Campus Financial Systems for the Future

Employing appropriate management techniques

Solid project management with regular meetings of all players is necessary at all phases of system projects, but perhaps is at a premium during implementation and thereafter. How much project management is necessary is always a dilemma: too little and the project is in serious jeopardy of missing deadlines, going over budget, or not meeting goals; too much and the work may never get done because of the overhead of feeding project management systems. While computerized schedule-tracking systems can help, they must be used with caution.

Effective team leadership
More importantly, no project management tool can ever be a substitute for the good judgment of the project leaders and key stakeholders. As in earlier phases of the project, good team leadership is of paramount importance because there will be no substitute for it when the project gets into trouble. No computerized schedule package or set of PERT charts will solve these problems. The team leader will have to know when to relax and when to hold firm, which boils down to good judgment.
A key success factor in the implementation phase is ensuring that project leadership remains balanced and that roles are clearly understood by all parties engaged in the process. If one party (be it the functional, technical, or user area) is missing from or dominates the process, problems will almost assuredly follow.
Implementation schedule management
Once started, it is critical to keep momentum going. A long, drawn-out implementation plan, although seemingly safer, can in fact destroy user buy-in. Many practitioners suggest that the schedule should include a small number of well-publicized milestones whose dates are held firm as opposed to larger numbers of less significant ones that may be allowed to slip. The former provides a sharp focus for both the team members and for the stakeholders, while the latter diffuses the importance of a given milestone and may erode overall institution-wide confidence in the team and the project.
Using such milestone agreements is a very effective and inexpensive tool. If the system is being implemented with an outside consultant, progress payments should be tied to the milestones. The same can be done for in-house developers if a chargeback process is in effect.
Managing the implementation schedule is always a difficult challenge, since the project will very rarely go completely according to plan. For most institutions of any size, these projects are typically multi-year initiatives. It will be important in such a situation for the project management team to keep the steering committee informed of any changes in schedule and share the reasons for the changes. The ideal scenario is that the project management team has done a good job of building credibility during the early stages of the project so that the team is trusted when things go wrong.

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