Rationale for Integration

Enterprise IT project delivery is often disjointed due to the siloed nature of contributing disciplines. Each field—whether project management, business analysis, or IT service management—operates with its own established frameworks, methods, and processes tailored to the discipline's unique focus. For instance, project management prioritises timely, on-budget delivery, leading to oversights in the time required for detailed analysis. Meanwhile, business analysis operates within its frameworks for eliciting and managing requirements, often without determining how delays in baselining requirements affect downstream project tasks and overall delivery. This fragmented approach risks creating disconnects and delays as teams become narrowly focused on their outputs and lose sight of the project’s overarching objectives.

In large-scale initiatives, as many as twenty disciplines contribute to project delivery, each with its own body of knowledge and prescribed deliverables. Time and resources would quickly become unsustainable if each discipline were to function strictly by the book. Enterprise IT projects do not have the luxury of fully implementing exhaustive academic standards from multiple fields. However, in quality-critical projects—such as those involving product innovation where lives are at stake, including software for pacemakers, electric vehicles, or aerospace systems—adhering rigorously to detailed methods and standards is necessary to ensure safety and reliability.

The Cross-Disciplinary Need

Project participants, while experts in their fields—whether stakeholder management, requirements elicitation, or testing—often lack a broader understanding of overall project delivery. Many participants do not fully grasp the interplay between roles, the dependencies between deliverables, or the way their work impacts the work of others. For instance, a business analyst might see project success in delivering requirements on time without considering whether the IT team is equipped to act on them. This narrow, discipline-centric perspective highlights the need for a team-oriented, cross-disciplinary approach aligning participants towards a unified project goal.

Benefits of a Team-Oriented Model

A cross-disciplinary model promotes collaboration and shared accountability by integrating each discipline’s core principles into a unified framework. This approach moves away from isolated guidelines, enabling teams to work towards a single objective, where deliverables and timelines align with the project’s overall goals. By merging insights and expertise across disciplines, teams gain a deeper understanding of interdependencies and are better positioned to deliver a cohesive solution.

Examples of Effective Integration

Tools like the project deliverables roadmap offer a cohesive view of deliverables, timelines, and cross-discipline dependencies. This shared roadmap enables teams to anticipate challenges, manage interdependencies, and maintain alignment through a common understanding of each discipline's contributions. By using such tools, teams gain a practical framework that supports coordinated efforts, enhancing their ability to achieve successful project outcomes.

A global retail chain, M-Mart, initiates a strategic IT project to modernise its legacy inventory management system. This upgrade is critical for enhancing supply chain efficiency, enabling real-time inventory tracking, and supporting a growing network of online channels. The project’s success relies on seamless integration across project delivery disciplines, highlighting the necessity of a unified, cross-functional approach.

Challenges

The StockCount project faces several challenges, for example:

• Cross-discipline dependencies: IT projects require contributions from over twenty delivery disciplines—such as project management, process analysis, and business analysis —all essential to project delivery. These disciplines often work in silos, leading to fragmented deliverables that are not fit for purpose or usable by downstream teams.
• Project planning: Project schedules are often created by working backwards from a target delivery date without input from each team or discipline. This approach can set the project up for failure, as schedules built without effort estimates from the specialists who will do the work often lack credibility and feasibility.
• Process and requirements analysis: When business analysts develop requirements without input from process analysis, the result can be incomplete specifications. Without understanding current workflows and gaps, requirements become a set of random functionalities that create gaps in the final solution.

Implementing a Unified Approach

Enhancing Cross-Discipline Coordination

The project assurance manager creates a project deliverables roadmap to manage cross-discipline dependencies. This roadmap provides visibility into deliverables, timing, and dependencies across disciplines, allowing all team members to view interdependencies and understand when their contributions will be required. It facilitates the elimination silos by providing a shared view of cohesive project workflow and promotes collaboration.

Effective Project Planning

M-Mart implements a cross-functional project planning structure in response to project planning challenges. The project manager actively seeks effort estimates from each delivery discipline to create a schedule reflecting the work required rather than a backward target-based timeline. Based on input from all teams, this schedule is realistic and resilient, reducing the risk of unforeseen delays and ensuring that the necessary expertise fully supports each phase.

Collaborative Requirements Development with Process Analysis Integration

To address this challenge, business analysts work closely with process analysts in joint sessions dedicated to understanding and mapping the current workflows. The team can identify necessary changes, dependencies, and improvements by conducting a thorough gap analysis. This collaboration ensures that requirements are structured and comprehensive, supporting a seamless transition to the future state.

Outcome

The unified approach delivers tangible benefits:

• Improved collaboration: Regular cross-functional workshops and updates promote collective problem-solving and a shared commitment to project objectives, supporting the need for cohesive teamwork across disciplines.
• Feasible timelines: By implementing a realistic project schedule based on input from all disciplines, teams can deliver their outputs within achievable timeframes, preventing the perception of delays that arise from poor planning.
• Enhanced requirements quality: Collaborating with process analysts ensures that requirements are structured and comprehensive, addressing the challenge of incomplete specifications and aligning with operational needs.

Conclusion

This cross-functional approach, including cohesive planning and collaboration, strengthens the foundation for success in delivering projects like StockCount.