4. RESULTS
4.1 Front end process in the organization
4.2.6 Management of the front end
Management of the FE was considered to be very important in the organization. The management approach in the organization in the FE is quite organic. The focus is clearly on leading people and getting things done. Based on the interviews it seems that the sales does not treat the FE phase fully as a project. The organization does not plan FE that accurately. However, the overall process is somewhat defined beforehand as introduces earlier. Two sales organization members mentioned that there is an ongoing development project in finding new ways to manage the sales projects better but they did now expect that much from it. Three interviewees from the project organization stated that the FE should be managed like an execution project which it currently is not. A sales and a PM stated that project like practices create commitment and a feeling that the project is relevant. They consider that the current way leads to inefficiency and issues.
Two of the project organization members considered the project like management to be the most important parts of the FE. One of the practices that was considered good was using short weekly meetings with the FE team to keep up to date, communicate, and share the knowledge. Common meetings where each has to shortly state what they have been doing was considered to also be a good way to apply some pressure on people to do their tasks in time. It was also considered important that all the experts get into one
place to go through things since the organization is otherwise quite distributed. A project organization member stated that it is very important to keep people up to speed.
However, common meetings were also mentioned as a challenge by three sales organization members since people are quite busy and do not have time to attend. A PM stated that often these meetings have a habit of bee long and ineffective driving people to not attend. Thus it would be important to create memos of the meetings.
Scheduling was also considered to be a particularly important part of the FE mentioned by five interviewees as the organization in the FE is large and different parts are dependant on each other's input. Currently, the organization is not doing this on a very accurate level. Only main deadlines are commonly agreed upon, but the issue with this is that even these dates and the progress are not that well followed. The difficulty in the FE scheduling is that situations change quite quickly and thus the schedule needs to be quite flexible. A PM mentioned that creating a well-defined schedule would reduce the idling and make the FE more effective driving down the average length to even a couple of months. The current length of the FE was considered an issue by most of the interviewees. A project organization member commented that with a bit tighter schedule the result is often better. Also, the dependencies between the disciplines would become more visible. Three sales and two project organization interviewees also mentioned that responsibilities need to be defined clearly and persons actually named. It is much easier to follow-up on the work and control the work based on the scheduling and responsibilities i. This was considered to be important by the interviewees since without control things seem to be left undone. It was commonly agreed that responsibilities vary quite a lot depending on the project and people attending it. Thus, it was considered important to clearly define them.
The case company has a quite well-defined project governance framework (Figure 6) that is used with all the projects. This subject was quite rarely mentioned in the interviews. One reason for this might be that the practices are quite established. It is built quite well into the organization and people are used to using it. The governance adapts a bit according to the project's scope and type. The framework is also ready for the execution phases of the project. This means that it does not require that much setting up during the FE, only the people need to be selected and a common understanding has to be established about the project's governance framework and how it is specifically utilized.
Teambuilding and teamwork were also considered to be very important in the FE. A SM even mentioned it to be the most important task to focus on since building the team is not always that easy. The FE teams are cross-functional but also very large in size which
was mentioned as a hindrance for effective management. This also makes team building and ensuring that everyone has enough time available quite difficult. As the organization does not specifically have a separate sales organization the integration between sales and execution is quite natural and built into the process. This was considered to be positive by the interviewees. However, two sales organization members suggested the idea of having a separate organization for sales to have more free resources. The organization typically arranges kick-off for the FE to get the team up to speed on the case and divide responsibilities and tasks which was considered useful. Many of the interviewees mentioned a core team as a way to organize the FE. This core team was considered to include SMs, PMs and engineering managers. Many of the interviewees also mentioned product sales manager to be part of this core team. A SM and a PM also mentioned some key disciplines that could be a part of the core team. This team would be in charge of organizing, leading, and delegating the work compared to the current very broad organization with quite distributed responsibilities. Four project organization members mentioned that with a well-integrated core team the sales process would be much more efficient. In this team SM would handle the client interface. Engineering- and product sales manager the technical aspects and leading the internal organization and PM the execution. This way the big picture would be easier to optimize. An important part of the team building which a project and a sales organization member mentioned is the supervisory work which helps and supports in uniting the team and getting the FE work started.
Project quality control is heavily built in the FE process of the case company. As mentioned earlier all the reviews and audits are means to control the quality of the process. A project organization member stated that the audits are well developed and strong practice and thus it is the most important that these requirements are fulfilled. In the interviewees' opinion, they provide a good foundation for a successful project. Two SMs agreed with this view but stated that often the basic foundation is not competitive and it requires more work than just fulfilling the review and audit requirements. When asked for strengths a sales organization member stated: “We have a lot of reviews but I don’t necessarily know it is making us any better”. A PM suggested that there should be a bit more control than currently to review the materials fully before sending them to the client. Almost all of the interviewees mentioned benchmarking to previous cases in some form either as part of the execution planning, risk reviews, cost reviews, or scheduling.
This was considered a good practice to increase the quality and accuracy of estimates.
However, as brought up earlier the selection of benchmark cases is not systematic and
some interviewees considered it to be somewhat biased. This causes issues in estimates usually overestimating costs or schedule.