My Adventures in Consulting

iPlan Banca - an ipad application that will allow my client SCB to sell Life insurance more effectively, with less mistakes and less mis-selling went live this past week.  It was a very difficult project for me.  We started at the end of September. I am new to Asia having moved here in June 2016.  The project was the first agile project for IBM TH and the first Backbase project also.  I had an inexperienced team but we pulled it off with my leadership and with my awesome Architect Mark Willis.  The local Architect Jintana was excellent in the slog also.  So was the awesome dev team....Its a lot to be proud off. I sacrificed my Christmas to get this live (I couldn't go home to Minne but the family joined me but even then I hardly saw much of them as I worked right through with just two days off)....Even on NY eve we worked till about 11.30 PM....So we all made sacrifices for sure...At the last moment the client wanted us to add a new product also....but somehow we pulled it off and

There are some common problems I have seen recently on digital transformation projects.   This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that can go wrong. This list is also not exclusively the domain of the digital transformation projects only but can happen in other types of projects 1. Poor road mapping and unclear understanding of the program objectives – Not enough time may be spent early enough to truly understand the multi-year vision, develop and disseminate clear objectives/benefits to all stakeholders direct and indirect (especially if the indirect stakeholders have undue influence on the CEO).   For example I recently had a client that took almost 1 year to close the sales cycle – during that sales cycle we agreed to a 2 year multi-phase road map where B2C Web Content Management was agreed to happen in Phase 1, B2C e-commerce was in phase 2 and B2B related events (content and commerce) in Phase 3 and beyond. However once Phase 1 started there was constant pres

I view change management in the Digital area through the lens of the following 5 activities 1. Process (engineering / re-engineering), 2. Org Design, 3. Training & Learning Management 4. Communications Management 5. Incentives and Adoption Management (which may or may not be part of #2 above.)   Process:   Many consulting firms can do process very well since they are familiar with it (very similar to doing any IT project and can typically be done by your existing BA's and Business Consultants).   However we need to adapt our mindsets in the digital world.   In order to truly deliver the best value for our customers we should take a comprehensive omnichannel view of the solution and also ensure that old processes and bad behaviors are not just ported over to the new world, given a coating of paint, and passed off as an improvement. At Target.com I had to ensure that the new content planning and production processes were actually BETTER i.e. simpler,

As a project manager especially in a consulting environment you are balanced sometimes precariously on a three legged bar stool…..Each leg of the bar stool symbolizes an aspect of your work life that if not managed actively and well can result in disaster for you and your project.  The three legs symbolize – Your client, Your team and Your up line .  You Mr. or Ms.  Project Manager are sitting on top of this stool…..your job at the highest level is to keep these three legs in harmony…..In a particularly bad week or project phase you can probably afford one of the legs to go out of balance f or a short period of time (ie you make a calculated gamble say to burn the team at a higher than tolerable velocity to meet a deadline, or you convince a customer to get his pet project in the next quarter, or you convince your boss to relax that profit target for this quarter in order to improve next quarter).  So three in balance is ideal….Two legs unbalanced for short periods are