IT Project Health Checks

Driving Successful Implementation and Multiples of Business Value

Sanjiv Purba

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000581010
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion de projet

Project or program health checks provide tremendous value to businesses and pay for themselves by multiples of magnitude. No matter how well a project or program is performing, there are always activities that can provide better value, reduce costs, or introduce more innovation. IT project and program health checks can help organizations reach their goals and dramatically improve Return on Investment (ROI).

IT Project Health Checks: Driving Successful Implementation and Multiples of Business Value offers a proven approach for evaluating IT projects or programs in order to determine how they are performing and how the eventual outcome for the initiative is currently trending. The project or program health checks provide a set of techniques that produce actionable recommendations that can be applied for any combination of the following outcomes:

• Drive more business and technical value from a program
• Set a project or program back on track for successful implementation as defined by executive management
• Rescue a program that is heading towards failure
• Act as additional insurance for initiatives that are too important to fail
• Protect executive careers by creating transparencywithin the inner workings of complex initiatives.

The book shows how a review can quickly identify whether an initiative needs to be rescued even when the project team is not aware that it is hurtling towards failure. It also provides techniques for driving business value even when a project team believes it's been stretched as much as possible. Other outcomes covered in this book include:

• Objectively develop a project Health-Check Scorecard that establishes how well a project is doing and the direction it is headed
• Demonstrate how to drive business value from an IT program regardless of how well or badly it is tracking
• Provide surgical advice to improve a project's outcome
• How to usethe many templates and sample deliverables to get a quick start on your own health check.

Designed to provide significant value to any member of a project team, program team, stakeholders, sponsors, business users, system integrators, trainers, and IT professionals, this book can help find opportunities to drive multiples of business value and exceed project success metrics.

Index

Page numbers in italics refers figures and bold refers tables.

A

• Accenture, 4
• acceptance testing, 116
• accountability/accountabilities, 100
  • behaviors, 314, 315
  • definition of, 314
• actionable recommendations, 229–230, 230
• action plan, for first 30 days, 73
• aggressive, negative emotions, 29, 31
• agile delivery approach, 181, 233
• API integration, 9
• appendices, 65, 274, 328
  • final health check report in, 271
• approach, engagement letter, 153
• architecture/design, 304, 415–416
  • evaluation framework, 58
  • questionnaires, 218
• assessment methodology, executive summary, 70–71, 71
• assessment report, 234, 269, 408, 409, 411
  • assembling, 278–287
    • sources of information, 278–284
    • summary dashboard, 284, 288
  • completing, 294, 295
  • draft report, 270
  • evaluation criteria for, 290, 327
  • examples of past presentations, 336–339
  • final deliverable, 349
  • final health check, see final health check assessment report
  • finalizing, 323, 324, 325
  • final presentations, 332–335
  • final report, 271
  • interim (draft) report, 270
  • interpreting discovery findings, 274–278
    • budget, 277, 283
    • business value, 277
    • evaluation criteria, 278, 286
    • functionality, 277
    • quality, 277
    • timeline, 276–277, 283
  • log, 204
  • non-confidential, 331
  • options, 348
  • positioning project/program interventions, 295–305
  • possible recommendations review, 287–290
  • presentation logistics and agenda, 333, 334
  • prioritized functionality, 291
  • pros and cons of, 332–333
  • questions, 336
  • rules of engagement, 334
  • sections, 272–274, 273, 326–329
  • states of, 269–271
• assessment sponsors, 92, 94, 108, 211, 345, 351
• assessment te...