OneOne Hundred Blog

 

Are you taking on an existing project from either inside or outside of your organisation?

Increasingly, Mergers, Takeovers, Outsourcing, personnel changes and Shared Services means that during the project lifecycle delivery responsibility passes to different reporting lines.

‘On-Boarding' has become a core project management capability.
Most projects expect to make some change to the delivery during the project life-cycle but how can you be certain about the handover state of the project that you are responsible for On-Boarding?  Equally how can you set the terms of the transfer without clear view the projects current situation in relation to success or failure?

Project On-Boarding

Project On-Boarding is the process of aligning, acquiring, accommodating, assimilating, and accelerating the transfer of a project, wherever it comes from.  The prerequisite to successfully On-Boarding a project is getting your organisation and project leadership team to understand the degree of alignment and synergy of the project with your existing project portfolio.

There are five key steps required to successfully On-Board a project:

• Align: Making sure your organisation agrees/understands the need for the project and that the scope and benefits are consistent with your organisation's strategy.
• Acquire: Make sure you understand the resources and timescales required for successful project delivery, and identify any existing shortfalls.
• Accommodate: Verify that the project team has the necessary tools and support that they need to successfully deliver the project, identifying any shortfalls or remedial action required.
• Assimilate: Verify the level of interaction with and support from stakeholders, including the end user/customer community, ?and to implement the actions identified in the preceding steps.
• Accelerate: Help the project team to maintain or restore momentum and deliver better results faster, thus increasing the probability of project success.

Why is Project On-Boarding important?

Few projects complete their project lifecycle with the original management team in place. Effective on-boarding of new projects can be one of the most important contributions any manager can make to project success.  Effective On-Boarding  drives productivity, significantly improves the probability of success and reduces rework. On-Boarding is particularly important for projects transitioning between organisational units, either internally or between organisations, as it is difficult to maintain project momentum in these complicated situations where roles,  responsibilities and governance arrangements are changing.

While project On-Boarding is a standard operating procedure for outsourcing companies, it tends to be handled as part of a larger transfer, e.g. the outsourcing of an IT department or the creation of a shared service centre. A key difference between the On-Boarding of a single project and its transfer as part of an outsourcing exercise is that in the latter there is likely to have been extensive due diligence as part of the contract and SLA negotiations. In the case  of a single project transfer, a key part of the on-boarding process is the development  of an action plan. This requires the planner to have a detailed understanding of the current project situation.

Project On-Boarding - Key Stages

Align

Aligning the project involves reviewing the project's scope, objectives, success criteria and benefits to confirm that they remain relevant and consistent with the organisation's strategy.
For projects transferring within or between organisations checking the alignment is a critical first step as the assumptions underpinning the project initiation may be invalid in the new organisational context.

Where there are changes in the project leadership team, alignment is about monitoring the continued strategic validity and the viability of the project. It is also about ensuring that the leadership team will support and champion the proposed changes.

Successful organisations follow best practice and ensure that the strategic alignment of a project is monitored as it progresses through its lifecycle. Project On-Boarding ensures that this revalidation occurs whenever there are changes in the organisational context or the project leadership.

Acquire

Acquiring the project is the next step in the On-Boarding process, involving a review of the project's resource requirements and timescales. The aim is to establish that the organisation has the capacity to successfully deliver the project.

The original project plans would have been based on the existing organisational context and the estimates approved by the original leadership team. Changes to the organisational context and/or the project leadership team should automatically trigger a review and re-baselining of project plans, including the resource requirements.

Effective project organisations recognise that the acquisition step is important, building commitment and ownership by those responsible for the successful delivery of the project. By revalidating the project plan as part of the On-Boarding process the project team can also engage, or re-engage, with the project stakeholders to ensure a shared vision of the project success criteria. At the end of this step any resource shortfalls or lack of commitment from stakeholders, should be identified and appropriate mitigation plans developed.

Accommodate

Having established a continuing need for the project and its benefits, and re-assessed the project plans, the next step in the project On-Boarding process is to accommodate the project. This involves ensuring that the project team has the necessary skills, tools, infrastructure and support they need to implement the project.

Where a project is transferring within or between organisations, there may be a need to relocate the project team or to change some project team members. This is particularly the case where organisations are being merged or part of the organisation is being outsourced. A failure to assess and address the needs of the project team will contribute to project delays and a loss of momentum, typically resulting in reduced or delayed benefits, increased costs and schedule overruns.

If the project On-Boarding arises from changes in the project leadership team, this step allows the new leadership team to ensure that any shortfalls in skills, tools, infrastructure and project support are addressed at an early stage. This is often necessary as decisions on these matters may have been deferred or delayed pending changes in the leadership team.

As part of the Accommodate step, the application of organisation's business rules to the project will need to be considered, to ensure that appropriate authorisations and delegations are in place and remain valid. This review should include the identification of all affected contracts, assessment of the impact on and continuing viability of these contracts, and a decision as to whether to continue with, amend or terminate the individual contracts. Failure to address this as part of the On-Boarding process may result in project delays affecting procurement and contractual activities.

Assimilate

The first three steps in the on-boarding process Align, Acquire and Accomodate established the continuing need for the project, re-baselined the project plan and identified the steps needed to accommodate (or to continue to accommodate) the project. Subject to the satisfactory completion of the first three steps the organisation is ready to assimilate the project, i.e. to incorporate it or maintain it within the delivery portfolio. The assimilation step is effectively a re-launch or re-initiation of the project, in its new organisational context and/or under new management as appropriate.

This step should include the implementation of any changes identified and agreed as part of the preceding steps. These will typically take the form of a 90-day plan, with specific actions and responsibilities assigned, and clearly stated deliverables.

Fundamentally, the assimilation steps seek to ensure cost effective and efficient changes to an in-flight project and the mitigation of risks associated with changes in governance, priorities and staffing. Successful project organisations will seek to implement this step of the process in a planned and well co-ordinated fashion, with adequate project communications to ensure that stakeholders, project teams members and suppliers are kept informed of any changes.

Accelerate

For projects transferring within or between organisations, the real value of project On-Boarding is the effective integration of the project into a new portfolio, whilst minimising or mitigating the impact of the organisational change on successful project delivery.

For projects affected by changes in the leadership team, the real value of project On-Boarding is getting a new management team up to speed and delivering the required results to the new plan.

In both scenarios, the execution of a properly structured project On-Boarding process will significantly reduce the risk of project failure that arise from discontinuities on governance, organisational and project leadership responsibilities. A failure to properly On-Board a project will significantly increase the risk of project failure, through misalignments at the strategic, operational or process levels.