Business transformation for government projects
For an agency to achieve business transformation through EA, CPIC and EVM, project managers must:
Work to Change Organisational Culture: In order for project managers to fully realise the major mission benefits that come from IT being tightly integrated with key organisational processes, there must be a change in organisational culture.
Program and business-unit leadership, facilitated by the CIO and his or her staff, should adopt an enterprise view of the organisation. It must be communicated throughout the organization that IT will be implemented only through this three-pronged approach in order to ensure that it links directly to enterprise-wide goals and objectives.
It is also important for project managers to alter their program- or project-centric view of things in order to understand how their project fits into the bigger enterprise picture and what resources are available to them outside their domain. They will be much more effective if they are able to see the broader picture and become more collaborative both inside and outside their domains.
More Effectively Plan Initiatives Tied to a To-Be Architecture: It is crucial that key program initiatives, and the major projects to implement the initiatives, be driven from the To-Be, or Target, Architecture through the EA T&S. In order to ensure that IT enables mission performance, it is important to implement, and then use, the integrated three-pronged approach.
IT initiatives are only effective if they help to improve mission processes that ultimately lead to mission performance improvement. This occurs through understanding the process changes that can lead to the improvement sought. The changes in processes are identified as the EA is developed. If project managers are closely involved in the development of the EA models and the T&S, their key initiatives and projects will be facilitated through this business transformation process.
The initiatives that cause that change to occur are identified in the process of developing the Target EA. It is this process that leads to identification of the investments that comprise the agency’s IT Capital Asset Portfolio.
Implement and Adhere to Standards that Encourage Interoperability and Integration: It is widely accepted that, in order to achieve organisational agility for responding to mission change, it is important to implement technology that facilitates interoperability and integration.
To achieve this objective, agencies must adopt open standards that allow for the rapid implementation of such technology.
If project managers are closely involved in the development and adoption of standards for interoperability and integration, and then facilitate the incorporation of these standards into their projects, it will help to create the transformation desired.
This approach requires an enterprise view of technology standards that are implemented and managed centrally through an EA governance process. The standards are established collaboratively with a process that involves all interested stakeholders, but they are applied and enforced at the enterprise level.
Project managers must subscribe to this process to achieve interoperability and integration in their technology systems and infrastructure.
Accept That They Will Have Less Individual Project Freedom: Clearly, the integrated process described advocates an enterprise, structured and governed approach to defining, designing and managing the IT portfolio of an agency. This has the logical result of reducing the freedom of individual project managers to make unilateral decisions on the technology products and development approaches.
For business transformation to occur, there must be broad inclusion of all organisational stakeholders in the process of developing the EA, establishing key EA standards, and creating the selection and management criteria for investments that become part of the agency’s IT portfolio.
In the past, project managers in government agencies have been primarily concerned with the project success within their purview. Generally speaking, limited attention was given to the selection of technology solutions except to ensure that the most effective solution for their projects was chosen. Communication of best practices beyond their domain was limited.
However, in order to effectively support their organisations’ transformation efforts today, and to share in the benefits that transformation will bring, project managers must now be concerned with delivering tangible and demonstrated business results using inter- and intraagency shared services and resources. The business of government has certainly changed.
In conclusion, by developing their knowledge and skills and sharing best practices in EA, CPIC and EVM, today’s project managers can help their agencies determine where they would like to be, how they are planning to get there, and whether or not they are on the right track, and achieve true business transformation.
