How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects!

How to Successfully Manage High Risk,
High Reward Learning Projects

www.tatainteractive.com
It was mid-December, when we heard that Tata Interactive Systems (TIS)
was selected to create three games for a global healthcare company’s
dynamic shift towards customer centricity. Excellent, games! We love
to create games. They’re new, they’re different. We haven’t yet bored
ourselves to tears, as the industry has with eLearning courses, by
enforcing unsophisticated templates and locked down navigation.
We had 11 weeks, start-to-finish, to deliver the games. Eleven weeks to
create 1.5 hours of visually complex, competitive and audio rich games
with branching content. And the content didn’t exist. It should take at
least 16 weeks. Not to mention this overlapped with Christmas and
Chinese New Year, where wide swaths of customers and subject matter
experts intended to be unavailable. Still, we signed up readily for the
challenge.
And then we heard something incredible. During the proposal process,
16 other vendors indicated they were unable or unwilling to meet the
project requirements. At TIS, we were stunned.
Maybe this isn’t surprising, though? The Project Management Institute’s
(PMI) 2013 research indicates that, “fewer than two–thirds of projects
meet their goals and business intent (success rates have been falling
since 2008), and about 17 percent fail outright.”1 Perhaps there is a gap
in qualified vendors who can fulfill high risk and high value business
initiatives?
What is a high risk, high reward initiative?
While there is some evidence that budgets are stabilizing, in the past
ten years TIS and the Learning industry increasingly have been asked
to do more with less. In 2009, 45% of companies surveyed for Masie’s
Learning Resources Barometer indicated that their learning department
had to do more with fewer resources. 2 Doing more with less is widely
understood to mean, as Mark Royal and Tom Agnew put it, “shorthand
for continually raising the bar on goals and expectations while spending
less money,”3 but we always find there is a time constraint involved, too.
Many of these requests are about doing more (more engaging, more
global reach, more performance support, more results) in less time.
Additionally, we often find that most of these initiatives with time
constraints also fall into one or more of the following categories:

» High Visibility - the public or target client of an organization will see
the initiative & its results may drive perception, loyalty and revenues
» High Impact - the results of the initiative will have huge efficiency,
cost and/or safety results
» Technical Complexity - Information Technology, logistic &
geographic variables that complicate process and delivery
Any initiative that starts out with a limited timeline automatically increases
the risk of achieving a successful outcome. When combining any of
these additional factors, you have a high risk project that, if handled
correctly, can lead to high reward, or value. In these cases, value
generally refers to the payoff to the customer, which isn’t always about
revenues and the organization’s bottom line. Value can mean more
efficient services, safety, or continuity of operations, for example.

What does it take to manage a high risk, high
reward initiative?
So why were so few learning vendors interested in considering the
healthcare opportunity? What made TIS able to produce something 16
other companies wouldn’t even start? It likely has to do with how well
prepared a vendor is and perhaps their level of exposure & experience.
Let’s take a look at some examples where TIS has met the challenge
of such high risk, high reward projects. A former Vice President of
Canada’s leading communications and media company asked us “How
do we decrease time to proficiency for new hires without compromising
on learning effectiveness?” As we engaged to understand a 12-week
onboarding program for new hires, we found that while creating solutions
that cut time but increased productivity there was an imperative business
driver for the solution to be implemented quickly. We overhauled the
training program reducing 51 training days to 40, turned out 400 online
courses in 24 weeks, which resulted in 22% productivity increase for the
client.
» At Nielsen we worked on a global process improvement and enterprise
application initiative that rolled out to 30,000 employees in 42 countries
including three releases of 70 hours of training developed over ten
weeks each.
» At a major US telecom, we developed 1000 learning (seat) hours in
nine months as part of a strategic initiative to transform the company
both from an operations and a learning perspective.
» Likewise, for a leading telecommunications company in Australia
which needed an engaging induction program for new hires, we
reduced standard instructor-led training costs and created world-class
eLearning with a 150 hour training program developed in just 16
weeks. The content, covering a variety of topics from soft skills to
customer interaction, ranged from Level 1 WBT (Overviews, etc.) to
Level 3 WBT (Game-Based Training, Branched Scenarios).
For TIS, it all started with an initiative nine years ago, one at a fraction of
the size of some of the above projects, but nonetheless one that seemed
impossible at the time. It was a challenge to produce a large number of
courses in a year’s time which would have a multimillion dollar savings
for the customer if it could be done successfully, which included meeting
host of federal regulations. This challenge, like so many of the others,
also required a higher level of instructional fidelity, i.e. no page-turners.
So we created what is informally known as our project management for
corporate initiatives approach.

Project Management for Corporate Initiatives
That approach includes:
People & Training
» A point of contact at the client site or in the client’s primary time zone
» Specialized teams focused on core components of the lifecycle
» Full lifecycle teams responsible for oversight & QA
» Utilization of the 24 hour global advantage of multi-geography resources
» Removal of cost model variability for ad-hoc local consultants
» Executive sponsorship
Process & Procedure, Tools & Best Practices
» Process Flexibility - as a standard
» Best practices & guidelines for each phase of the lifecycle
» Internal centers of excellence on products & design
» Proactive, not reactive, risk management using a Risk Matrix
» Development tools for efficiency
» Subject Matter Expert management as part of the process
» Metrics tracking & reporting at the program and course level
With executive support, we’ve refined & institutionalized our process
and created tools, such as our Project Management & Collaboration
portal and our proprietary rapid development tool, LearnX, to ensure the
success of corporate initiatives. We’ve trained our team and we re-train
them per initiative. All of which are standards you cannot do without if you
expect to achieve successful outcomes, as PMI indicates in their 2013
Pulse report about high performing companies.
The best performers standardize and mature their project, program and
portfolio practices over time to drive organization-wide efficiencies—but
they don’t stop there. They also deploy these tools with talented staff
and empower them to lead their projects— not just manage them—by
training them in best practices and carving out defined career paths.
High performers drive project, program and portfolio management
strategically, with top management visibility, active executive sponsors on
projects, and use of consistent and standardized project management
practices.4

Best Practices for Managing High Risk,
High Reward Initiatives
TIS provides more detail on best practices that are critical to successfully
managing high risk, high reward initiatives, in the table below:
Critical
Elements for a
Successful High
Risk Initiative
Service Provider
(Vendor)
Skin in the game
Plan early to
remember the
forgotten
Subject Matter
Experts
Service Provider
(Vendor)
You want a vendor who also shows they
value the importance of your initiative.
Ensure you meet leadership.
Expect to have a Director level and
above participating in your initiative.
You need a vendor who has the proven
ability to execute. Check for similar
scale and scope.
You also need a vendor who has more
access to resources than you could
possibly get your hands on, since the
vendor does the bulk of the heavy lifting.
It will be necessary to have parallel
teams and overlapping work tasks.
And you want to check for qualifications
of the team member.
Expect your vendor to alert you during
project kickoff to look out for groups
that need to be included in the analysis
& design phases (at a minimum).
Commonly forgotten groups are:
marketing, branding, legal, international
HR and IT, for example.
Look for a vendor that has SME
management practices & procedures.
Expect your vendor to estimate # of
resource hours.
Client
(Purchasers)
You will not succeed if you do not have
executive buy-in and Sponsorship.
The Initiative must align to the
executive’s and business objectives;
else it will stall or fail.
No vendor, no matter how great, knows
how to navigate your company better
than you do. In order to push through an
initiative you must have a primary point
of contact, a dedicated team who will
drive to completion.
Dare we say it? You need a PMO.
You will want to reach outside of your
direct network or line of business to find
out who else needs input, approval &
access. Involve them early or the most
common result is delay and re-work
(more time & cost).
You probably cannot do this well without
involving a cadre of your own experts
to provide inputs & review. Realize
that it takes more time than you think
to contribute to and review & approve
materials.

In summary, we are still surprised that there are not more vendors who
are willing or able to pick up higher risk projects. But we believe the
critical factor behind this is lack of preparedness. To consider managing
a high risk, high reward opportunity, a vendor has to be prepared
with processes, tools, trained teams and best practices in place. To
further extenuate your success you must partner with the customer
organization and provide coaching towards the balance of interactions
that are needed to meet success. Lastly, a vendor must have experience
proactively managing the risks inherent in the opportunity.
Map it out
Communicate,
communicate,
communicate
Look for a vendor that can bring in
experts to augment your own team, if
needed.
You want a vendor who can detail
the exact lifecycle, deliverables &
responsibilities – this includes pointing
out integration tasks with other vendors
and with your team.
Your vendor should provide you with a
timeline that shows what you need to
know (not what the vendor has to do to
get a deliverable to you.)
Expect the vendor to stick to the
timeline, i.e., no changes without prior
approval.
Look for a vendor who has a
communication plan.
Expect your vendor to participate in
status, progress & planning meetings
not only for their own portion of the
work, but as part of the collective
team partnering to ensure you have a
successful end result.
In the event that you do not have your
own experts, make sure your vendor
supplies them. But still assume that you
will need to provide for approvals. It’s
your business & reputation at stake.
You will have multiple integration points,
internal and external teams with their
own timelines and deliverables that
must roll up into your overall plan.
Even if you have a Prime coordinating
the entire program, you want and need
to be involved in the entire timeline
tracking.
You will need to drive communication up
and down within your company.
You also want to ensure that silos are
not created to the extent that you have
duplicate work, assumptions, or lack
of information. Often, when multiple
vendors are involved in deploying an
initiative, they are kept in silos. Then
you find that say, your developers didn’t
create a testing database therefore
the QA team cannot do their job. Don’t
forget end user audience & external
customer communications. These need
to be planned for early in the project.

About Tata Interactive Systems:
Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), a division of TATA Industries Limited, is
an acknowledged global leader in the e-learning industry. As part of the
Tata group, TIS has an international presence and offers diversified and
innovative bouquets of learning and training solutions to corporations,
universities, schools, publishers, and government institutions across
the US, Canada, the UK, , the Middle East, India, and mainland Europe.
Our offerings range from Web-based Training, Instructor-led Training to
Simulation-based Learning Objects (SimBLs®), Story-based Learning
Objects (StoBLs), Courseware and Curriculum Design, Special-needs
Education, Assessments, Electronic Performance Support Systems
(EPSS), Mobile Learning, and Game-based Learning along with other
Corporate Training and Consultancy Services.
About Anna Kuehl, PMP
Anna is the Vice President of Key Accounts - North America, holds her
PMP, and has worked in project and program management for 12+ years.
She specializes in management and client relations for learning programs
that are high risk and high reward.
References
1,4 Source: 2013 Project Management Institute, Inc. Pulse of the
Profession, March 2013. http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Business-
Solutions/PMI-Pulse%20Report-2013Mar4.ashx accessed July 2013.
2 Source: Masie.com 2009 Learning Resources. http://masie.com/
Surveys/learning-barometer.html accessed July 2013.
3 Source: Businessweek.com, Four Ways to do More with Less, 2011.
http://www.businessweek.com/management/four-ways-to-do-more-
with-less-really-11012011.html accessed July 2013.

How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects!

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How to Successfully Manage High Risk, High Reward Learning Projects!