I'm presenting a workshop on Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS) to a group of Enterprise Services managers. In adapting IMP/IMS from product delivery management to services delivery management several interesting things have occurred:
- Only a small portion of the responsible managers have IT interests. Their interest is in performing their business function.
- There is nearly zero software development in terms of coding. COTS products provide the solutions.
- Project management is not of much interest either. That is project management at the detailed level - tasks, WBS, plans, status etc.
What is of interest is "when will we be able to use the systems?" The answer to this of course is "what do you mean by system?" and "what do you mean by use?"
What came out of the rehearsals for the workshop was the transformation from product based planning (development, testing, delivery) to a capabilities based planning process. The capabilities include "use cases" and "business scenarios" for the integrated system consisting of ERP, Supply Chain Management, Finance and HR COTS products.
IMP/IMS now asks Event questions like:
- When can we close the monthly G/L across the enterprise?
- When can a new suppliers be integrated into the supply chain?
- When can a new employee be provisioned?
The Business Use Cases become the Program Events of IMP/IMS. The Significant Accomplishment (SA) and Accomplishment Criteria (AC) now support the assessment of maturity in the standard IMP/IMS process manner. This transformation from product to "capabilities" was not obvious to me for a simple reason - I had not thought of the problem in that way before. With this new view the processes that worked so well in product delivery management can now be extended into broader domains.
