Form and Charter the Pilot Group

Form and Charter the Pilot Group

Martin examined what was asked of his group for the pilot. The senior executives wanted more trading groups involved. Martin adjusted the roles of everyone involved. He assigned himself to be the liaison with a new trading group that was joining the pilot. This left his senior manager to handle the day-to-day management follow-up that he had done for the POC. The supported applications would not change for the pilot. Choosing additional applications to support would be done on a case-by-case basis, and only ones that clearly had no support impact would be added. The biggest hurdle was to keep expectations in line. With the success of the POC, there were very high expectations for the pilot. These expectations would need to be managed.

Jason planned to not expand the roles and responsibilities of the pilot group if it could be avoided. With the limited time in each continent and city, looking at anything new was out of the question. Jason wanted the users to have low expectations for the pilot. This way, if his group could under-promise and over-deliver, the project may make it through okay.

The Methodology

The pilot charter will include all the elements of the POC charter, with the following additions or changes:

• Expanded roles and responsibilities ” Since the scope of the pilot is much larger, the roles and responsibilities are greater as well. To accommodate this, individual stakeholders will consult more with their direct reporting lines. That is, the members of the stakeholder group will consult more frequently with their senior managers and executives. In addition, the internal sponsor of the project and the senior executive sponsor will take more active roles in the project. Since the stakes are now higher, so are the risks and rewards. With the success of the POC, all concerned want to see success once again.

• Define new goals and success criteria for this phase ” The goals and success criteria will be very similar to the POC, but the scope will be much greater. The goals will generalize somewhat to support the greater scope, and the success criteria will be more objective than subjective. It is much easier to evaluate numerous objective answers than numerous subjective answers.

• Manage users and support expectations ” With the success of the pilot, the unofficial bar for success will be set higher internally. It is now more important than ever to manage expectations. If expectations are set too high, then the smallest sign of failure could impede the entire project. On the other hand, setting expectations too low will result in the usefulness of the pilot being called into question. Executives and users involved in the project may think that the pilot is just a remake of the POC. There may also be an expectation set with the users that support for the pilot will occur through normal mechanisms.

• Get buy-in from all concerned groups ” While this seems like a standard thing to get from all stakeholders, it becomes easier to ignore people or groups that dissent with the majority view. If one group is dissenting based on its point of view, that group is easier to ignore, as there is a large enough user base to get agreement without including the troublesome group. The danger of doing this is isolating that particular group and losing its support and input.