

o Supplier – Development Challenges and Solutions

The Business Strategy and Proposition is to develop various products and enhance legacy applications to

cope with projected new business and contribution process peaks. The Supplier had to overcome

development challenges and define end to end solution in detail to position IT applications and

infrastructure to sustain increased book size. The above requirements/scope was executed and

implemented through structured implementation model of “Partnership Approach” that consists of:

o Basic Principles

o Enabling Services

o Optimal Results

o Staying Relevant

o Innovation

o Governance

Basic Principles – Ensure that everyone understands the basic principles and promotes one team approach highlighted in earlier section.

Enabling Services - Effective communication and seamless collaboration become key factors.

Optimal Results – Ensure to get the right results as a Partnership Approach.

Staying Relevant- Understand the big picture and stay focused on relevant content to be

accountable for the team & contribution as appropriate.

Innovation – Continuously innovate, adopt and evolve with customer wants and needs in order to

stay relevant.

Governance – One of the very important elements in delivery model to track and monitor the

progress and take appropriate actions at each level.

Partnership Approach – Along with above key parameters and elements, Cost, Quality, Time and Scope

are influencing factors on the Partnership Approach. This structured implementation model was run

effectively by using supporting structures like, SWAT, Governance team, Innovation, Wider Connect, etc

to leverage best practices. Also adopted “ONE TEAM” behavior throughout the journey of execution and

implementation. Some of the key differentiators to promote ONE TEAM and Partnership Approach are

highlighted below:


a) The frequent visits from Customers to delivery centers to gain a greater understanding how team can

better exploit any opportunities moving forward and look back at lessons learnt, identifying and

implementing key actions to improve communication and collaboration.

b) Customer visiting the team and being part of key implementations, especially on weekends, make the

team realize how important the Supplier as an extended team to Customers.

Another very important aspect while working with “Partnership Approach” is innovation. While team

enhances the value of team work, it will stand by each other in challenging times and create the

environment that promotes innovation and allows transformation. This emphasizes the idea that

“INNOVATION distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” This structured implementation model

ensured in adopting proper innovations and thought leaderships to leverage maximum benefits

highlighted some of them below:

a) To address the challenge for enhancing legacy applications to handle increased volume of new

business growth and concurrent process efficiency - Team introduced “Business Throughput

Measurement Utility”, an Early Warning System for Application Breakdown that would capture metrics to

predict potential break points in business applications for predicted volumes. This was used to measure

the application performance, identify breakpoints and predict future issues. There was a need to setup a

test environment, setup massive test data with complex business scenarios and run number of iterative

tests. But this was practically not possible due to the complexity of the application landscape, cost and

timelines. Thus the “Business Throughput Measurement Utility” idea evolved, which helped realize more

than GBP 500K benefits in IT delivery.

b) To improve operational efficiencies through a low/no-risk, adaptive and business aligned automation

technique - As part of the overall solution, an online application was already developed; but to handle a

small number of requests manually. The operations team needed to perform certain steps manually. This

meant a huge amount of manual work for the Business operations team. To address this challenge

effectively based on the business users requirements and considering other parameters, team had come

up with an innovative solution. The solution was a wrapper by making use of the existing functionality in

the ‘Online Application’. This resulted in significant cost reduction in the build. This also helped realize

more than GBP 200K benefits in operational efficiency.

Key Learnings

Based on the successful implementation of the approach and adoption model, here are the key learnings

from this Programme delivery:

Improve Customer Supplier relationship - Do not let go the existing traditional methodology best

practices merely to adopt this. Blend best practices with these principles


Take Small Steps - Adopt partnership approach on one or more medium-risk pilot project(s) to

gain both organizational experience and to build trust with Customer.

Top-down Approach - Partnership approach is an organization cultural change. Thus any such

adoptions should have senior management commitment and support and should be accepted first

by the senior management and then only should be made effective

Knowledge Management - Ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the change through training

sessions, and understand their roles and benefits.

Align to organization and business goals - Determine the return on investment and align the

adoption benefits to business and organization goals

Organization Characteristics – Organizations culture may have adverse impact, so carefully

review the implications before adopting

Risk and value driven model – Reap better results through shared risk and value driven model

Sponsor commitment - Gain clear direction and commitment from the right management levels

and Sponsor

Delivery Plan - Clarify objectives, supported by a comprehensive plan for delivery

Implementation - A clear decision-making process to deal with conflicting priorities

Enhanced Trust – A better working and personal relationship, facilitated effective decision making

throughout the programme

Summary and Conclusion

The “Partnership Approach” is neither a rocket science nor a fairy tale magic stick to bring improvements

on its own. Any partnership approach adoption process needs senior management commitment and

direction. It can be done in phased approach by ensuring the organization and projects best practices are

continuously adopted and evolved. This approach has resulted in increased confidence, higher success

rates/quality, greater levels of stakeholder satisfaction, better return on investment (ROI), and reduced

time to market for the deliveries. This structured approach was adopted and implemented successfully in

one of the big scale programmes and achieved following benefits directly:

o captured more than 50% of market share

o enhanced capacity of legacy applications to cope with projected new business volume

o realized more than GBP 700K benefits in IT and operational efficiency and

o achieved 200% increase in APE post implementation Also managed to come up with a robust, well-defined project management methodology for the Transformation Programmes and build synergies across the business units, which ensured proper control over scope, time, cost, quality, risks and contractual arrangements to maximize the benefits across the board. This approach is highly proven, beneficial and one of the strongly recommended secrets to success in programme management, to enable the Business Transformation and to bring certainty in uncertain


times. Also in Customer and Supplier environment to continue with next level initiatives and bring in change “Partnering for Growth” will take right momentum through this well-defined “Partnership Approach”. Glossary

APE – Annual Premium Equivalent

SWAT – Swift Action Team

B2B – Business to Business

EQ – Emotional Quotient


About the Author

Ramesh Ganiga

Consultant, Insurance Service Unit

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd

Ramesh Ganiga has more than 15 years of IT experience and is Certified PRINCE2 Practitioner and has Financial Planning Certificate (FPC) from Charted Insurance Institute (CII) UK and ISEB Certification. Currently the Delivery Manager for one of the leading Insurance Relationships.

He has specialist skills in Programme and Portfolio Management. Also experienced Consultant in Test Management for the large programmes like Data Center Migration.

Education qualifications is BE, he is passionate about people management and Champion for the Corporate Social Responsibility within the account. Interesting fact is that he is trained ‘Yakshgana’ specialist who has performed at various cultural events.

ramesh ganiga

Education

higher success

gbp 700k benefits

ape post implementation

structured

single page

relationship

successful

senior management