Ventiv Technology

RISK MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE DEPLOYMENT: YOUR GUIDEBOOK TO SUCCESS 5 We have found that a crucial, and often overlooked step involves managing employee workloads. On an RMIS implementation, nearly every employee also has a day job, and the implementation is an unplanned addition to her or his workload. Both provider and client should be realistic about time constraints, both foreseen and otherwise, for participants. Managers should build in breaks for vacation and holidays, and allow for potential emergency projects to arise. And they can celebrate milestones, hold team-building activities and build RMIS project activities into overall performance goals. Some clients simply want their RMIS provider to do the job. But we continue to encourage a collaborative implementation since one of the key ultimate goals of adopting an RMIS is to improve the organization's working environment and work product. Put in that context, it's a bit easier to understand why a collaborative implementation should cross all levels of users, business units and departments that will ultimately touch the product. MANAGING WORKLOADS: THE HUMAN ELEMENT Project managers know it as the triple constraint: Schedule, cost and scope. If one of those variables changes during an implementation, the others must also change, because the variables naturally self- balance, or recalibrate themselves. Imbalances in the schedule-cost-scope relationship can be a major contributor to IT-project failure. Positioned in positive terms, and if communicated correctly, the triple constraint provides a way for project managers to communicate this paradigm with our stakeholders. The provider and client must work together to avoid adding features that are not critical to the business. They must agree and stay true to the project plan to meet objectives they've jointly defined. But often change is unavoidable; the important thing is to analyze the change (scope) and understand the effect on cost and schedule. MANAGE SCHEDULE, COST AND SCOPE

• Cover