Financial Program Strategies, Inc.
Following a merger, a large broadcast media company IT department was at risk of being replaced with a third-party software provider, as they had repeatedly missed deadlines, which had delayed substantial operating cost reductions expected from the retirement of their mainframe. A decision to invest in the in-house IT department was conditional. To be acceptable, the project would have to convert 39 branches in two and a half years. Based on prior conversion experience, initial estimates were four years to complete.
The IT group of about 20 had no managers. After building a preliminary project plan to meet the compressed timetable, the initial reaction from the team was that it was impossible. The FPS staff person expressed total confidence in the team’s ability to find a way to make it happen. She encouraged them to explore every idea without restrictions by beliefs about what was feasible, and she directed them through the process. The team identified the resources needed to implement the plan, and three major areas of leadership and responsibility for project success. The plan was approved, and people were assigned to the teams and several people stepped into lead roles and began to define, with their teams, the processes and communications they needed to be successful.
The teams worked together to develop a 12-week project “template” that was implemented 39 times over the next 30 months. The plan involved coordination with branch operations and management, local and national sales organizations, network services and broadcast engineering personnel. The team met every deadline for both feature delivery and branch implementation, in spite of changing business priorities and requirements, acquisitions and divestitures and technology changes.
Team members were consistently recognized by the CIO for outstanding contributions and were compensated with raises, promotions, stock options and special recognition awards.
And, the project completed $1.5 million under budget and exceeded projected reductions in annual operating costs of $700,000.