How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects

8/13/2019 How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects

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How to Successfully Manage High Risk,High Reward Learning Projects


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www.tatainteractive.com


It was mid-December, when we heard that Tata Interactive Systems (TIS)

was selected to create three games for a global healthcare companys

dynamic shift towards customer centricity. Excellent, games! We love

to create games. Theyre new, theyre different. We havent yet bored

ourselves to tears, as the industry has with eLearning courses, by

enforcing unsophisticated templates and locked down navigation.

We had 11 weeks, start-to-finish, to deliver the games. Eleven weeks to

create 1.5 hours of visually complex, competitive and audio rich games

with branching content. And the content didnt exist. It should take at

least 16 weeks. Not to mention this overlapped with Christmas andChinese New Year, where wide swaths of customers and subject matter

experts intended to be unavailable. Still, we signed up readily for the

challenge.

And then we heard something incredible. During the proposal process,

16 other vendors indicated they were unable or unwilling to meet the

project requirements. At TIS, we were stunned.

Maybe this isnt surprising, though? The Project Management Institutes

(PMI) 2013 research indicates that, fewer than twothirds of projects

meet their goals and business intent (success rates have been fallingsince 2008), and about 17 percent fail outright.1 Perhaps there is a gap

in qualified vendors who can fulfill high risk and high value business

initiatives?

What is a high risk, high reward initiative?

While there is some evidence that budgets are stabilizing, in the past

ten years TIS and the Learning industry increasingly have been asked

to do more with less. In 2009, 45% of companies surveyed for Masies

Learning Resources Barometer indicated that their learning department

had to do more with fewer resources. 2 Doing more with less is widely

understood to mean, as Mark Royal and Tom Agnew put it, shorthand

for continually raising the bar on goals and expectations while spending

less money,3 but we always find there is a time constraint involved, too.

Many of these requests are about doing more (more engaging, more

global reach, more performance support, more results) in less time.

Additionally, we often find that most of these initiatives with timeconstraints also fall into one or more of the following categories:


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High Visibility- the public or target client of an organization will see

the initiative & its results may drive perception, loyalty and revenues

High Impact- the results of the initiative will have huge efficiency,

cost and/or safety results

Technical Complexity- Information Technology, logistic &

geographic variables that complicate process and delivery

Any initiative that starts out with a limited timeline automatically increases

the risk of achieving a successful outcome. When combining any ofthese additional factors, you have a high risk project that, if handled

correctly, can lead to high reward, or value. In these cases, value

generally refers to the payoff to the customer, which isnt always about

revenues and the organizations bottom line. Value can mean more

efficient services, safety, or continuity of operations, for example.


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What does it take to manage a high risk, highreward initiative?

So why were so few learning vendors interested in considering the

healthcare opportunity? What made TIS able to produce something 16

other companies wouldnt even start? It likely has to do with how well

prepared a vendor is and perhaps their level of exposure & experience.

Lets take a look at some examples where TIS has met the challenge

of such high risk, high reward projects. A former Vice President of

Canadas leading communications and media company asked us Howdo we decrease time to proficiency for new hires without compromising

on learning effectiveness? As we engaged to understand a 12-week

onboarding program for new hires, we found that while creating solutions

that cut time but increased productivity there was an imperative business

driver for the solution to be implemented quickly. We overhauled the

training program reducing 51 training days to 40, turned out 400 online

courses in 24 weeks, which resulted in 22% productivity increase for the

client.

At Nielsen we worked on a global process improvement and enterprise

application initiative that rolled out to 30,000 employees in 42 countries

including three releases of 70 hours of training developed over ten

weeks each.

At a major US telecom, we developed 1000 learning (seat) hours in

nine months as part of a strategic initiative to transform the company

both from an operations and a learning perspective.

Likewise, for a leading telecommunications company in Australia

which needed an engaging induction program for new hires, we

reduced standard instructor-led training costs and created world-class eLearning with a 150 hour training program developed in just 16

weeks. The content, covering a variety of topics from soft skills to

customer interaction, ranged from Level 1 WBT (Overviews, etc.) to

Level 3 WBT (Game-Based Training, Branched Scenarios).

For TIS, it all started with an initiative nine years ago, one at a fraction of

the size of some of the above projects, but nonetheless one that seemed

impossible at the time. It was a challenge to produce a large number of

courses in a years time which would have a multimillion dollar savings

for the customer if it could be done successfully, which included meeting

host of federal regulations. This challenge, like so many of the others,also required a higher level of instructional fidelity, i.e. no page-turners.

So we created what is informally known as our project management for

corporate initiatives approach.


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Project Management for Corporate Initiatives

That approach includes:

People & Training

A point of contact at the client site or in the clients primary time zone

Specialized teams focused on core components of the lifecycle

Full lifecycle teams responsible for oversight & QA

Utilization of the 24 hour global advantage of multi-geography resources

Removal of cost model variability for ad-hoc local consultants

Executive sponsorship

Process & Procedure, Tools & Best Practices

Process Flexibility - as a standard

Best practices & guidelines for each phase of the lifecycle

Internal centers of excellence on products & design

Proactive, not reactive, risk management using a Risk Matrix

Development tools for efficiency

Subject Matter Expert management as part of the process

Metrics tracking & reporting at the program and course level

With executive support, weve refined & institutionalized our process

and created tools, such as our Project Management & Collaboration

portal and our proprietary rapid development tool, LearnX, to ensure the

success of corporate initiatives. Weve trained our team and we re-train

them per initiative. All of which are standards you cannot do without if you

expect to achieve successful outcomes, as PMI indicates in their 2013

Pulse report about high performing companies.

The best performers standardize and mature their project, program and

portfolio practices over time to drive organization-wide efficienciesbut

they dont stop there. They also deploy these tools with talented staff

and empower them to lead their projects not just manage themby

training them in best practices and carving out defined career paths.

High performers drive project, program and portfolio managementstrategically, with top management visibility, active executive sponsors on

projects, and use of consistent and standardized project management

practices.4


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Best Practices for Managing High Risk,

High Reward Initiatives

TIS provides more detail on best practices that are critical to successfully

managing high risk, high reward initiatives, in the table below:

CriticalElements for a

Successful HighRisk Initiative

Service Provider(Vendor)

Skin in the game

Plan early toremember theforgotten

Subject MatterExperts

Service Provider(Vendor)

You want a vendor who also shows theyvalue the importance of your initiative.Ensure you meet leadership.

Expect to have a Director level andabove participating in your initiative.

You need a vendor who has the provenability to execute. Check for similar

scale and scope.

You also need a vendor who has moreaccess to resources than you couldpossibly get your hands on, since thevendor does the bulk of the heavy lifting.It will be necessary to have parallelteams and overlapping work tasks.

And you want to check for qualificationsof the team member.

Expect your vendor to alert you duringproject kickoff to look out for groupsthat need to be included in the analysis& design phases (at a minimum).Commonly forgotten groups are:marketing, branding, legal, internationalHR and IT, for example.

Look for a vendor that has SMEmanagement practices & procedures.

Expect your vendor to estimate # ofresource hours.

Client(Purchasers)

You will not succeed if you do not haveexecutive buy-in and Sponsorship.

The Initiative must align to theexecutives and business objectives;else it will stall or fail.

No vendor, no matter how great, knowshow to navigate your company better

than you do. In order to push through aninitiative you must have a primary pointof contact, a dedicated team who willdrive to completion.

Dare we say it? You need a PMO.

You will want to reach outside of yourdirect network or line of business to findout who else needs input, approval &access. Involve them early or the mostcommon result is delay and re-work(more time & cost).

You probably cannot do this well withoutinvolving a cadre of your own expertsto provide inputs & review. Realize

that it takes more time than you thinkto contribute to and review & approvematerials.


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In summary, we are still surprised that there are not more vendors who

are willing or able to pick up higher risk projects. But we believe the

critical factor behind this is lack of preparedness. To consider managing

a high risk, high reward opportunity, a vendor has to be prepared

with processes, tools, trained teams and best practices in place. To

further extenuate your success you must partner with the customer

organization and provide coaching towards the balance of interactionsthat are needed to meet success. Lastly, a vendor must have experience

proactively managing the risks inherent in the opportunity.

Map it out

Communicate,

communicate,communicate

Look for a vendor that can bring inexperts to augment your own team, ifneeded.

You want a vendor who can detailthe exact lifecycle, deliverables &responsibilities this includes pointingout integration tasks with other vendorsand with your team.

Your vendor should provide you with atimeline that shows what you need toknow (not what the vendor has to do toget a deliverable to you.)

Expect the vendor to stick to thetimeline, i.e., no changes without priorapproval.

Look for a vendor who has a

communication plan.

Expect your vendor to participate instatus, progress & planning meetingsnot only for their own portion of thework, but as part of the collectiveteam partnering to ensure you have asuccessful end result.

In the event that you do not have yourown experts, make sure your vendorsupplies them. But still assume that youwill need to provide for approvals. Itsyour business & reputation at stake.

You will have multiple integration points,internal and external teams with theirown timelines and deliverables thatmust roll up into your overall plan.

Even if you have a Prime coordinatingthe entire program, you want and needto be involved in the entire timelinetracking.

You will need to drive communication up

and down within your company.

You also want to ensure that silos arenot created to the extent that you haveduplicate work, assumptions, or lackof information. Often, when multiplevendors are involved in deploying aninitiative, they are kept in silos. Thenyou find that say, your developers didntcreate a testing database thereforethe QA team cannot do their job. Dontforget end user audience & externalcustomer communications. These need

to be planned for early in the project.


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About Tata Interactive Systems:

Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), a division of TATA Industries Limited, is

an acknowledged global leader in the e-learning industry. As part of the

Tata group, TIS has an international presence and offers diversified and

innovative bouquets of learning and training solutions to corporations,

universities, schools, publishers, and government institutions across

the US, Canada, the UK, , the Middle East, India, and mainland Europe.

Our offerings range from Web-based Training, Instructor-led Training to

Simulation-based Learning Objects (SimBLs), Story-based Learning

Objects (StoBLs), Courseware and Curriculum Design, Special-needsEducation, Assessments, Electronic Performance Support Systems

(EPSS), Mobile Learning, and Game-based Learning along with other

Corporate Training and Consultancy Services.

About Anna Kuehl, PMP

Anna is the Vice President of Key Accounts - North America, holds her

PMP, and has worked in project and program management for 12+ years.

She specializes in management and client relations for learning programs

that are high risk and high reward.

References

1,4 Source: 2013 Project Management Institute, Inc. Pulse of the

Profession, March 2013. http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Business-

Solutions/PMI-Pulse%20Report-2013Mar4.ashx accessed July 2013.

2 Source: Masie.com 2009 Learning Resources. http://masie.com/

Surveys/learning-barometer.htmlaccessed July 2013.

3 Source: Businessweek.com, Four Ways to do More with Less, 2011.

http://www.businessweek.com/management/four-ways-to-do-more-

with-less-really-11012011.html accessed July 2013.
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How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects