Deliver multi-team and discipline analysis & requirements in a hostile and disorganised environment
The Situation
CTO needed to complete their over-running Datawarehouse programme & deliver related technological projects (system replacement, BI reports etc) to their senior users in order to reduce inefficiencies and innovate past the competition.
The Task
Liaise with the senior users and SME (before they left the company in ~1 month!) to elicit and document their requirements and operational processes to inform IT of the ‘need’, as this request had become political and IT were not trusted to deliver what was being asked for.
The Action / Approach
I took the time to subtly investigate the root of the conflict between business and IT delivery teams, and worked on improving the relationship by being the change I wanted to see.
I quickly understood what they did and who they were as users which gave them some confidence; I created structure and order so they always knew what was happening and that we were making progress (regular update emails, meetings and ‘show and tells’, playbacks etc).
I helped each side understand the other and carved a mutually agreeable direction for the programme.
I detailed their operational working practices and processes which showed they did more than others had realised and gave more insight, thus respect for their work.
I delivered requirements and UI mocks which gave IT a good idea of what was needed now and in the near future so they could propose a solution that was fit for purposes and not which fitted their biased view of the world.
The Result
Delivered the report and requirements on-time so that the SME did not leave with the required knowledge – these outputs meant that IT could research, propose, design and deliver a system the business could use to:
- reduce operational time and costs
- increase innovation (more time for the SME’s to do higher skilled work instead of working through system inefficiencies)
- increase the volume of work performed
