The Dashboard Effect

BI Project Execution with Jennie Swenson

November 01, 2022 Brick Thompson, Jon Thompson, Caleb Ochs Episode 51
The Dashboard Effect
BI Project Execution with Jennie Swenson
Show Notes Transcript

Click here to watch this episode on YouTube.

In this fourth episode of our series on BI project management, Brick and Jennie discuss the project execution phase. They touch on the main components of this phase, including project integration management, quality management, resource management, communication management, and risk management.

Blue Margin helps private equity owned and mid-market companies organize their data into dashboards to execute on strategy and create a culture of accountability. We call it The Dashboard Effect, the title of our book and podcast

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#projectmanagement #PM #BI #projectexecution #businessintelligence #reporting #dashboard #datawarehouse

Brick Thompson:

Welcome to the Dashboard Effect Podcast. I'm Brick Thompson.

Jennie Swenson:

And I'm Jennie Swenson, the Director of the PMO here at Blue Margin.

Brick Thompson:

Hey, Jennie.

Jennie Swenson:

Hi.

Brick Thompson:

Good to see you again, I'm glad you came back.

Jennie Swenson:

Thanks for having me.

Brick Thompson:

Of course, yeah. So this is another episode in our series of Project Managing BI Projects. So what are we going to talk about today?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, today we're going to talk about executing.

Brick Thompson:

Okay. So, it sounds self evident, but what is actually the executing phase?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah. So executing is a phase within project management that follows our planning phase. So we've talked a lot about our planning and initiation and how we set ourselves up for good projects. And here's where the rubber meets the road. It's where the work is done, deliverables are completed, and really where we're actualizing the plan.

Brick Thompson:

Okay, good. So the last episode I did with Anne, and we talked about project initiation. That was sort of the handoff from the sales department, to the engineering department and the PMO project management group. This is sort of, "Okay, we've done that handoff, and now the rubber is meeting the road."

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly, yep, she's set us up. The initiation process has set the foundation for the project, and now we're really here to take all of those outputs of that process and execute on them to deliver on the goals of the project.

Brick Thompson:

Alright, so I'm guessing there's a lot of different parts to the executing phase. How do you think about those?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, so really, in executing, we're drawing on processes from a lot of different areas. So first, we're looking at project integration management. We're also looking at quality management, resource management, communications management and risk management. And there's a whole bunch of process and framework underneath each one of those that we have in our playbook, if you will, to execute on our projects well.

Brick Thompson:

Okay, so, Project Integration Management, that sounds fancy.

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah.

Brick Thompson:

It's a technical term, I think, from the PMI world. Yeah. So for us lay people, what does that mean?

Jennie Swenson:

Sure. It's really where we're taking all the outputs from project initiation and planning, and building them into a cohesive strategy in order to meet the goals of the project.

Brick Thompson:

Okay. And so, what's involved? What are the pieces of that?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, so... like I said, we're using the outputs, a lot of those are tools and documentation coming out. So things like the project plan, the timeline, we have our set of deliverables, we likely at this point, have a risk log that we're leveraging. We're also managing project knowledge. So really looking to leverage our client teams. So subject matter experts from our client teams on the data sources, the reporting areas that we need to tackle, as well as on our internal resources. So looking at our technical experts, and also people that have experience in the industry, or on the topic area at hand.

Brick Thompson:

Okay. And so Project Integration Management is really, and correct me if I get it wrong, but the bulk of what we're doing, it's the main thing. And then the other things you talked about support that? Am I thinking about that right?

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly, yep.

Brick Thompson:

Okay, so what are the supporting pieces then?

Jennie Swenson:

So we've got Project Quality Management. So we talked on our other podcasts about quality here at Blue Margin. That's been a big initiative for us always, but very intentionally over the last year, we have a department that set a really solid group of processes in place to check in on quality for our report deliverables, as well as our data deliverables. So we're really working with that department to continuously check in on quality as we're going through our development process, and ensure that we're meeting our quality standards, and if not, making small tweaks along the way to until we really arrive at our goals.

Brick Thompson:

Alright, so that makes perfect sense. So it's really quality management, management around the deliverables, not so much the quality of our project management processes. That's kind of meta.

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly. Around the deliverables, we always want to ensure that we're delivering top quality to our clients.

Brick Thompson:

Okay, great. All right. And then I think one of the other ones you mentioned when you were listing them was Project Resource Management.

Jennie Swenson:

Right.

Brick Thompson:

Tell me about that.

Jennie Swenson:

So we've talked a lot about our resource management here at Blue Margin. We're really talking about people primarily. In traditional resource management, there's everything from what sort of tools and software you're going to use and those types of things. But here, we're really talking about people. In a more traditional environment, we may see that we would actually acquire the resources during this phase. but at Blue Margin, we actually acquire, if you will, our resources during our planning phase. So I think we talked about that with Anne.

Brick Thompson:

We know who's going to be working on the project, or at least we think we do.

Jennie Swenson:

We think we do, yeah. We definitely really try to plan for that early to make sure that we have the right people in place to start the project on time and finish it on time. So in executing, what we're trying to do, in terms of resource management, is really just making sure that as the project moves through execution, if things are changing, that we still have the right people on the team. I believe we've talked about in previous podcasts the idea of skill to scope match. So wanting to make sure that we have the right people that have the skills to match the work at hand. So we're continuously checking in to make sure that that matches.

Brick Thompson:

Because it might change.

Jennie Swenson:

It could change. Yeah, our projects change pretty regularly.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, you might find something you didn't anticipate upfront or run into a problem that, there's a person who has the knowledge and experience to solve more easily than the team that's on it. So you bring them in.

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly, yeah, sometimes we have to change the way we connect to a source. So if we do that, we have to check in and make sure, "Is this still the right person for that work?"

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, okay.

Jennie Swenson:

Yep. So that's part of it.

Brick Thompson:

And then, I'm guessing, there may be times where you plan to have a certain team when you were planning the project, and then for whatever reason, let's say, we were delayed in getting the SOW signed or something, so maybe a team member has gone on to a different project, I guess you're sort of managing that during this as well.

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, that is part of it. We do experience delays on projects occasionally as we have to change our approach or work comes up in the project that we didn't anticipate. So we occasionally have to change team members in order to ensure we can stay on track for that project, or maybe another project that we have in the plans. Right now we're running up against a lot of out of office for the holiday season, so we're having to get really creative with how we're needing to shift work around and leverage our resources to ensure we're staying on track.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, that sounds like a complicated matrix problem to solve there.

Jennie Swenson:

Its a puzzle.

Brick Thompson:

All right, what was the next one?

Jennie Swenson:

So still in resource management, the other thing that we're really looking at is making sure that we have the right people according to the plan in order to control costs on the project. So we go into the project with the plan, we know approximately how much effort it is going to take for us to get the project done as planned, so we want to monitor and ensure that we're sticking to that plan. And also, we want to make sure we have the right people, at the right time, in order to make sure we can deliver on time, and also plan other projects in our portfolio around that work.

Brick Thompson:

Right.

Jennie Swenson:

So you have sort of two aspects to the people management. Making sure we've got the right people, and then that that they can implement the work per the timeline.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, it gets more complicated. Sounds like a bit of a Rubik's Cube, because I'm imagining, you get a delay here, you got a technical problem there, the right person you want needs to come over here, maybe you've got a little excess capacity, you can throw extra people over here. So you're just kind of managing that every day.

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly. It's daily, for sure, especially when we're really busy. One small delay can just have a domino effect on the rest of the portfolio's that we're constantly moving pieces around to correct.

Brick Thompson:

So your Project Managers come together with you and do that kind of planning constantly. You probably get pretty good at doing it, just kind of transparently, I bet.

Jennie Swenson:

We do, and we also have, and I've said this before, our teams are really flexible, which we really appreciate. So we can constantly be shifting around. And well, I shouldn't say constantly, it's not that much, but there's some shifting.

Brick Thompson:

It depends on the week.

Jennie Swenson:

Depends on the week.

Brick Thompson:

And then, lets see, the next one you had was Project Communications Management.

Jennie Swenson:

Yep.

Brick Thompson:

That sounds self evident again, but tell me what that is.

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah. So it's really making sure that we have the right message, at the right time, for the right people. We say all the time in our department, "No surprises." We want to make sure we keep our clients informed of progress, so we make sure that we have the right people on the communications. I think we've talked about our structure for communication internally, and also with our clients. We have a set of meetings where we review progress with them on a weekly basis. We also generally provide a recap of that meeting to the stakeholders who were on the call, and even those who may have missed it so they can stay informed on progress. Internally, we meet up twice to three times a week on active projects to check in on progress, make changes to the plan if we need to do that, adjust resourcing, things like that. We also have to customize our communication plan depending on the stakeholders and sponsorship on a project. So we work with a lot of PE firms who bring us, some some of their portfolio companies that may need reporting. So we have two sets of project sponsorship or stakeholders oftentimes that we need to communicate to. So we work with those, primarily with PE sponsors, to understand,"What level of communications, at what cadence, does it need? What do they need from us in order to stay informed on the project?"

Brick Thompson:

And that'll vary a lot. I know some, some of the PE guys will say, "Look, our management team has it at the portfolio company, just work with them." And some of them want maybe a once a month check in. And some of them want to be in the weekly meetings.

Jennie Swenson:

Yes, exactly. And with some we have weekly meetings to stay in touch with them separately. We've had great partnership experiences with them. They can really help us ensure momentum on a project. So we do customize our plan based on that.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, I'm guessing there's another piece of internal communications that has to happen with the sales consulting group, too. Because they're out talking to our PE partners, or potential clients, and they need to be able to talk intelligently about, "Okay, when do we think we can execute this work that we're talking about?" And so you've got to keep them informed. Is that is that part of it?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah. So we do have a weekly check in with our consulting group, where we review what's in the pipeline, we do talk generally about what we have, as far as available capacity. And I'm in touch with the Director of Consulting daily so we can stay in touch on what we have as far as capacity in the upcoming weeks.

Brick Thompson:

Okay. All right. Anything else on communications?

Jennie Swenson:

I think that covers it.

Brick Thompson:

That was good. Okay. And the last one you mentioned was Project Risk Management.

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, I would say this is probably our biggest opportunity area in the list of processes that we've been discussing here. In executing typically what we're going to see is really implementing a risk response. So ideally, in our planning and project initiation activities, we're actually setting up the risk log, and we're establishing the steps we need to take to mitigate risk. And then in executing we're actually implementing those steps. I think we were talking earlier, and we are fortunate that our risks are pretty minimal. We have very short projects, so we're generally able to establish good mitigation strategies and execute on those for the risks that we do identify at the beginning of the project. There's occasionally things that there's just not much we can do about it, and so we'll just monitor that one. But generally, we're implementing those steps at the beginning of executing, and then ongoing, identifying new risks and implementing strategies.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah, I like that. I've worked in project teams where we followed a PMI approach, where they're sort of the risk matrix where you've got likelihood on one axis, and you have impact on another axis, and then you spend time mitigating for the ones that are more likely and more impactful. And as I was talking to you about that earlier, you said, "Yeah, that's true. We just try to mitigate all of them," which I like. And then obviously, sometimes risks turn into issues.

Jennie Swenson:

That's right.

Brick Thompson:

And then you have to do issue management.

Jennie Swenson:

Exactly. And we were saying, we will have a whole episode on how we manage change at Blue margin.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah. All right, good. Well, that was a great summary. Anything you want to add?

Jennie Swenson:

No, I guess, just to say this, I would say this is really where the PMO shines. You know, this is our opportunity to do what we do best, which is coordinating all the disparate pieces and making them come together to ensure project success.

Brick Thompson:

Yeah. And you and your team do a fantastic job of that.

Jennie Swenson:

Thank you.

Brick Thompson:

I've worked with a lot of PMO's, and you're the best so nice work on that.

Jennie Swenson:

Cool.

Brick Thompson:

All right. Well, thank you for coming. I think Anne's back on deck next week.

Jennie Swenson:

She is.

Brick Thompson:

Do you know what she and I are talking about?

Jennie Swenson:

Yeah, so we're gonna talk about Monitoring and Controlling next week. Really figuring out how we respond to change.

Brick Thompson:

Great. All right. Thanks again.

Jennie Swenson:

Thanks, Brick.