| Customer |
Global
Financial Services Institution.
|
| Situation |
A
full-service Global Financial Services Institution
(GFSI), heavily criticized by shareholders for
being late to the multi-billion dollar opportunity
as the market moved to online trading, announced
to the press that they would launch an online
service within 90 days.
Follow-on
services would need to be rolled out over the
following year; each with progressively more
aggressive time frames that relied on being
able to execute and subsequently improve best
practice with each iteration.
|
| Customer Problem |
The
customer had a number of knowledge related problems:
- Knowledge underpinning
a number of the processes to be taken online
was locked in the heads of 5 GFSI Subject
Matter Experts (SME's).
- There was no consolidated
resource that defined the knowledge gained
from the successes and failures of previous
projects.
- Some of the knowledge that
needed to be automated was complex and highly
tacit in nature.
The
customer had a number of project management
alignment issues:
- Vendors and internal teams
had no common understanding of their roles
and tasks within the context of the larger
project.
- Previous projects had suffered
severe delays due to miscommunication through
the use of multiple information formats;
finger pointing due to a poor understanding
of roles and responsibilities; flawed implementations
due to gaps and misalignments in process
that were only detected when the system
went 'live'.
- Tasks were being tackled
without an explicit understanding of how
they aligned to the objective of 'going
online', resulting in a high level of wasted
activity.
- Traditional forms of text
documentation were too high level and ambiguous
for technical specialists implementing a
complex systems project, or too 'techie'
to be used by senior management for strategic
planning and business case development.
|
| Solution |
Knowledge Genes®
Author software was used to:
- Rapidly capture, validate
and structure the largely tacit best practice
process from the SME's.
- Provide an unambiguous
(and apolitical) set of models that:
- Explicitly mapped all
tasks to the objective of 'going online'.
- Defined roles and responsibilities.
- Systematically tested
(rehearsed) the process before going
'live'.
- Provided context (an
expert index) to the project documentation.
Knowledge Genes®
Server Software was used by GFSI and Vendors
as:
- The definition of the current
project status.
- An ongoing resource that
defined best practice incorporating 'lessons
learnt'.
- An online resource that
was used to align and coordinate multiple
team efforts.
- A means of ensuring a common
approach and context for strategic planning,
bench marking and project performance evaluation.
- A knowledge protocol for
the transfer of knowledge between geographically
remote teams; incoming and out going team
members; multiple third party vendors.
|
| Primary Users |
CTO
Level Consultants, Senior Project Managers,
Business unit directors, operational managers,
Security, Change Management Department, technicians,
systems engineers, software developers, hardware
architectural developers, the strategic planning
group, and the quality assurance team.
|
| Implementation |
Knowledge Genes®
methodology and technology was implemented in
multiple, and in many cases, simultaneous phases.
The major implementation areas were:
- Knowledge Capture of the
mission critical processes underpinning
web hosting - a number of high-level knowledge
captures sessions were conducted with CTO
level consultants and project leads.
- Gap Identification. For
the initial project 2 Knowledge Genes® consultants
systematically used HOW-WHY looping (detailed
cause effect analysis and process rehearsal)
in order to identify possible alignment
issues real time.
- Capture, Validation, Transfer
- Day 0 processes before
system went active - Over the course
of the project each subject matter expert
spent 5-10 hours in Knowledge Genes® Knowledge
Capture Sessions.
- Day 1 after the system
goes live - 2 weeks of model refinement
continued after the completion of the
project to link all associated documents,
web sites, and additional Knowledge Genes®
models to create a roadmap for future
large scale projects.
Ultimately,
a complete model was developed for all the processes
involved for Web Hosting that included:
- Change Management,
- Release Management,
- Quality Assurance,
- Performance Engineering,
- Network Infrastructure,
- Systems Maintenance,
- Security,
- Contingency & Recovery,
- Problem Escalation Management.
GFSI continues
to roll out additional and expanded Knowledge Genes®
projects.
|
| Results and Returns |
GFSI
experienced a 50% (2 month) reduction in what
was considered, by GFSI, to be an unrealistic
deadline of 4 months.
The
"at risk" multi billion dollar revenue stream
of the Global Asset Management client base was
retained.
|
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