Lir Cowman

The agency had begun working with a publishing client who was worried that a significant internal project would not hit its deadlines. The purpose of the discovery phase was to assess the project and problems in more detail to plan how the agency would best assist the client.

The issues outlined by the client were relatively simple. They wanted additional help to reduce the risk. After 12 interviews with assorted project team members, I realized that part of the problem was a difference in understanding the requirements. The development team believed it had to build a complex, future-proof platform, yet what was driving the imminent deadline was a much smaller problem. Specific areas needed to move off an existing platform to complete a contract. Neither the development nor the management team was aware of this requirement difference.

The client was delighted by this analysis and recommendations and commissioned the agency to do extensive further work.

The project was a large, complex, new site development for a leading charity, enabling them to receive donations of money online for the first time. Their financial projections relied on this eCommerce enablement happening on time. However, the existing development team had left the company abruptly, with no handover notes or materials other than a set of thousands of stories in Mingle.

What I did:

• Quickly onboarded a team of five new developers.
• Managed the client's expectations around the launch date and risks ahead.
• Reset budget expectations with senior stakeholders and the agency board of directors.
• Ran a gap analysis to identify the full scope, what had been completed, and what was left to be done, and replanned the remaining work, obtaining approval from all on this redefined project scope and timings.
• Launched within ten weeks with a pleased client and team.

This was a brief contract. I made many improvements in how the company worked in just over two months. Given that they hired me again a year later, I could see that the changes were still being used.

I helped the existing delivery team define their offering and collaborated to develop improvements. I created all the necessary documentation, such as the playbook, templates, roles and responsibilities, checklists, and supporting sales assets. I proactively identified issues and optimized operations. Within the first week, I set up a wiki and began porting information from various sources. I also identified that resource management could be far more efficient with new tooling and began the rollout of this within the first two weeks. I developed a balanced scorecard at the request of the CEO, working closely with the senior management team to get their agreement on the metrics. While doing this, I also did hands-on project management. I was the delivery lead for an existing large corporate SaaS client and led the delivery of a new business with a gambling company, heading the intensive two-week discovery.