How to establish your starting point

In our last blog I examined the things you need to think about in the early stages of planning in order to set a firm foundation for your transformation program. This month, I’ll look at key considerations when selecting the project starting point. 

Every transformation project needs a roadmap with a starting point and a destination. However, establishing a starting point can be tricky when your project is complex with many moving parts. You need to weigh up technical and cultural perspectives, along with risks and challenges and where the biggest improvements can happen.

The good news is that, with your capability model in hand, you’re already partway to figuring out your starting point. Here are some practical pointers to get going with the process.   

Gather the team

Your first step is to assemble a team to gather information. The core group would be comprised of business analysts and potentially some change specialists working with staff across the business—ideally your Process Champions, if you’ve selected them. The size of the team will depend on how fast you’d like to proceed through this stage, as well as how detailed you want your analysis to be. This could also be a good time to bring in support from consultants. 

Collect your data and insights

Next, use your capability model to develop a series of heat maps. Here you’ll look at each of the capabilities in the project scope and dig into key areas likely to generate risk. These may include:

• Data quality

How good is the data that underpins each capability? How much cleansing will be needed before you can migrate it? Do you have sufficient data to perform the right level of reporting needed by each area of the business?

• Level of customization

How customized is your current solution? Even if you’re moving to a different product and system, your existing customizations will highlight where you have non-standard processes that need to be considered.

• System inventory

How many systems are involved in delivering each function? Identify the systems that aren’t owned by Information Services and are run within individual schools or departments, but still rely on data from the existing system. This gives a good indication of where integrations or additional exports/reports may be needed.

• Knowledge and documentation

How much do people understand about the existing system? What has been documented? Does the wider organization know why they do what they do in the system? Are the inputs and outputs required to deliver each capability understood?  

• Stakeholders impacted

This won’t necessarily be a full list of stakeholders, but an attempt to understand how many people will be impacted by the process. EG: Student Receivables would see big impact, as it affects both staff and students, but Commercial Receivables has a far smaller footprint.

• Current level of quality

How often are current capabilities delivered as planned without the need to intervene in the process? This highlights where system or process changes are needed.

• Time requirements

How long does it currently take to deliver each capability? Examine each function from the perspective of how resource intensive it is. 

• Change resistance 

How ready are teams and stakeholders to adopt new processes and procedures? Is there likely to be resistance to change that needs additional attention?

Summarize your heat maps

Once you’ve gathered your information, your heat maps can be summarized in two ways:

1. By capability. This gives you a sense for the areas of the university that are currently pretty robust, and where additional effort will be needed during the implementation. 
2. By key area. This gives you a view of which elements of the transformation—such as integrations, data cleansing or change management—are likely to represent bigger challenges.

This vital information supports both your resource and time estimates, and gives you an indication of the areas that would benefit from implementation partner input.

Next steps

If you want to take the analysis to the next level of detail, look at process changes you can implement now in your current system. This provides immediate benefit and reduces change when you go live with the new system.  .

This process will give you a clearer understanding of what needs to be addressed technically for the new system to deliver on its promise, along with giving you an idea of where to focus change management activities. Your findings will also inform your project risk log, so you can plan mitigations early in your process.

With this information in hand, you should have a clear starting spot on the road map based on factors like available resources and priorities. 

Next you will need to have an idea on where the finish line is, which we’ll look at in our next blog: Setting a vision for your project. 

I hope this blog has been helpful. If you’d like to know more about understanding your starting point or how to gather and compile this information, Ask Inoapps about our technical and business transformation readiness assessment and how the service can be tailored for your university’s needs.