Introduction:
‘as a Service’ offerings exist across much of the ICT landscape. Projects, programs and portfolios support is an option to meet changing demand and scale. Delivery Support as-a-Service offers more efficient workflows based on rich experience and knowledge. It enables organisations to free up their own resources and costs while scaling to meet demand and improvements with specialist skills as and when required on an agreed model.
Problem:
An early childhood education and care provider manages over 440 centres across Australia, operating under multiple brand identities. The finance management system in use had reached the end of its service life. A major program initiative to replace the finance solution was underway to facilitate and enhance their financial and operational capabilities across the organisation.
The management controls practices had fallen behind due to the scale of the program and workload, rendering reportable information outdated. With limited capacity of in-house skilled resources to supplement, the organisation identified a major gap in support for their program and project control.
Objective:
A critical need for temporary team augmentation services with proven capability to boost capacity and capability to aid governance was recognised. Therefore, our ultimate objective was to ensure that decision makers had accurate and timely information by maintaining strong control and keeping all program and project records up to date.
It was also necessary to deliver this capability in a flexible, demand-based model that did not limit the organisation to a fixed capacity with limited ability to adjust as requirements changed.
Overview:
myP3’s Delivery Support ‘as a Service’ model was deemed a suitable fit as it caters for both skills and resource demand adjustments over time based on forecast consumption needs. The initial engagement commenced immediately after the design phase completion.
The delivery approach employed by the business was a hybrid methodology (combination of Agile and waterfall) that required standard gating, reporting and controls.
Our responsibility was to support the program manager and project leads by maintaining a high level of control and fostering continuous collaboration and engagement with the team.
Delivery support services provided included:
- Product / Deliverable Administration – review and approval cycle administration, monitoring and tracking to schedule, with team engagement on exceptions for delivery and quality. Provided accurate visibility of the current state of all outputs, enabling prioritisation of work in the remaining sprints.
- Risk Administration – active risk register management coupled with coaching and guidance to the project team and risk owners on risk descriptions, treatments and actions. Risks monitoring for regular reviews and updates by respective risk owners and actions closure by due dates.
- Status Reporting Administration – primarily using data-driven information from controls, generated weekly program progress and project status reporting including coordination of various teams updates.
- Training materials publishing support – registration and tracking of training materials migration to SharePoint.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Status – development of a tool to summarise and monitor the tests executed and track defects through to resolution.
- Schedule administration – Update and progress monitoring, and production of burn-down chart reporting.
Through myP3’s involvement, we ensured all teams responded and actioned tasks in a suitable timeframe.
Each week, myP3 provided a service report of activities conducted, service plans for the subsequent week, outstanding items and any concerns for action or escalation.
Outcome:
The business successfully achieved the first major program tranche for its corporate finance solution with greater confidence in overall control and governance decision making.
Improved data accuracy, availability and visibility enabled the delivery teams to track their progress and ensure they met their timeframes to bring the projects and program tranche to a successful conclusion.
Program and project support costs were contained through our Delivery Support ‘as a service’ arrangement.
The client organisation embedded processes and tools for improved delivery management practices across risks, products, quality, schedule management, and status reporting.