We consider that evaluation is in three stages.
Stage 1 is the migration from handover to benefits harvesting
Stage 2 is benefits harvesting
Stage 3 is the follow-up and Business Development
Stage 1 is the migration from handover to benefits harvesting
Here you review the results of the project closure at handover, for example, to confirm that:
- all the agreed products have been delivered and accepted
- arrangements are working to support and maintain the product in its useful life
- any useful statistics or lessons for later projects are passed to the relevant body
- the plan to check the achievement of the benefits claimed in the project’s business case.
- Lessons Learned Reports are followed up
- Follow on Action Recommendation to cover any outstanding requests for change or perhaps known problems.
- The plan on when and how the achievements of benefits are measured is being followed.
Stage 2 is benefits harvesting
Additionally, you need to look at the way the solution has been implemented, for example, you should evaluate or check:
- Procedures: The post-implementation review represents the final phase of the format assignment or project, and is examined objectively for example.
- Reconcile Requirements with Reality: How well has the solution met the specified requirements?
- Compare Activity Levels with Forecasts: Are volumes and staffing levels comparable with forecasts? Assess the
consequences of any variances? - Assess the Human Elements: How does the staff perform and how do they feel about the solution?
- Effectiveness and Efficiency: Have the plans been carried out? Identify reasons for major discrepancies and take appropriate action.
- Overall Assignment or Engagement or Project: How well did the work go? Review progress against applicable plan.
- Review Report: Prepare a review report for approval and use as a basis for corrective or improvement action.
Stage 3 is the follow-up, Benefits Management and Business
Benefits Management
Benefits Management is a structured approach to help you identify and realise assignment benefits. It will also help you to:
- Identify the expected business benefits and ensure that they are understood and accepted by all concerned.
- Plan how the benefits will be achieved and measured.
- Allocate accountability for their successful realisation.
- Monitor progress towards their delivery,
- Transform the existing services
You will have identified the expected benefits during your Critical Success Factors Analysis and Change Impact Analysis.
The benefits expected must be refined and agreed all the way through the procurement and change processes and reflected in the SLA, ITT and Contract and the benefits profile.
The profiles will tell you how and when benefits are to be planned and realised. The profile plan must be linked into your Support strategy and (will help you generate the business improvements identified earlier such as:
- Higher quality
- Faster delivery
- Lower costs
- Increased revenue and profits
- Improved productivity
- Transformed customer service
- Image enhancements,
- Marketing advantages
- Reduced stockholdings
- e-business to e-business)
It should also help you to:
• Control IT Service
• Provide improved management information,
• Transform the Business Operations Support,
• Identify beneficial system enhancements and amendments.
Make it easier to absorb change, to adapt and respond to change with le difficulty.
Control IT assets: Recover faster from failure conditions as skilled support is available to resolve incidents in the shortest possible time-scale. Make more effective use of skilled staff to handle many conditions. There obtaining resolution or circumvention details.
Business Development
There are many ways in which you can identify potential opportunities for Business Development, for example:
- You can adapt the stages we have already been through and take the “fast path” approach.
- You can build on leads you identified during the specific engagement or the assignment as a whole
- You can use a ‘Search’ process, in this section we highlight some key area help you do this.
Search for changes
There are many different areas you will need to look at to find potential and high-value change opportunities. You can either:
- Stumble on a change (an opportunity or threat),
- Search for it perhaps via looking for changes,
- Perform a SWOT and Force Field Analysis
SWOT will help you highlight the key issues facing a business. You will need to build upon strengths, overcome weaknesses, capitalise opportunities and minimise threats.
Once you have the potential opportunity it is worthwhile finding out who you might need backing from these are the stakeholders.
To identify stakeholders you can refer to:
- your organisation charts
- service product user matrices.
- results from your business analysis models (such as the Business Activity Model)
- CSF. Competitive Forces, Product Life Cycles
A useful output will be the MANDACT
Assess the Changes
Before you can assign resources and develop and exploit the change, you will have to justify the potential investment and allocate priorities to the changes that appear the best bet.
There are many ways of doing this – ranging from a full investment appraisal to a very simple risk and impact analysis. I suggest that (as a minimum) you use at least one.
Each change you have identified will need to be assessed to establish its value You can do this by checking the ability of the recommendation (change) to fit the organisation its mission its goals or its strategy.
This can meet checking its compliance against Root, CSF, Mission, Vision, VOCATE and Goals
If the mission is to be: “A world-wide information services organisation and help customers to make productive use of their information through computing and marketing services…
And you have identified a change that requires: “a commitment to become a fast-food company”
Then your chances of success are small.
Assessment is never easy, there may be issues that are difficult to uncover, for example, cost-cutting systems need to be looked at differently compared to systems providing closer linkage with customers. A successful assessment will enable you to plan the programme.
The Driving (Development) programme
To develop and capitalise on the changes think of actions to trigger to ignite them. What can I do to make it happen? “Who should do it and by when?
There are seven fundamental principles to driving the program forward; we suggest that you consider your own programme using these raw criteria:
- Will we have a proper process for change
- Is there a willingness, energy. acceptance, understanding and commitment for the change by those affected
- Will business pressures delay the changes
- Have we got the timing, depth and breadth of the change right
- Have we a plan with deliverables and review dates established
- Do we have the right skills, culture, resources and roles to progress the change
- Is there a change champion
Techniques such as Force field analysis will help you do this. Forces often relate to customers, suppliers, structures, styles, people, politics, technology, money and time.
For each force and action be “SMART. Look for the big resistors and pushers and concentrate on them (use 80:20 rules)
During the development process you identified the drivers (those actions you take to “ignite the change). Now we look at the accelerators; these are the actions that help you get the most bangs for your pounds/dollars.
As stated earlier, all these must be tied into your programme, service and project plans. They should eventually help you create benefits plans, Investment Appraisal and Implementation Plans
One of the best approaches for identifying accelerators is to use brainstorming. Brainstorming will also help you search, assess and develop your changes. See also the section on Creative Thinking.
Once you have enough ideas to help you exploit the change, then you can re-filter. You could use some of the techniques outlined earlier such as force fields or just eliminate the changes that are: Integral, immoral or otherwise acceptable
Having screened them it is worthwhile trying to re-evaluate to see whether the options become available
The next action is to categorise the changes of responsibilities.
- What and who
- The change to be implemented
- Triggers, accelerators and actions
- Results required by date
You will also need to ensure that the support processes are in place If you wish to get the most from the change, for example, some accelerator (and trigger actions require a more active promotion of the change).