Reflection - Learning Launch

Challenge

My role is within a large corporation’s internal business development team and our role is to help  improve operational efficiency in regards to our project management. Our projects are typically for an  external audience, but involve several external vendors who are contracted to conduct and oversee the  projects. The project scope includes the internal business development working group of five colleagues  and the business technology department. The project should not exceed 180 business days and is  dependent on both internal and external resources, both limited by employee time and project budget.  The key stakeholders for the project are internal parties within the internal business development  leadership team and related functions.

Though the department frequently works with external vendors, there was no mechanism for evaluating  satisfaction after the project was completed. The business development team was unsure if colleagues  were satisfied with the current pool of vendors. The goal of the project was to assess internal  satisfaction with vendor services and to assess vendors’ preparedness, quality, and scope of services for  ongoing and upcoming projects.

Selection

The team had decided to deploy a series of internal and external surveys assessing internal satisfaction  and external services. The survey tool was selected by default, since only one tool was approved for  external use by corporate polices. The learning launch is an experiment meant to test the base  assumption that colleagues were satisfied with vendor services.

Application

For the first part of the learning launch, the focus was on the internal colleagues. This phase focused on  the execution of the methods and approach determined during the Scrum phase. The first step was to  deploy the internal survey to test the hypothesis that colleagues were unhappy with certain vendor  services and to gather further feedback to determine next steps. Our hypothesis was proven correct that  certain service providers were considered sub-par when compared to other ongoing projects.

For the second part of the learning launch, the focus was on external vendor services. A series of existing  structured questionnaires developed for other business departments were customized and applied to  this type of projects. These extensive questionnaires included 200+ questions about vendor capabilities,  current services, the scale of ongoing projects, and anticipated plans for scope changes and future  services. Further clarification was sought using structured interviews. This analysis led to a better  understanding of existing services and highlighted current gaps that could potentially lead to a decrease  in quality of service.

Insight

The primary insight from the first part of the learning launch was that cost constraints often led to  selection of lower quality vendor services. Another takeaway was the need to develop a new  workstream/project to develop a new mechanism to assess quality following the conclusion of each  project. The new workstream would have the goal of developing a mechanism (e.g. a survey) that would  allow finished projects to be described and any challenges/complaints documented. The ultimate goal  would be to provide future projects a description of the services with reviews to allow for a more  informed choice, while still taking into account cost constraints.

The primary insights from the second part of the learning launch was collection of information that was  previously lacking from the service providers themselves, primarily the identification of service gaps that  could lead to reduced quality. These gaps will be taken into consideration when choosing which vendors  became preferred service providers during the following year’s review cycle. Additionally, it opened an  opportunity for future workstreams to help better understand these issues and how they impact the  business.

The overall takeaway was this exercise prompted further discussions with leadership and other  stakeholders about the tradeoffs between quantity of and quality of projects.

Approach

This stage of the project was following several design thinking activities, so the learning launch was the  appropriate tool. Insights generated from this process led to the need for further design thinking  activities.

