Page 110 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

His thinking was that as long as the application was live, those responsible for developing it should
be available to answer questions about it. To be clear, he wasn't advocating 24-7 support or calls
from a client at 10 pm on a Sunday night, but he was adamant that having unleashed a solution onto
the world, we should at least be answerable for its future behaviour.
Whether it is the handy person fixing the printer, super users you've trained up or an outsourced
support desk, all will eventually have one central question: if I can’t work out what to do, who do I
call? Who do you think your IT Project end users should be calling? Ghostbusters?
The next question, after who will help, is usually how quickly will they help me? This can become a
nice metric by which to be measured. In my experience, most issues can be resolved really quickly
and teams that have processes in place to accommodate support questions can quickly raise their
profile and become organisational heroes. As long as it doesn’t derail the daily tasks!

IT Projects are our babies, and while some us feel an ongoing instinct to support them, many IT
Project teams shut the door once they have flown the nest. It's understandable because, to be fair,
there never seem to be enough hours in the day for the work you have scheduled let alone an old
project coming back to haunt you.

However, being there in a support capacity builds great relationships.
The thing is, you never know when you might need the good will that you bank by being the one to
call upon in a crisis. Your next project may hit some roadblocks and when you need stakeholders to
cut you some slack, they are more likely to do so if they remember how grateful they were that you
were there in their hour of need.
The third question, asked by end users, is likely to be ‘who else needs to know that we are in a
pickle?’
Who does need to know? Put yourself in your end user’s position. They can't do their job one day or
their productivity is reduced because of YOUR IT Project, they won't hide this and hope no-one
notices - they'll tell their boss. Now put yourself in the boss's shoes. She oversees a team of end
users and their IT issues are denting her department's targets - what does she do? When IT isn't
performing it quickly shows up on board level radars.

IT is at the strategic heart of business now and with this increased prominence comes increased
responsibility. Many are arguing that the lifecycle of a project, that once spanned from initiation to
delivery, now extends into the operational period. It is here, when end users are manifesting your
project's business value, that they need your support more than ever.

Finally, here's an exciting thought. One of my project manager friends has identified this as a whole
new service offer. "Like offering an extended warranty on a toaster," he told me. Extended
warranties always come at a premium and he has managed to negotiate extra budget for his team to
provide ongoing support beyond what would have previously been expected of his team. Rather
than seeing support as a problem or a distraction from his schedule he has creatively negotiated
new budget for the IT Project team.

Extra money! Now that's something worth your support!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, please get in touch – how far are you willing and able to
support your IT Projects.