It's time for me to get back into it.

International Site Redesign #1

A couple of years into my time in London, our team started a project to overhaul the design of both the acquisition and servicing areas of our websites in 10 International markets.  Two of my peers served as project co-leaders of the design phase (a real challenge) and then implemented the new design in first market – the UK.  As head of online servicing, I was considered a key stakeholder.

A few weeks into the implementation of the second market, Canada, both of these directors left the company.  Myself and the Director of Acquisition became the new co-owners of the project.  I had a very strong interest in their successful completion, but I knew from several months of program office weekly status updates that the first market’s implementation had been rough, and the second market was already struggling with delays and cost over-runs. 

In addition to our other existing duties, my co-lead Bruce and I started chairing the weekly project team meeting comprised of business and technology project managers, agency representation,  partners from the market, and technology leaders, architects, senior developers, and representation from our program office.

In about the third weekly meeting, our technology project manager reported an additional delay and projected the associated project costs.  As he was about to move on to the next topic, I stopped and asked what had happened since the prior week when this was not foreseen.  He said the delay was due to added analysis and re-work do to a ”change request” submitted by the market.  When I asked who had approved this change request, he said “the market did”.  So the market was submitting their own change requests and approving them themselves, but had no budget and did not share responsibility for timely execution?  Hmmm. 

I made sure I had everyone’s full attention and clearly announced that from that moment forward, neither our business nor technology partners would do any work on any change request that not been approved in writing by either me or Bruce.  I made certain everyone was clear. 

Immediately after the meeting I drafted an email for my leader to send out to any and all involved restating what I had said in the meeting.  I pointed out to her that this was the leading reason the project was now forecasts at $1.4mm instead of the original estimate of $1.0mm.

There was some grumbling for about 2 weeks then things started going smoothly.  It turned out none of the changes requested were truly meaningful. 

In the end, the market came in at $1.3mm.  And with clear expectations set, the next market, and the next all came in on time and budget.  And the cherry on top was that team moral greatly improved.