The Cattening

Project format

(Consulting Lifecycle as inspiration)

We were outsiders

(O'Mahoney & Markham 2013)

Moving from desktop & mobile to responsive mobile
Technical restructuring to "microservice" architecture (imperative for our project)
"Annual" restructuring of teams and human resources

Tie the users closer to the profile
Integrated the (new) profile further into the service
- Communicated through company wiki & one meeting – not good (O'Mahoney & Markham 2013)
Demonstrated a short term win for new technological architecture (Kotter 1995)

No capacity ⟶ project dies
- Reality as of today
Internal
- Missing alignment
- ... or commitment?
- High-level communication
- Complex handover
External
- The users don't respond
- Company commitment changes

Alignment with strategy
Bring actual value (testing + KPIs)
(Kotter 1995)
Internal team communication & task management (O'Mahoney & Markham 2003, Hargie 2011, Joseph et al. 2010)
High-level communication and negotiation with "client"
(O'Mahoney & Markham 2003)
- Graphs speak volumes
- Mapping results to strategy works

Continuous high-level communication
- Clearly defined goal for the project
Agile project management (kind of matters)
Continuous deliveries, minor changes (e.g., Luftman 2009)
Handover seems to have gone well
- Decisions were documented
  (O'Mahoney & Markham 2013)
No real project review: not a consultancy project

Hargie, O. (2011). Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice. Fifth edition. UK: Routledge
Joseph, D.; Ang, S.; Chang, R.; Slaughter, S. (2010). "Practical Intelligence in IT: Assessing Soft Skills of IT Professionals". Communications of the ACM. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 149-154.
Kotter, J. (1995). "Leading change: why transformation efforts fail". Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995.
Luftman, J. (2009). Managing the Information Technology Resource. Second Kindle edition.
O'Mahoney, J. & Markham, C. (2013). Management Consultancy. Second edition. USA: Oxford University Press
Pettigrew, A.; Woodman, R.; Cameron, K. (2001). "Studying organizational change and development: challenges for future research". Academy of Management Journal 2001, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 697-713.