Opportunity

For most organisations an accurate appreciation of the status and performance of live projects is beyond their grasp. This carries a high burden of cost. Projects which should be terminated limp on; those deviating from plan are identified late in the day, if at all, when wastage is already high and the cost of remedy is higher still.

Approach

Littlewoods were better placed than most; they had in place robust monitoring mechanisms and reports. However there was a suspicion amongst their project support team that the use of these tools was too reactive and not achieving the added value that they should. They wanted to achieve more than just reporting cost and progress to the board.

Their objective was to have current and reliable information, in order to succeed this meant that it had to give confidence through its credibility and demonstrate that projects were delivering more consistently and safely. Status should be capable of immediate and accurate interpretation and the information should be of use to the project teams as well as the sponsors. It was for these reasons that they engaged CITI.

Outcome

A combination of a consistent approach and simple but effective reporting has seen a halving of increases in cost over original estimates. Alternatively, before the changes half of their projects had a variance exceeding 50% of plan and only 3% could be expected to come within 10% of plan.

Within a year of implementing the CITI approach nearly 20% of projects came within 10% of plan and the number exceeding 50% variance was beneath 30%. The sheer financial impact of these advances is not the only advantage that Littlewoods gained; heightened confidence in the planning and execution of projects reflects right through to board level where outcomes are more predictable and decisions are therefore more focused.

Opportunity

Changes caused by technology, alternative purchasing channels and John Lewis’s own drive in the vanguard of influential retailers has caused it to become increasingly interested in, and increasingly dependent on, projects.

Approach

CITI first became involved with the computer services department, within the Partnership in 2000. A major relocation project was underway and it had to be successful. Governance was recognised as a critical concern and the key stakeholders became involved in an intensive session on what and how to create the necessary support environment for the ultimately very successful project.

With that experience and with the growing portfolio of projects the computer services senior management group accepted the need to develop the computer services project office (CSPO) function. Never a simple proposition, impacting as it does on both senior managers’ need for information and project managers’ need for support, the CSPO uncovered the requirement for several connected initiatives.

The CSPO makes it’s influence felt by giving guidance rather than by command and control. As their interests and types of projects become known the Partnerships “body of knowledge”, about how it runs projects, has grown. CITI has been there working with the CSPO delivering project management education, a range of management briefings and suggesting sources of knowledge and ways of working.

Outcome

As the computer services project community matures, with partnerships between sponsor and project manager developing, CITI sees the growth of a new core competency, valued and trusted with ability to run projects successfully and predictably going forward.

Opportunity

As part of its strategic review Diageo acknowledged the need to overhaul, reorganise and standardise its processes. It was recognised that a key element was to differentiate between global processes (marketing a particular brand) and local processes (purchasing newspaper advertising).

Despite the practical and action orientated culture of the organisation, the debate between ‘global’ and ‘local’ was fast becoming esoteric. Senior management, frustrated by the circular nature of the debate, decided the discussion either ceased or was brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Their preference was the latter as it was apparent there were significant cost savings to be made by differentiating between the two.

Approach

CITI was invited in to solve the issue. Following discussions with Diageo’s Chief Operating Officer, the solution was found using CITI’s strategic implementation planning (SIP) approach facilitated by one of our senior programme managers, Simon Peach.

In its simplest form, CITI’s SIP approach identifies and ‘proves’ the relationship between the blueprint of the new organisation (its target operating model), the customer value proposition and benefits case for the transformation. The process involved can be a challenging time for the executives and senior managers as ideas are exposed to a constructive, but necessarily ruthless, analysis process.

The outcome is an executable plan for implementation that links and tracks benefits → impacts → products (deliverables). The core element is the ‘As-is’ and ‘To-be’ modelling process. The ‘As-is’ identifies Diageo’s current operation, while the ‘To-be’ focuses on the future – the blueprint. Unlike approaches adopted by others, CITI’s approach identifies the implications of decisions made regarding process ownership and location and does not concentrate on process mapping alone. This makes it real and permitted Diageo to develop a coherent and comprehensive target operating model.

Together with Diageo’s senior management and analysis teams, CITI produced an operating blueprint which facilitated resolution of the global verses local process debate. It also proved that an operating model is not ‘shelfware’! In fact Diageo established an internal Design Authority group to become the guardian of the new operating model. Of additional, critical importance and value to Diageo, the SIP process identified a number of standalone programmes that did not contribute towards the new operating environment.

Outcome

Following this, CITI undertook a full analysis of the benefits claimed by all programmes currently underway at the time. It became evident that a number did not have a robust business case and were driven more by inertia than value to Diageo. As a result of CITI’s involvement, Diageo decided to close those programmes with no clear benefits case and align others into a more coherent programme of change. This included the exhaustive revamping of a North American portfolio of projects. The board has since demanded that the CITI approach is adopted throughout Diageo for all of its corporate projects.

Opportunity

Six months into the change programme there was little discernable progress and a lot of dissent among stakeholders. Projects were competing rather than collaborating in bringing about the necessary changes.

Resourcing was difficult and the impact on stores and their performance was often negative, and the project activity was failing to deliver business benefit. Senior management were extremely frustrated at rising costs, delays and the absence of any investment payback.

Approach

Through contacts within the retail organisation, CITI were asked to help with the change programme. We assessed the programme using our programme evaluation methods, and it soon became apparent that, although the business benefits were well articulated and financially robust, there was no clear linkage between the benefits to be realised and the projects being undertaken.

We used our proprietary BIP mapping (benefits > impacts > products) toolkit to establish clear connections between projects and their deliverables, and the benefits sought. This identified that many of the projects were not aligned to the business benefits and some of the benefits did not have any means by which they could be achieved – this led to a major restructuring of the projects, and a fundamental adjustment to the governance of the projects.

Outcome

The BIP mapping tool showed the client how to restructure the change programme based on achieving the business impacts required, ranging from improved customer service, to more valued staff, through to improved distribution processes. The new set of projects each had a clear link between what it delivered in terms of outputs, the impacts or changes to people and processes they would cause, and the benefits.

By taking this approach, we were able to reduce the number of interdependencies between projects and therefore reduce the possibility of delay through projects ‘competing’. By restructuring the projects in line with the business impacts the most challenging task, realignment of business sponsors was undertaken. Their traditional approach to project sponsorship had been based on functional alignment – a problematical approach when large-scale cross-functional change is the outcome sought. The approach used showed the nature and degree of cross-functional dependencies and allowed a more appropriate governance structure to emerge.

The programme was re-organised into three delivery tranches, each with its own set of projects, which would leave the organisation is a new, stable state. The first two tranches have now completed and the original benefits from the business case have come through, despite the delayed start.

In conjunction with CITI, the client developed a new approach to managing complex change based on the toolkit we provided them as part of the process of creating a coherent programme of change. Along with the associated skills transfer from CITI to the client, this has allowed them to successfully embark on other change initiatives with confidence.