The business units needed confidence that a critical project could be delivered by an offshore supplier following a contractual agreement. To date, the supplier had only been given non-urgent tasks as part of the knowledge transfer, but to achieve the projected ROI documented within the business case, it became necessary to significantly increase the amount of development being transferred offshore.

My role was to ensure that the onshore company had the relevant ‘acceptance’ and ‘integration skills and tools to reduce the risks of failure and the offshore company had full exposure to the processes to be adopted and were given an acceptable level of training and knowledge transfer to effect a successful delivery.

In order to overcome the cultural differences between the 2 companies, I arranged for a ‘Tour of Duty’ rota to be established for the duration of the project so the offshore guys had a subject matter expert working along side them who could not only train them in the processes but also overcome the initial communication issues in order to create an open risks culture with both parties. This was additional cost but I argued that the cost of rework and loss of confidence would be significantly reduced with this approach.

i personally focused on the operational acceptance aspects of the project as neither company were strong in this area, and many key activities would have started far too late and caused overruns, if the existing ‘light’ processes were not improved from the start of the project.

Following a series of workshops involving all impacted parties, a comprehensive set of operational acceptance criteria was developed, in conjunction with subject matter experts from both companies, This was quickly embedded on the project to become part of the standard gating process as the business units realised the benefits of operational readiness kicking in at the start of the project and then incrementally built upon. The deliverable matrix informed the implementation and cutover planning as opposed to being an outcome of it. It was also taken up by other internal projects as the organisation realised they were quite weak in this area.

Since its adoption and incorporation within both the gating process and Project Steering Group agendas, the following value was accrued: –
-Higher proportion of projects fit for purpose, on time and on budget
-Improved credibility with and confidence from across the business and support functions
-Improved influence with suppliers and higher quality of delivery from them
-Improving customer and colleague service and satisfaction
-Greater acceptance of change and quicker to implement new changes
-Improved delivery efficiency and effectiveness from clarity around process performance
-Creation of automated testware, increasing quality and reducing cycle time by 50%

Pains relieved included;
-Lack of subject matter expertise and experience
-Lack of clarity or understanding on operational readiness requirements
-Reduction in rework due to misunderstandings and process non-compliance

• business and it operational processes
• Business Change Management & Communication
• change strategy
• Commercial Management
• facilitation
• governance
• IT Service Management & Design
• Operational Risk Management
• outsourcing
• process improvement
• Project delivery
• project planning
• Quality Management
• stakeholder management
• testing
• training