Page 121 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

The bulldozer and the butterfly: How to transition a reluctant client's IT

Project into service

Your IT project is almost ready: Development is done;
testing is going well; just a few defects remain. The
customer is satisfied with the look and feel of the
product, you both have a shared vision about the
business change it will bring .... but ... they want to ...
delay ‘go live’ ... just a little bit longer.

And you begin to ask – have we missed something?
The answer is almost certainly ‘yes’.

At Stoneseed, transition into service is an aspect of the
project lifecycle that we are increasingly helping with
clients with and this “reluctant customer” or “reluctant
stakeholder” phenomenon is one that we are seeing
repeated on a regular basis. It’s like getting to the edge of the penalty box and being afraid to shoot,
procrastination at the delivery end of IT Projects is on the increase.

As a Project Leader, you have a number of options here. The most popular two are, as a project
manager friend poetically calls them, the "Bulldozer” and “Butterfly" approaches.
She told me, "The bulldozer approach pretty much does what it says! You have other projects
waiting, you've spent blood, sweat and tears on this project! Testing is going well, ok there are a few
bugs, but you've delivered projects before and sorted niggles after the 'go live' day. So you use your
persuasive skills to convince the client that it's just 'opening night nerves' and that the project needs
go-live. NOW!"

The problem with this approach is that it's not win/win. OK, you got what you want, the project is
signed off and transitioned into service but what about the end client? How do they feel? Bullied?
Railroaded? And what about the end-users who have to put with buggy software? Are they happy?

And ultimately, what about your team? Can they really move on when they keep having to field
support calls post-delivery?
Years ago, a wise IT Project leader once asked me, "If you deliver your project, and it doesn't bring
the full impact to its users on day one, have you really delivered the project at all?"
So, what of the “butterfly” approach?

"The butterfly approach is altogether less heavy-handed. You've heard of taking a helicopter view,
you can visualise exactly what's meant by that, so hold that thought. Swap the chopper for a delicate
butterfly though. Same job, it takes an overview of the project from a high viewpoint but because
it’s smaller and more delicate it can also really zoom in and check very specific parts of the project
for issues that may have been missed. You'll have seen a butterfly land on the buddleias - imagine a
helicopter doing that!! It would blow it everywhere! No, the butterfly gently lands on a single flower,
does its job and leaves the rest of the plant unaffected. The attention that you give to your IT Project
at this point in its lifecycle needs to be just as delicate, just as precise and just as non-destructive to
everything else you've created."