Month: December 2013

A new year is approaching fast, and the last remaining days of 2003 are hastily passing by, leaving time for family and for those involved in Siebel Projects, a well deserved chance to think about something else than Siebel Best Practices, Screens, Views, BusComps, user interface, Integration design, EIM processes and all the other what-have-you-nots of a typical Siebel Project. There are times when even the best running Siebel project is running shallow, and the resources that comprise the team are just on the verge of wearing thin. This is normal in all larger-scale projects and its not a foreign concept in a Siebel project. There are many ways to deal with this challenge in a project team – right this season the re-vitalization of the Christmas holidays is the obvious and easy one – simply ask team members to not think about the project for the holidays…. But there are other things you may want to look into too (after all Christmas is only once a year);

• Look at the team groups;
  • Are they communicating on the same level.
  • Do they combine efforts to make team progress.
  • Are team member only concerned with progress on their own area of responsibility.
  • Are team members actively discussing issues and solutions.
  • Are all team members being involved in the discussions.
  • Are the team members understanding the business reasons for the solution requirement.
  • Do the team make forward-moving decisions – and stick with them.
  • Is the team asking for help and input when facing challenges.
• When you’ve looked at the above points, you probably have some notion if you need to change anything to make the project run better. Here’s a list of steps you could take to make your project teams run even smoother;
• Shuffle members between teams in order to bring fresh thinking and new perspective into a team, if you identified a weakness or deficit on a team, look for a new member that excels in those areas. Don’t present changes as demotions or promotions, but rater as adding catalysts in order to help teams become even more successful. Their success is the projects success.
• Encourage “eXtreme Programming” in the teams when they are being challenged, even though extreme programming methodology is developed for pure programming tasks, it is easily adapted for Siebel Development. Encourage that extreme programming teams are sought across all teams. If you want to know more about extreme programming then read the book “eXtreme Programming eXplained” by Kent Beck.
• Encourage discussions about solutions, but make sure that everybody have the business reasons for the solution requirement clear in memory. Try and provide the teams with simple clear cut business reasons and requirements, just the headlines. This will allow teams to develop a better solution, without discussions creating divergence between customer requirements and resolution.
• Encourage taking mental breaks from the project. both in the weekends, but also during lunch breaks, and in the evening. Sometimes the distancing from the challenges in the project will allow a fresh take on any challenges that a team and it’s members may be facing.

In Manzana we live on our customers’ success, and our ability to scope, develop, implement and rollout solutions that cover the above points and more. And the results speak for themselves. Our customers are satisfied, their employees are satisfied, and resources have been freed for more important tasks. Look at the Customer Success to see some quotes from customer installations that Manzana have built.

Further we pride ourselves in not just being an implementator of Siebel, we also use Siebel actively in Manzana. So our experience also comes from our own daily use of Siebel.

Thanks for your time!
Henrik Ohm Eriksen, CEO
Manzana

If you are considering a CRM or Siebel solution or just want to ask a question, then send us an email and we will get back to you asap. If you would like to inquire on hiring Manzana Services please do not hesitate to contact us, either by email or phone.

And also, we highly recommend you visit the Siebel Inc. homepage at www.siebel.com