How Was the Project Managed? Lessons and Learnings

Jaydev Chauhan - How Was the Project Managed?

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Summary

In a detailed discussion, Jaydev Chauhan elaborated on the management of a transformative project executed during 2018-2019. The project, aimed at making power plants virtually accessible, was supported by continuous input from the CIO, governance team, and other stakeholders. Initial steps involved gathering insights from end users through workshops and evaluating market solutions with various vendors. Key challenges were understanding the technology and selecting appropriate frameworks, but the team overcame these hurdles by embracing risks and focusing on company-wide digital strategies. Ultimately, the project underscored the importance of simplifying new technologies, democratizing data, and aligning with the company's broader vision for successful innovation.

Highlights

The project aimed to virtually access power plants using any computer. 💻
Workshops gathered end-user insights, crucial for shaping the strategy. 🗣️
12 vendors were evaluated to find the right technological solutions. 🤝
The importance of democratizing data, making it easily accessible. 🔓
Setting the company vision as a priority enhanced project success. 🌟

Key Takeaways

Embrace new technologies but ensure they are simple and intuitive to use. 😊
Understand and involve end users from the start for better outcomes. 👥
Align projects with the company's long-term vision for broader benefits. 🚀
Overcome challenges by realistically assessing risks and benefits. ⚙️
Conduct thorough evaluations when selecting technologies to ensure compatibility and effectiveness. 🔍

Overview

The project, managed meticulously by Jaydev Chauhan and his team, sought to revolutionize how power plants were accessed by making them virtually available through any computer. This ambitious goal set the stage for engaging diverse stakeholders like the CIO and governance teams. Initial workshops were integral in understanding end-user needs, which were then aligned with available technological solutions from various vendors.

Technological hurdles were a significant aspect, requiring the team to ponder over data handling, storage solutions, and user interface development. They constructed a centralized IT infrastructure and ensured that technologies chosen could integrate third-party data, reflecting a strategic focus on flexibility and user needs.

Learning from the project, the team realized that innovations need to be simple and user-friendly to be effective. Moreover, a strong emphasis was placed on understanding user needs and aligning innovations with the company’s broader vision; this directional clarity was paramount in pushing the project forward and achieving magnetic improvements.

Chapters

00:00 - 04:00: Project Management Approach and Learnings The project management approach was collaborative, involving the team, the CIO's office, governance team, and end users. Key learnings included the importance of continuous support and collaboration among different stakeholders.
04:00 - 07:30: Challenges Faced in the Project The chapter discusses the initial challenges faced in a project where the aim was to make power plants virtually accessible using any computer. The team experienced a moment of inspiration, realizing the potential benefits of their idea. They quickly acted on this by bringing together representatives from various end users within the company. As a first phase, they conducted six workshops to align their visions and gather essential inputs from stakeholders.

Jaydev Chauhan - How Was the Project Managed? Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 so how was the project managed what approach did you take to that and what did you learn from the project management yeah so um the project was managed by our team back in 2018-2019 time frame along with continuous support from our chief information office cio procedure and governance team and of course end users and affected
00:30 - 01:00 stakeholders um so right after you know the light bulb went off in our brain that one day we can have all the power plants virtually accessible um by using just any computer and so we were super excited for the future and benefits it can bring so we we right away gathered the representatives of many end users across the company as as a first step and we did about uh six workshops together um
01:00 - 01:30 and then we gathered the thought on what they would like to see in next 10 years if they had access to power plants virtually right from the computer and in parallel to this we invited about 12 different vendors to do the show and tell so we can evaluate what is what is readily available in the market now while we were gathering these details we realized
01:30 - 02:00 that there are company-wide applications and hence we started the enterprise strategy document where we listed things that we will do to transition opg to have a better digital future and then we started executing that strategy with help from our cio we set up secured centralized i.t infrastructure and with help from our drawing office
02:00 - 02:30 who are the owner of the as built data such as drawings right so we set up a small team within that team to start collecting 3d data and publish it onto the centralized server so end users can access it easily we modified some of our governance to remind users that 340 technology is available and the service provider is in-house which they can leverage while we were executing this project we
02:30 - 03:00 learned many things such as the new technologies should be simple easy to implement easy to use and has to be intuitive the data has to be truly democratized and available to all employees at their fingertips truly listening and understanding problems of end users and having a passion to solve them is a key
03:00 - 03:30 and also having an attitude towards setting the end user for success brings huge benefits we also learned that it is very important to put the company and its vision ahead of executing any innovation this progresses the innovative idea further and helps in bringing an order of magnetic improvement to the company in general one thing that we learned during this project is that if we ever overwhelmed
03:30 - 04:00 with many possible options and outcomes then there is a way to overcome it and what helped us was to um we we accept the worst case scenario or worst case outcome and assign that a probability score and on the other hand we think about good things that they can bring to us and assign them probability from both of these probabilities scores now we were able to
04:00 - 04:30 see that probability of good things happening are far more certain so that kept us going okay and what challenges did you face in the project uh you know what things caused you to uh didn't go the way you expected them to go yeah so one of the biggest challenge i would say was to wrap our head around how this technology will work
04:30 - 05:00 things such as how the front end will work how the back end will work where will we store the data what server specifications we should use how will we collect the data from the field how we process how we're going to process the data who will take the who will take the roles and responsibility of doing different things we will train people what format of data we will use
05:00 - 05:30 and how will it be available to employees to use um so thinking about these things ahead and getting a head start on them to learn how all the pieces of the puzzle will come together before implementing at scale helped us a lot as soon as we got the device back in 2019 and software is implemented on the same day we started collecting data to understand the workflow and how it will all work
05:30 - 06:00 second thing that we faced challenged with was making sure we select the right technology that works for organization and also that technology should allow important importing of third party data and the reason for that is basically we want to give our vendors freedom to use any other scan technology that they want to use
06:00 - 06:30 but at the same time we should ensure that our system can import that data and we can use it for our purpose so that so that the degree of freedom is there right uh so choosing appropriate technology for our purpose was a great challenge and as i mentioned earlier to overcome that we did about uh 12 show and tell with different vendors and understood what they're offering and
06:30 - 07:00 we also did multiple meetings after that to understand [Music] understand how their technology works in deep so basically just making sure that the technology works for your organization is very important very much so and you went through a very careful process of technology selection uh some organizations don't do that and and that can create problems for them it's
07:00 - 07:30 very important that you mention that