Insurance Projects Failure – Our Nine Top Lessons
Insurance Project Failure is not new and has been with us for some time. For most of us working in the insurance sector in IT or on the business side, we are continually working on projects of some sort. The insurance sector, like many parts of the financial services sector is undergoing a lot of change. For the insurance sector, indeed the only constant is change. Some of the major changes include the business and IT changes that are necessary to comply with the new Solvency II regulatory rules and from an IT perspective, this is the year of business automation, social media, mobile technology and cloud computing. So, depending on budget and resources, there is no limit to the number of IT projects businesses will undertake and therefore these is always a risk of insurance project failure.
Project Management Lessons We have learned from the Rugby World Cup
The insurance sector is not the only sector to experience project failure. Well, The Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is now over and we hope you have enjoyed the last three posts drawing some parallels between the more traditional disciplines of project management and project failure in the business environment versus the project management skills that we have seen, or not seen, by the various national teams seeking to win the Rugby World Cup. There were some very poignant project management lessons and clearly the team that executed the plans on the day won through – even though a rather chaotic team that appeared to be poorly led and exibited most of the traits of an unsuccessful nearly won through on the day. The French team certainly ran the All Blacks very close and showed us all that all projects need a bit of luck if you are going to deliver your projects successfully. However, the All Blacks were the stand out project team of the tournament – they had the best plans, good contingency and executed their project plans on the field
Project Management Pitfall #1 – Inaccurate Scheduling for Insurance Projects
Here, in the next series of posts we are going to discuss the major project failure points that cause so many projects to fail to deliver the business and technology change that is envisaged at the outset of the project. These project failure points are not in any particular order. However, each one is crucial to the success of any project. To a Project Manager getting the scheduling right is critical to the success of any project so we will start with what we consider to be the most important and often the most over-looked risk to an IT project – Project Scheduling.
Insurance Projects are no different from any other business or IT project. When we sit down and start building a project plan, as a project manager, project scheduling is one of those things that we like to pencil in and focus on. The project manager cannot produce estimates for projects on his or her own and the role of the Project Manager is to manage the process of producing a set of realistic estimates. The best way to achieve this is for the Project Manager to sit down with the business or IT SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), to agree and solidify estimated times for each portion of the project and manage the process of producing a set of realistic estimates.
Too many project managers fail to consult enough with the appropriate SMEs and stress to the people giving the estimates that they need to be accurate. They must be all inclusive and they need to be bound to the time frame proposed. And remember, as project manager, you’re managing the project, you’re not performing these tasks, so you are relying heavily on these SMEs to call it like they see it and to put their education and experience to work.
So Lesson Number One is to make sure that you have a project plan that is comprised of as series of estimates for individual task that have been defined and agreed with the SMEs that are available to you on the project. It is not the role of the Project Manager to produce estimates that make up the schedule on his or her own and then take ultimate responsibility for the schedule. Make sure your schedule is a joint effort between you and your SMEs.
JMR Consulting UK Ltd can Help you succeed with your Business Projects
Insurance Project Failure is not on our radar screen! We have worked very successfully with some of our major clients to deliver fairly complex business projects. Here at JMR Consulting UK Ltd we promote the use of project management best practices on all our projects. If you want advice or help with your projects please contact us.
To find out more about how we can help you with project management, please get in touch by using the contact form, sending an email to info@jmruk.com or calling us on 0845 052 0900 for a brief chat.