Finding the right software sometimes can be the easy part.Getting a project off the ground requires a project manager who canlead IT, the business unit, and, yes, the vendor to a successfulimplementation. Veterans who have gone through the process preachadaptability as well as any number of methodologies.

By Robert Regis Hyle

Remember the good old days of assembly lines where everyone hada single task to perform and at the end of the day a car magicallywas built? Todays business world, thanks in great part totechnology, has meshed many of the tasks employees perform so thereis more of a reliance on what co-workers are doing. Thisinterdependence holds true for the tools employees work with andthe need to implement those tools effectively. To achieve asuccessful implementation, project managers have taken theforefront in bringing all sides IT, business, and the vendorsintothe same room.

Project management is definitely a joint venture, says AdrianBrown, CIO of Canal Insurance. Its a marriage. If you dontimplement a project correctly, youre not going to have somethinganyone is going to use. It could be the best product in the world,but if you dont implement it correctly, it wont fit your needs.

Project management offices are taking shape within insurancecarriers, usually with a single person responsible for technologymanagement, according to Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, researchdirector for Gartner. Project managers primarily are coming fromthe IT side and report to the CIO. [Theyre] usually senior ITpeople who know more about the business side than what you may haveseen in the past, she says.

The push behind project management comes from a combination ofproj-ects getting too far out of hand and companies realizing theydont have a lot of money to throw away on a failed implementation.There is a great need not to waste money and to make sure you areon target with being successful more than ever before, addsHarris-Ferrante.

Project management needs the commitment of senior management andeveryone involved in a particular project to be successful,believes Bob Green, director of information technology with HealthNet. There is a lot of reluctance to commit to a project because[employees] silo their activities to protect themselves from anyonecoming into their space, he says. To achieve project success,Health Net involves business-side people, IT staff, and consultantsfor certain jobs. You need to be able to recognize who is availableacross all of those entities, he notes.

Method to the Madness

Project management involves more than just theory, according toGreen. The most prevalent project management tool in the market,particularly in the IT space, he suggests, is Microsoft Project.There are other tools out there, such as Workbench, as well asproject portfolio management tools, such as PlanView, which HealthNet currently is using.

Most insurers are starting to move in the direction of projectmanagement, states Harris-Ferrante. As part of this, carriers alsoare talking about quality assurance and quality practices,particularly around some of the popular methodologies, such as SixSigma, Lean Management, STOMP, and others.

Methodologies also are gaining importance among carriers becauseof their proven success. As methodologies become more widespread,it is easier to find people who understand and are knowledgeable intheir use, Harris-Ferrante points out. Carriers are beginning toseek more from their vendors than just the software, she contends,focusing on project management. If you are a company with a lot ofexperience in one of these methodologies, you are going to beviewed more positively, she says. If a vendor is working withcarriers that adhere to [a certain methodology], it is going to behard to win [the carriers] trust if [the vendor] doesnt haveknowledge in the methodologies the carriers support.

As for methodologies, Brown prefers Rapid ApplicationDevelopment. The probability of getting really perfect specs isslim, he says. You meet, listen, get back together in a week, andshow them what youve got to try out.

The best quality methodologies bring to projects, though, is theaddition of structure to the process. When you go into any project,whether it is a little one or a long-term one, you need structureto keep you focused, Brown says. Especially if its a nine-monthproject as our claims project was. The temptation to wander off tothe woods is almost overpowering.

The structure keeps everyone focused. But Brown cautions thedanger in structure from a methodology is it can encourage peopleto feel it is more important a project follow a certain methodologythan the project be successful. [The methodology] becomes a lifeform of itself, he says. I know people who use [methodologies] tokeep from having to put their own stake into the total projectworking correctly. The methodology gives you boundaries and acomfort level, but it shouldnt become a life form of its own. Browncompares such dependence to a high-school science club operatingunder Roberts Rules of Order. The purpose of science in high schoolis to blow things up, he says. Its not to have a Roberts Rules ofOrder meeting. Sometimes methodologies be-come Roberts Rules ofOrder.
Solutions provider Guidewire looks for implementation people whoare adaptable and wont get into religious wars about methodology,according to Alex Naddaff, vice president, implementation services.We tell our people you have to be able to adjust, he says. If [thecustomer] wants advice on Six Sigma or something like that, itsfine to give it, but our mission is customer satisfaction andsuccessful implementation of our software. Were not sellingmethodology. If the best method to [a successful implementation]with any given customer is Six Sigma, thats great. The last thingwe want is to be arguing with people for three months on how weshould work together as opposed to moving forward. Its not worththe time.

A successful implementation is im-portant to all sides, but whenthe project is complete, it will be the carrier using the product,not the vendor. Customers dont need for me to put a redundantproject manager in there to tell them how to work, says Naddaff.What you end up doing is focusing on the theory of projectmanagement as opposed to the action of getting the projectimplemented. Were trying to avoid that battle.

Where Is Everybody?

The biggest issue facing Health Net is improving resourceutilization, according to Green. We have a large IT organization,and obviously people are working on more than just one or two jobs,he says. We need that visibility to make sure we have the availableskills and the resources to work on very large portfolio projectsthat are being requested [by the business side].
The challenge today for many companies such as Health Net isdetermining the available capacity of personnel if the companytakes on additional demand, Green believes. We dont even know attimes where were going to be short on certain skill sets six monthsout, he says. Thats where an integrated project portfolio kind ofsolution is going to provide that visibility. Its a matter ofpreparing to do [projects], and therein lies the real challengewith many organizations.

Vendors can send out good facilitators to manage their end ofthe project, but Brown maintains the facilitators have to know theinsurance industry, as well. You can have really good facilitators,says Brown. They can promote discussion and ask penetratingquestions, but they also can miss something really major. Thebiggest problem you can have on a project is people focusing ontheir particular areas. You have all these people with tunnelvision.

That is why Brown advises project managers have to look at thebigger picture. If they dont understand your business, they aregoing to miss something, he says. They are going to listen to allthe individuals, and they can be intuitive or sharp people, but ifthey dont know the industry, they can miss something that is justso obvious.

As an example, Brown mentions a claims project and a discussionthat took place on how the carrier defines a loss. Even thoughproperty/casualty companies have tremendous similarities, there arevariants within there that sound really close but have radicalimplications for your claims department and how you process things,he says. Someone who doesnt know your business might not think itsounds like much, but it really is. You can have a really goodfacilitator who doesnt have tremendous business background, but forproject leader you need someone whos got [the background].

Solutions providers such as Guide-wire have to go through abalancing act of their own, points out Naddaff. Guidewire hasestablished a solid project methodology of its own, he notes, butwhen the vendor goes to a customers site, the vendor is there as asoftware company, not a proj-ect manager. Were consulting toinstall our software, he says. What we do is try to adapt to thecustomers methodology and the customers program office. Any toolsthe customer uses, we adapt to them. Weve worked with Six Sigma,weve worked with companies that had program offices in place, andweve worked with companies that had very informal projectmanagement.

Guidewire looks at its own project manager as an assistant tothe customers project manager. The actual tools Guide-wire uses forproject management, Naddaff explains, are designed to set up acontract between parties involved in the projectsaying what theirresponsibilities are, the mechanisms to schedule thoseresponsibilities, and action to be taken if something goes wrong.Youre trying to detect problems as early as you can so you can takeaction on them, says Naddaff. Projects are complicated things todo. No matter how well you plan or whatever you do, you are goingto run into some problems. The key is to have a group in place thatknows how to deal with problems and can take action.

The Real Issue

Capability Maturity Model is another methodology prevalent inthe IT engineering area that Green supports. Its used to determinethe maturity of the project management or software development inan organization, he explains. Quality is a real issue today as isthe ability to repeat processes. Most people will tell you at theend of the day most of what we do is repeatable but only if we areable to identify the repeatable steps and build that into theoverall project management life cycle.
Green doesnt believe IT professionals have been successful inhelping the business or the customer to understand the informationlife cycle. I dont think weve done a very good job of educating thebusiness side on the steps you need to go through for itsinvolvement and commitment, he says. Thats been one of mydisappointments of the last five or six years. Were trying toredefine the whole information engineering framework. Its not justproject management. You have to look at other areas.

Health Net is a product of acquisitions, says Green. We broughttogether a number of companies, and obviously each of the companiescame with its own baggage, as you would expect, he continues. Weretrying to tear down those barriers and get everyone on the samesystems development life cycle. Politics, culture, and stubbornnessare three factors that hinder organizations from overcoming theacquisition ob-stacle. Its going to be extremely critical for us toget our hands around all these projects, adds Green. The companybasically is asking: Why does it cost so much to do IT? And we donthave an answer.

Insurance carriers are starting to pick up the same projectmanagement trends Gartner is seeing outside of the insuranceindustry, according to Harris-Ferrante. Just because they are ininsurance doesnt mean their systems are different and theirprojects will be different, she says. The best practices to whichcarriers are starting to adhere arent specific to the insuranceindustry.

Typically, a company would want to have the same projectmanagement processes address either small or big proj-ects,suggests Harris-Ferrante. However, there are more protocols,particularly when you get into some of the large global companies,and you have more standards if [a projects cost] is over a certaindollar amount. When you reach that point you have to have moremembers of the executive team look at the projects to secure thefunding. You have a little different discussion when you reach thatlevel.

Vendor Friendly

The relationship between the carrier and the vendor is criticalto any projects success, Brown maintains. At the front end, makesure you are comfortable with the [vendors] people, he says. Youhave to get a high level of comfort, or you are in a world ofhurt.

IT people need to participate in the business side of thediscussion, comments Brown, and be able to demonstrate fromprevious applications how something would have been done. Sometimesyour people are wrong, but a lot of times theyre right, he says. Ifyou get your IT people in there with the claims people or otherbusiness people, they all have to know this project has to work. Noone gets to say, Well, I did my part, and walk away. Its all ornothing.

Naddaff believes the things that are critical to a projectssuccess are a strong sponsor and a team thats aware of itsprogressso it knows when its going off trackand very adaptable. Theframework that can make that happen can involve any of themethodologies that companies work with, he says. Working withCanal, Naddaff describes the management of the project as much moreinformal [than other projects] because Browns philosophy is to havean adaptable team that is small and can move quickly. When you workwithin Canals environment, you end up putting a team on site thatshould be very adaptable, says Naddaff. When you work with anothercarrier, you might end up putting a team on site that is much morestructured and works within a major methodology.

Dont Blow It

Development time always was critical for yesterdays projectsbecause it took so long to implement tools, the cost of proj-ectswas so high, and the technology was so rigid. If you blew it, youblew a multi-year effort, and for companies that did that, it wasdevastating, says Brown.

Today, carriers can do incredible things within the enterprisein a short period of time. Now, we can bend the systems around thepeople, he concludes. For a while there people were bending aroundthe systems because the mainframes were such massive investmentsand you had to optimize [that investment]. Well guess what? Today,people are your biggest investment. You better optimize themnow.