Today’s C-level executives must deliver business results faster with on-going quality, using fewer resources. Driving productivity via integrated Information Technology is the path to the future and strategic IT deliverables will continue playing a larger role in an enterprise’s success or failure. Companies viewing IT as merely an expense cannot compete in the fast-paced global business environment. However, IT alone will not drive success. Rather, transformed business processes, brought to life through integrated data, cost-effective applications, and scalable technology are the solution. These are the promises of enterprise software.  

Successful leadership, process, and politics requires an aligned plan. Thinking with the end in mind, organizations must define “what” to clarify the desired outcome, “how” they will approach the problem, and “who” is accountable for which components to successfully deliver business results faster. The key to success is clearly understanding the problem before trying to solve it.  

You’ll need a technique to prioritize your improvement opportunities relative to all of the other company requests. This is the portfolio process. The direction comes from the top, based on needs and desires across the company. The portfolio process identifies, prioritizes, and allocates resources to the top choices. Importantly, the process also identifies efforts you will NOT work. Identifying and clearly communicating those requests for which no resources are planned is critical. If some projects aren’t stopped or at least delayed, your resources are spread too thinly to deliver against your most important efforts.  

Peeling back the onion layers, the portfolio process leads into a phase-gate approach. A phase-gate process defines the steps and checkpoints in the development of new capabilities. It begins with an idea, progresses to analysis, a detailed business case, development, testing, launch, and finally a review of results. Following each phase along the way is a gating meeting resulting in a go/no-go decision.  Meeting results can be, yes - move forward; no – stop all efforts, or go back and do more work prior to leadership making the decision. It is imperative to review each phase’s results and provide the team with formal alignment to proceed. Continuing through the steps without checkpoints will almost certainly yield an out of control effort, with an unclear target, and ultimately unrealized business benefits. 

While the portfolio and stage-gate processes are necessary, they are not sufficient to drive success. Another onion layer must be peeled back, clearly identifying who is accountable for which deliverables in each stage. Accountabilities will shift across stages. In the early stages (e.g. ideation and analysis), business resources define “what’s desired.” Accountability transitions to IT resources to define “what’s possible,” based on current constraints. The key point is resources will have different responsibilities throughout the process. Everyone must understand the deliverables for which they are accountable, and the components for which they’ll hold their peers accountable. Failure to define up-front, who is accountable for which deliverables, yields dysfunctional behavior.

In my next blog, I’ll dig deeper into the phase-gate and HR processes to drive clarity on accountability transitions as your progress through the phase-gate process.