Are you proactive reactive or active on your SAP Project
Are you proactive… reactive…or active on your SAP Project
Invariably on any project we often hear from senior management to “Be Proactive”. Identify or foresee issues, problems and needs of the projects and incorporate this during planning, design, build, and test and deployment phases of the project life cycles. This will help reduce projects risks and keep the project on schedule. This is desirable on any project… but this rarely happens on any project.
If you live in a proactive world, you spend most of your time thinking what could happened wrong in the future and how to overcome future potential issues and you will lose track of current tasks.
You need to be active to get day to day project tasks going on smoothly. Be active and mindful of tasks going on in the project will result in higher productivity – keeping the project on schedule and on budget with high quality deliverables.
As for being reactive, you have to be to certain extent. Any project runs into snags at various phases of the project. How you and your team react to overcome or mitigate this risk by being reactive will keep the project on track and the stake holders happy.
Proactive – anticipation of future problems and needs
Reactive – a response to a stimulus
Active – engage in an action or activity
All projects should have team members with varying degrees of these traits – Proactive (think future), Active (think present) and Reactive (think past). What percentage of each trait varies based on the project and your role on the project. Team members, Project Managers and Senior Management often emphasizes on being proactive and reactive, but never on the key element “active”.
You need to be active and present for this moment, looking around for micro and macro details of the project keeping a pulse on health of the project and escalate any abnormalities or risks.
My observation based on around 20+ projects – 15% Proactive, 75% Active and 10% Reactive.
Please share your experience with our SAP SCN community.
What are your thoughts???
I am all three. Is it possible? At the beginning I'm very proactive. By the time it comes down to the end of the project I'm reactive. Active - Mmmmm... during the entire project.
An example:
There was a project to integrate a third party software with our system. I've blogged about it before, and so won't bore you with details.
It all started out proactive. What were the requirements? We did a blueprint. I was brought in early. Very cool, since I'm a developer. We worked on getting PI set up with the outside system. Set down and detail the possible issues if PI wasn't up and running. If our outside vendor couldn't make our dates. What was our plan B? I think we had a pretty good plan.
Then we started work - tried to make the dates, extended the dates based upon new requirements. Tried to keep our head above the water. Proactive went out the door.
Next into reactive phase. We had to react quickly the changes. We had to think about what that change would mean to the rest of the project while getting the change done. Ahh!!! But unfortunately that seems to be normal not the exception.
Then we went back to active to finish up the project while tabling new requirements for the next roll out.
Does that sound familiar to anyone? Run, stop, run, stop... It gets exhausting. But it feels good when the project up and running and into maintenance mode.
See you!
Michelle
That was a Great example.
Yes it is possible and that’s the way it should be. We need all three traits and we need one of them stronger than the other based on circumstances. All three traits are dynamic and an experienced team member will know how to balance them optimally.
Best,
Srini