Managing HR IT Consultant
After Christina wrote an introduction to project and process management earlier this week, I want to look with you at quality assurance in projects. To minimize the risks in an HR IT project for not achieving its goals and results, it makes sense to apply quality assurance during a project program and project. Such an assurance looks at whether all conditions are present to achieve a good project result, and which risks could disrupt this result. Call it an MOT on your project.
In practice, I often see that everyone in a project is focused on getting the project results, on budget, and on time. Risks are identified and seen, and defects come to light. But under the pressure of a successful and timely go live, these risks and flaws -and to a large extent unconscious- are kept smaller than they really are. The risk of major disruptions is looked away from, with the assumption that these risks will still be mitigated or resolved during the rest of the project. Not so. Before you know it, the consequences of these risks grow into impactful proportions that put a lot of pressure on the project result. A leaky faucet that starts flowing harder and harder and at some point, becomes almost impossible to close. Something that, in many cases, only emerges toward the end of the project.
Quality assurance is therefore not something boring for your project, but rather necessary to ensure a good result. It feels like a thorn in the flesh, but it is a help that can put its finger on the sore spot. The project result becomes more predictable and successful by doing so. With a result that meets the requirements and expectations of the organization and customer satisfaction with the end user. Small defects that you discover during the project are often still relatively easy to repair at that time. There is still time to make adjustments. This prevents a project from not being delivered on time, and costs from going over budget. No one wants so many deficiencies after going live that it seriously disrupts operations.
At Consultday, we test projects using our real-world experience. First and foremost, we keep things simple, straightforward, and understandable. We articulate our findings clearly and transparently. We look at both business and IT aspects. In this way, we contribute to an assured successful project result.
At Consultday, we do quality control from different angles. I describe these below, giving some examples for each angle:
Of great importance is that those who will work with the new self-service processes know how to do so. Preferably barrier-free and without training. In my experience, a lot of time is often spent on creating instructions, videos, and training. On the contrary, practice has taught us that only when someone gets stuck in the implementation of the process does, they start asking for help. And what is then arranged for this end user? What is instant help? Is there an easily accessible service desk or is AI tooling such as myMeta available? Tools that help the user further in the process at the time of need. And if there is a service desk, how is it organized? For example, is there a ticketing system that allows calls to be picked up, tracked and managed? Or an AI help that answers all your questions instantly.
This is how we look at projects at Consultday. Together we identify the impact risks and make unseen shortcomings precisely visible. With the goal of improving the project result and having more certainty of success. We go from good to better!
Do you want to identify your impactful project risks and make the never-before-seen visible? I would love to help you with this! Get in touch so we can discuss the easiest way to do this together. Speak soon?