CHAPTER 15
The Business Analysis Center of Excellence: The Cornerstone of Business Transformation and Innovation
Centers of excellence are becoming invaluable to successful management of large-scale change. The business analysis center of excellence (BACOE) is emerging as an industry best practice. The BACOE is a new type of organization that serves as the single point of contact for business analysis practices. In that role, the BACOE defines the business rules, processes, knowledge, skills, competencies, and tools organizations use to perform business analysis activities throughout the business solution life cycle. It is an essential step toward implementing and maintaining a mature BA practice (see Figure 15-1).
As the discipline of business analysis becomes professionalized, it is no surprise that BACOEs are now emerging. Staffed with knowledgeable business and IT teams, who act as central points of contact and facilitate collaboration among business and IT groups, these centers are fulfilling a vital need in organizations today by providing a business-focused home for current business analysis practices, technologies, and emerging trends.
FIGURE 15-1. BA Practice Maturity Framework
The BACOE serves as an internal consultant and information broker to both the project teams and the executive management team. In addition, the BACOE is responsible for continuous improvement of business analysis practices. Toward that end, the BACOE continually evaluates the maturity of business analysis and implements improvements to overall business analysis capability.
HOW COMPANIES ARE USING CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE
Centers of excellence are emerging as vital strategic assets, serving as the primary vehicle for managing complex change initiatives, a business support function just as critical as accounting, marketing, finance, and human resources. A center of excellence (COE) is a team of people that is established to promote collaboration and the application of best practices.1
COEs exist to bring about an enterprise focus to many business issues, including data integration, project management, enterprise architecture, business and IT optimization, and enterprise-wide access to information. The concept of COEs is quickly maturing in 21st-century organizations because of the need to collaboratively determine solutions to complex business issues. The project management office (PMO), a type of COE, proliferated in the 1990s as a centralized approach to managing projects. Industry leaders are effectively using various types of COEs. Here we mention just a few.
HEWLETT-PACKARD SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE
Hewlett-Packard (HP) uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a COE when implementing large-scale organizational change for its clients. SOA is a software design technique in which smaller services—groups of software components that perform business processes—are developed. The services are then hooked together with other services to perform larger tasks. Web services, for example, constitute an SOA. (For more on SOA, see Chapter 9.)
SOA represents a transformation in how businesses and IT develop business solutions. It is an effort to drive down the total cost of ownership of IT systems, thus freeing scarce resources to develop innovative IT applications and infrastructures. HP describes its COEs as a critical component of large-scale organizational change. It looks upon its SOA COEs as SWAT teams that are fully focused on implementing reusable service-oriented components and infrastructure.2
IBM CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE
IBM also is heavily invested in COEs. The IBM project management COE is dedicated to defining and executing the steps needed to strengthen IBM’s project management capabilities. The IBM project management COE (PMCOE) strives to combine external industry trends with internal insight to develop project management policy, practices, methods, and tools.
IBM’s PMCOE has experienced such success that in 2006 IBM announced the creation of new COEs to help customers better use information. These COEs will facilitate software and service experts in the development of six new solution portfolios: business analysis and discovery, master data management, business process innovation, risk and compliance, workforce productivity, and business performance and process management. These centers will develop products and services to better implement business analysis practices. Their goal is to help their clients transform information from utility for running their business to a competitive asset.3
A BACOE SUCCESS STORY
One successful BACOE is at the Bank of Montreal (BOM). According to Kathleen Barrett, former senior business consultant at BOM Financial Group and president & CEO of IIBA®, the center’s formation began in early 2002. By October 2003 the center had conducted a current-state assessment; developed, piloted, and released its business analysis process standard; and received certification for its processes through the International Standards Organization (ISO). By 2005 its business analysis training and accreditation program had been rolled out.
Barrett noted that the following guidelines were critical to the successful implementation of the BMO center:
Identify specific goals and deadlines (e.g., ISO certification by a certain date).
Treat the COE implementation effort like a project: create a formal project team with a steering committee.
Ensure senior executive support and enforcement of new practices.
Link outcomes to performance pay.
Adopt a formal approach to measure and evaluate compliance with standards.
Involve all stakeholder areas—include everyone and overlook no one.
Adopt best practices from within the organization.
Provide process training to all practitioners and team members.
Communicate at multiple levels, in words that mean something to each group.
Many considerations must be taken into account when establishing a new COE, including the scope in terms of disciplines and functions, organizational alignment, placement and maturity, and the implementation approach. We will now discuss these in detail.
THE SCOPE OF THE BACOE
BACOEs vary in their composition and scope. Some organizations address the entire project life cycle, whereas others focus more narrowly on requirements engineering. A center of requirements excellence, for example, improves skills required for requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation working to achieve maturity level 2 of the BA practice maturity model presented in Chapter 13.
FIGURE 15-2. Typical Bacoe Functions
A truly comprehensive BACOE, however, is broadly scoped to include the services, functions, tools, and metrics necessary to ensure that the organization invests in the most valuable projects and that those projects deliver the expected business benefits. Figure 15-2 provides a summary of typical BACOE functions.
CAREER ADVICE
Making the Most of a Center of Excellence
BACOEs are emerging all across the business landscape. However, there is a risk they will simply become one more entity imposing bureaucratic processes on already swamped project teams.
A Word to the Wise
Work with the BA pioneers and leaders in your organization to get them to understand the criticality of an innovation-driven COE. If you already have a BACOE, you are one step ahead of most. Use your influence skills to transition the center from a typical support office into an innovation-driven real-world player.
One of the critical BACOE functions is benefits management, a continuous process of identifying new opportunities, envisioning results, implementing solutions, checking intermediate results, and dynamically adjusting the path leading from investments to business results.
The role of a BACOE is multidimensional and usually includes the following components:
Providing thought leadership for all initiatives to confirm that the organization’s business analysis standards are innovation driven, maintained, and adhered to;
Conducting feasibility studies and preparing business cases for proposed new innovation projects;
Participating in the leadership of all innovation initiatives by providing expert business analysis resources; and
Conducting benefits management to ensure that innovation initiatives provide the expected value to the customers and wealth to the organization.
THE INNOVATION-DRIVEN BACOE
An innovation-focused COE is capable of providing services across the gamut of the business by offering innovation and creativity training, consulting, and mentoring; providing enterprise BA resources to the project teams; facilitating the portfolio management process; and serving as the custodian of business analysis best practices.
The innovation-driven BACOE generally performs all or a subset of the following services:
Business analysis standards
Methods. The BACOE defines the methodology, metrics, and tools for use on all strategic projects within the organization.
Knowledge management. The BACOE maintains the central historical database of business analysis standard tools, processes, and business architecture components.
Continuous improvement. The BACOE periodically evaluates the maturity of the organization’s business analysis practices and implements improvements to policies, processes, tools, and procedures.
Business analyst development
Business analyst career path. Along with the human resources department, the BACOE designs and maintains the business analyst competency model, including titles, position descriptions, and functions.
Coaching and mentoring. The BACOE provides mentoring services to business analysts and project teams to help them meet the challenges of their current project.
Training and professional development. The BACOE provides formal skills and knowledge assessments as well as education and training for the professional development of business analysts.
Team building. The BACOE offers team-building experiences to project managers, business analysts, and team members.
Business analysis services. Facilitators and on-the-job trainers who are skilled and accomplished business analysts provide business analysis consulting support, including:
Studies. The BACOE conducts market research, benchmark, and feasibility studies.
Business architecture. The BACOE develops and maintains the business architecture.
Business case. The BACOE prepares and monitors the business case.
Requirements engineering. The BACOE elicits, analyzes, specifies, documents, validates, and manages requirements.
User acceptance. The BACOE manages requirements verification and validation activities, e.g., the user acceptance test.
Organizational readiness. The BACOE prepares the organization for deployment of a new business solution.
Staff augmentation. The BACOE provides resources to augment project teams to perform business analysis activities that are under resourced or urgent.
Full-cycle governance. The BACOE promotes a full-life-cycle governance process, managing innovation investments in business solutions from research and development through deployment. It provides a home (funding and resources) for preproject business analysis and business case development. Activities include:
Business program management. The BACOE works with management and the portfolio management team to implement a 21st-century model that transitions organizations from standalone IT project management to business program management focused on innovation.
Strategic project resources. The BACOE provides senior-level business analysts to lead the business analysis effort for strategic innovation initiatives.
Enterprise analysis. The BACOE provides process coordination and meeting facilitation to the portfolio management team. It conducts enterprise analysis activities. It also prepares the project investment decision package consisting of the business case, the results of studies, and other supporting information that provides senior management with a clear understanding of what business results are to be achieved through a major investment, including the contribution from IT to those results.
Benefits management. The BACOE manages the investment throughout the project life cycle and after the solution has been delivered, measures the business benefits achieved by new solutions, and facilitates the adoption of a shared vision of the benefits realization process. It ensures that the total cost of ownership (TCO) is understood and measured. (TCO is the full-life-cycle product cost, including the cost to build or buy, deploy, support, maintain, and service the solution in both the business and IT operations.)
Although the BACOE is by definition business focused, it is of paramount importance for successful COEs to operate in an environment where business operations and IT are aligned and in sync. In addition, the disciplines of enterprise architecture, project management, software engineering, quality assurance, and business analysis must be integrated.
BACOE ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT CONSIDERATIONS
To achieve a balanced perspective, it is important to involve other groups in the design of the BACOE, including business operations, IT (e.g., enterprise architects, database managers, infrastructure support teams, service-level managers, capacity and availability managers, and application developers), PMO representatives and project managers, and representatives from the project governance group. If your organization already has one or more COEs, consider combining them into one centralized center focused on program and project excellence. The goal is for a cross-functional team of experts (business visionary, technology expert, project manager, business analyst) to address the full solution life cycle from business case development to continuous improvement and support of the solution for all major projects.
TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
One of the golden rules of organizational change management is to combine the change efforts that affect a business process under one coordinated initiative. Consider the changes your organization may have underway such as:
The executive team might be attempting to implement or improve a portfolio management process to select, prioritize, resource, and manage critical strategic projects. In addition, management might be implementing a new corporate scorecard to measure organizational performance.
For enterprise-wide projects that affect several business units, some or all of the business units might be implementing improvements to the same business processes that will be changed by the larger change initiative.
The IT application development and infrastructure groups might be undergoing large-scale change, e.g. implementing a service-oriented architecture. Or the IT application group might be implementing a different software development life cycle methodology, such as the rational unified process (RUP) or agile development (SCRUM).
The IT infrastructure support team might be implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), an internationally recognized best practice framework for the delivery of quality IT service management (ITSM). ITIL focuses on continuous improvements to IT processes to optimize service quality. It is the most comprehensive and widely used ITSM framework.
The IT enterprise architects might be implementing a new framework to develop the business, information, technology, application, and security architectures. An architecture framework is a model that is used for developing architectures; it describes a method for designing an enterprise. The framework provides recommended standards, tools, and common language, providing order and structure to the architectural components. A number of enterprise architecture frameworks exist (e.g., the Zachman Framework, the POLDAT Framework, the Open Group Architecture Framework), but there is no accepted industry standard at this time.
The PMO might be implementing a new project management methodology or tool.
COORDINATING AND ALIGNING CHANGE ACTIVITIES
These change initiatives must somehow be coordinated to optimize the return on the improvement efforts. COEs that support centralized full-cycle governance provide the framework for the benefits realization process from project conception to benefit harvesting. Centralized governance also provides a process of progressive resource commitment in which resources are allocated to programs in small increments through stage gates. It stands to reason, then, that a centralized COE would improve the management and coordination of strategic change initiatives.
One of the biggest challenges for the BACOE is to bridge the gap that divides business and IT. To do so, the BACOE must deliver multidimensional services to the diverse groups mentioned above. Regardless of whether there is one COE or several more narrowly focused models, the COE organization should be centralized. According to a survey on the benefits of COEs conducted by SAP America, “Organizations with centralized COEs have better consistency and coordination, leading directly to less duplication of effort. These organizations configure and develop their IT systems by business process or functional area rather than by business unit, leading to more efficient and more streamlined systems operations.”4 Best-in-class COEs evaluate the impact of proposed changes on all areas of the business and effectively allocate resources and support services according to business priorities.
BACOE ORGANIZATIONAL POSITIONING CONSIDERATIONS
Organizational positioning usually equates with organizational authority. In other words, the higher a BACOE is positioned, the more autonomy, authority, and responsibility it is likely to have. In his must-read book, Building Project Management Centers of Excellence, Dennis Bolles, PMP, writes that positioning the center at the highest level possible provides the “measure of autonomy necessary to extend the authority across the organization while substantiating the value and importance the function has in the eyes of executive management.”5 The success and impact of the center will likely be significantly diminished if it is not positioned at a high level. In addition, a multi-disciplined center will carry more weight and influence. Consider a model to centralize a COE integrating the project management, business analysis, and quality assurance disciplines.
Understanding the business drivers behind the establishment of the COE is of paramount importance. The motive behind establishing the center—to drive innovation—must be unambiguous because the motive will serve as the foundation to establish the purpose, objectives, scope, and functions of the center. For example, the desire to set up a BACOE might have originated in IT, because of the number of strategic, mission-critical IT projects affecting the whole organization, or in a particular business area that is experiencing a significant level of change. Whatever the genesis, strive to place the center so that it serves the entire enterprise, not just IT or a particular business area.
Regardless of the COE model or organizational positioning, the center’s performance depends on the maturity of the organization’s practices.
BACOE ORGANIZATIONAL MATURITY CONSIDERATIONS
The centralized COE model is important, as are the effectiveness of the strategic planning and innovation project portfolio management practices, the business performance management processes and strategies, the maturity of the IT architecture, the maturity of development and support processes, and the strength of the business focus across the enterprise.
Higher maturity levels are directly correlated to more effective procedures, higher-quality deliverables, lower project costs, higher project team morale, a better balance between cost, schedule, and scope, and ultimately added wealth for the organization. Obviously, organizations that understand the value of more mature practices achieve higher levels of value from their COEs.
BACOE IMPLEMENTATION CONSIDERATIONS
Organizations can absorb a limited amount of concurrent change while maintaining productivity at any given time. Therefore, a gradual approach to implementing a BACOE is recommended. One option is to adopt a three-phased approach moving across the BACOE maturity continuum, from a project-focused structure to a strategic organizational model. Figure 15-3 depicts the BACOE maturity model.
FIGURE 15-3. Typical BACOE Maturity Path
PROJECT FOCUS
BACOEs are almost always project-centric in their early, formative phase. The goals of the BACOE at this stage are to build the confidence of, and become an indispensable resource to, the innovation project teams. During this early phase, the BACOE builds trusting relationships with business analysts, project managers, functional managers, and project teams. In addition to developing business analysis practice standards, the BACOE provides services to the project teams and offers training and mentoring to develop business analysts and high-performing project teams.
ENTERPRISE FOCUS
As the BACOE begins to win confidence across the organization, it is likely that it will evolve into an enterprise-wide resource serving the entire company. At this point, the BACOE begins to facilitate the implementation of an effective innovation-driven portfolio management system. It is building the foundation to serve as a strategic business asset that provides management with decision-support information.
INNOVATION FOCUS
During the third stage of development, the BACOE is considered to be a strategic asset serving the executive team. At this point, it is well understood that business analysis has a positive effect on innovation and profitability, and that organizations achieve innovation goals through well-prioritized, well-executed projects. Emphasis at this stage is placed on achieving professionalism in enterprise business analysis through the BACOE. Strategic activities for the BACOE include conducting research and providing the executive team with accurate information on the competition, identifying and recommending viable new innovative business opportunities, and preparing business cases to facilitate project selection and prioritization.
BACOE IMPLEMENTATION BEST PRACTICES
Although there are relatively few BACOEs in existence today, best practices for developing organizational COEs to manage the business analysis function are emerging. Through a rational and defined methodology, organizations are identifying the required business analysis knowledge, skills, and abilities; assessing their current business analysis capabilities; and assembling a team to create the new entity. Best practices for establishing innovation-driven COEs combine to form a relatively standard process with four basic steps. Figure 15-4 depicts the BACOE implementation model.
STEP 1: DEFINE THE VISION AND CONCEPT
During the early study phase, it is important to create a vision for the new center. This is accomplished by researching BACOEs that have already been implemented in organizations; studying their costs, benefits, strengths, and weaknesses; and determining lessons learned.
FIGURE 15-4. BACOE Implementation Model
Create a preliminary vision and mission statement for the center, and develop the concept in enough detail to prepare a business case for establishing the center. Vet the proposal with key stakeholders, and secure approval to form a small core team to conduct the assessment of business analysis practices and plan for the implementation of the BACOE. Develop a political management plan and customised manager for each key stakeholder. (See Chapter 11: Communication and Political Management Strategies to Enable Innovation).
Stakeholder Involvement
Key stakeholders include the executive enlisted as the BACOE executive sponsor, directors of existing COEs in the organization (including the PMO, if one exists), the chief information officer and IT management team, and executive directors and managers of business units undergoing significant change.
During meetings with the key stakeholders, secure buy-in and support for the concept. Large-scale organizational change of this nature typically involves restructuring, cultural transformation, new technologies, and forging new partnerships. Handling change well can mean the difference between success and failure of the effort.
Change Management
The change management techniques John Kotter and Dan Cohen describe in the book The Heart of Change are useful ones to consider during the early study and planning phase for a BACOE. These include:
Executive sponsorship. A COE cannot exist successfully without an executive sponsor. Build a trusting, collaborative relationship with the sponsor, seeking mentoring and coaching at every turn.
Political management strategy. Conduct an analysis of key stakeholders to determine who can influence the center, and whether they feel positively or negatively about the center. Identify the goals of the key stakeholders. Assess the political environment. Define problems, solutions, and action plans to take advantage of positive influences and to neutralize negative ones.
A sense of urgency. Work with stakeholder groups to reduce complacency, fear, and anger about the change and to increase their sense of urgency.
The guiding team. Build a team of supporters that have the credibility, skills, connections, reputations, and formal authority to provide the necessary leadership to help shape the BACOE.
The vision. Use the guiding team to develop a clear, simple, compelling vision for the BACOE and a set of strategies to achieve the vision.
Communication for buy-in. Execute a simple, straightforward communication plan using forceful and convincing messages sent through many channels. Use the guiding team to promote the vision whenever possible.
Empowerment for action. Use the guiding team to remove barriers to change, including disempowering management styles, antiquated business processes, and inadequate information.
Short-term wins. Wins create enthusiasm and momentum. Plan the implementation to achieve early successes.
Dependency management. The success of the center is likely dependent on coordination with other groups in the organization. Assign someone from your core team as the dependency owner; she will liaise with each dependent group. A best practice is for dependency owners to attend team meetings of the dependent group to demonstrate the importance of the relationship and to solicit feedback and recommendations for improvements.6
STEP 2: CONDUCT ORGANIZATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENTS
It is imperative to understand the current state of the organization before building BACOE implementation plans. Once the current state is understood and documented, the vision and mission of the COE may need to be refined to ensure alignment with the cultural readiness of the organization to embrace the new COE.
Organizational Readiness Assessment
The purpose of the organizational readiness assessment is to determine organizational expectations for the BACOE and to gauge the cultural readiness for the change. The BACOE assessment team determines where the organization is on the continuum from a stovepipe, function-centric structure to an enterprise-focused organization. Additionally, it is useful to gather information about best practices already in place in the organization that might be good candidates for replication across projects.
The assessment also provides the BACOE planning team with information on key challenges, gaps, and issues that the BACOE should address immediately. The ideal assessment solution is to conduct a formal organizational maturity assessment. A less formal assessment, however, may suffice at this point.
As soon as the concept has been approved and the core BACOE implementation team is in place, conduct an assessment to understand and document the current state of business analysis practices. This assessment consists of interviews with functional managers, business analysts, project managers, and IT professionals. It is designed to determine whether the organization is ready to establish such a center and to assess the current state of the following entities:
Business analysts. The individuals currently involved in business analysis practices. The assessment inquires about their knowledge, skills, experience, roles, responsibilities, organizational placement, training, professional development opportunities, and career path. The assessment also notes any other duties assigned to the business analysts, measures of their success, and performance evaluations.
Business analysis practices. This part of the assessment addresses formal and informal business analysis methodologies and techniques, including feasibility study processes, business case development processes, business architecture development standards or framework, requirements elicitation, analysis, specification, validation, and change management processes, requirements prioritization and traceability methods, requirements verification (user acceptance test) methods, and any other business analysis tools, templates, and guidelines.
Technology. The assessment covers requirements development and archiving tools, including powerful modeling tools, requirements repository and management systems, and team collaboration tools.
Governance. Finally, the assessment looks at oversight for project selection and prioritization, ongoing reviews of BA practices, and quality assurance functions to ensure compliance with BA standards. Does the organization have a portfolio management team to select and prioritize projects? How does it manage benefits throughout the project and after solution delivery?
Organizational Maturity Assessment
If the organization is going to invest in a formal maturity assessment, we recommend conducting an assessment that determines not only the state of business analysis but also the state of project management and software engineering practices to secure a complete picture of program and project maturity. Refer to Chapter 13 for a detailed discussion of organizational BA maturity assessments.
BA Workforce Capability Assessments
It is also important to determine the skill level of existing business analysts (and project managers, if appropriate). Refer to Chapter 12 for more on BA capability assessments.
STEP 3: ESTABLISH IMPLEMENTATION PLANS
The BACOE kickoff workshop serves as the capstone event that officially launches the BACOE. All key stakeholders should attend so they can participate in the decision-making about the new BACOE.
In preparation for the workshop, develop a preliminary charter and business plan for the center describing the center’s key elements. Conduct a BACOE kickoff workshop session to finalize the charter and plans and to gain consensus on an implementation approach. Refer to Figure 15-5 for a detailed list of planning considerations.
STEP 4: FINALIZE PLANNING AND FORM THE BACOE TEAM
After the workshop session, finalize the BACOE charter and staff the center (see Figure 15-6 for a typical STAFFING MODEL). Form action teams to develop business analysis practice standards. Provide education, training, mentoring, and consulting support. Secure the needed facilities, tools, and supplies.
FIGURE 15-5. BACOE Planning Consideration
Then develop a BACOE business plan/operations guide, describing the implementation strategy, phases, deliverables, milestones, and a detailed budget that lists salaries and training, technology, and consulting costs. The guide should also list infrastructure requirements and plans for equipment acquisition and installation, BACOE organization formation, initial orientation and training, and communications and risk management.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE BUSINESS ANALYST?
Establishing enterprise innovation-driven COEs is difficult because doing so destabilizes the sense of balance and power within the organization. Executives are required to make decisions based on the organization’s competitive position, benefits to the enterprise, and value to the customer versus their own specific functional area. Functional managers are often afraid of losing their authority and control over the resources assigned to them. In addition, project team members might be unclear about their roles and responsibilities and how they will be given assignments once the COE is established.
FIGURE 15-6. Typical BACOE Organization
These ambiguities might manifest themselves as resistance to change and will pose a risk to a successful implementation. Therefore, it is imperative that robust coordination and effective communication about how the center will affect roles and responsibilities accompany center implementation. Do not underestimate the challenges you will encounter. Pay close attention to organizational change management strategies and use them liberally.
To build a BACOE that executives love and project teams trust, make the center indispensable. Provide high-quality services and support to executives, management, and project teams rather than imposing requirements and constraints. Conduct the operations of the center and design business analysis practices using lean techniques. Follow this motto: Barely sufficient is enough to move on.
PROVIDING VALUE TO THE ORGANIZATION
To establish a BACOE that will last, you must be able to demonstrate the value the center brings to the organization. Develop measures of success and report progress to executives. Typical measures of success include:
Project cost overrun reduction. Quantify the project time and cost overruns prior to the implementation of the BACOE and for the projects supported by the BACOE. If a baseline measurement is not available in your organization, use industry-standard benchmarks as a comparison. Other measures might be improvements in team member morale and reduction in project staff turnover; the latter may be based on the former. Be sure to include opportunity costs caused by the delayed implementation of new solutions.
Project time and cost savings. Track the number of requirements defects discovered during testing and after the solution is in production before the implementation of the BACOE and for the projects supported by the BACOE. Quantify the value in terms of reduced rework costs and improved customer satisfaction.
Project portfolio value. Prepare reports for the executive team that show the investment costs and expected value of the portfolio of projects; report the actual value new solutions add to the organization as compared to the expected value predicted in the business case. Be sure to use the total cost of ownership to calculate cost.
BUILDING A GREAT TEAM
When staffing the BACOE, establish a small, mighty core team dedicated full time to the center. This team should be collocated, highly trained, and multiskilled. Do not overstaff the center; the cost will seem prohibitive. Augment the core team’s efforts by bringing in subject matter experts and forming subteams as needed. Select team members not only because of their knowledge and skills but also because they are passionate and love to work in a challenging, collaborative environment. Develop and use a team operating agreement. Develop team-leadership skills and dedicate efforts to transitioning your group into a high-performing team with common values, beliefs, and a cultural foundation upon which to flourish.
NOTES
1. Jonathan G. Geiger, “Establishing a Center of Excellence,” DMReview (March 20, 2007). Online at http://www.intelsols.com/documents/2006-08%20Geiger.pdf (accessed April 2011).
2. Mark Frederick Davis, “SOA: Providing Flexibility for the Health and Life Sciences Industry,” July 2006: 16. Online at http://h20247.www2.hp.com/publicsector/downloads/
Technology_Davis_VB.pdf (accessed April 2011).
3. Chris Andrews, “IBM Initiative to Capture New Growth Opportunities in Information Management,” February 16, 2006. Online at http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19249.wss (accessed January 2011).
4. SAP America Inc., 2006 USAG/SAP Best Practices Survey: Centers of Excellence: Optimize Your Business and IT Value (February 16, 2007): 8. Online at http://www.zdnetasia.com/whitepaper/centers-of-excellence-optimize-your-business-and-it-value_wp-284768.htm (accessed January 2011).
5. Dennis Bolles, Building Project Management Centers of Excellence (New York: American Management Association, 2002): 11.
6. John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002): 7.