After Action Review Themes: April 2024

This is the monthly update on the themes that came out of our After Action Review sessions in April. See below for key themes and opportunities, lessons learned, best practices, recommendations for immediate impact, and actions for long-term improvement.

What Sessions Did We Facilitate This Month?

• When initially engaging with a client, taking note of important language and terminology can have positive impacts on client confidence in their partnership with Stoneridge, and serve as an indicator of how well our team members understand their business and industry. As an opportunity for project leadership, gaining understanding of client culture and then sharing insights with other project team members can create a common reference on critical language/terminology.  

• Utilize recurring communication and meeting cadences with the client to regularly remind the client of agreed upon scope, how we are addressing scope in the engagement, and appropriate channels/processes if scope adjustments need to be made.  

• In multi-workload engagements, if budget allows, having a functional and technical resource for all involved product lines can provide a more holistic view of the proposed solution. This allows for identification of potential solution adjustments, fine-tuning, and areas of compromise.  

• When presenting the client with estimates (particularly if the proposal is higher than initially expected), always provide clear evidence for what informed scope and/or budget and how that is represented in the proposal. Being intentional with how we provide the client with options, along with recommended approaches, can help balance client relationship and trust in the best recommended path moving forward.  

• Ahead of critical presentations in a Roadmap (i.e. the Strategic Milestone and Proposal presentations), gathering all team members ahead of time to discuss and assign speaking roles can ensure smooth delivery. Conducting a dry run of the presentation(s) also allows for practice with slides, speaking elements, and overall flow. Communicating the different purposes of the Strategic Milestone and Proposal presentations to the client can help set expectations, reduce confusion, and prime them for more effective decision-making coming out of those sessions. Keep in mind that with larger teams, more time must be allocated to gather all necessary elements.  

Operations Enablement

• For projects with quick turnaround, managing and planning for the appropriate lead times can impact how effectively we plan for resourcing and prepare for project setup activities. The ongoing Operations Enablement initiative aims to centralize resourcing operations and processes, including gaining alignment on how we set up projects and soft + hard book resources in anticipation for client engagements to allow for smoother project start.  

• In this initiative, we’re also working toward a common process for estimating and creation, review, and approval of SOWs. Having these processes in place will ensure consistency and mitigate errors and confusion in how we create and manage SOWs and/or Change Orders. Outcomes from that project will be shared and implemented this year, providing guidelines on how to approach estimating and creation of SOWs to reinforce shared expectations and minimize miscommunication with the client.  

Solution Blueprint Feedback

The following feedback regarding the utilization of the Solution Blueprint has been recorded and passed along to the appropriate parties. As part of the Proven Process Baselining effort, an updated version of the Solution Blueprint was soft-released on 3/29, with a feedback window to make additional improvements. Full release of the Solution Blueprint is anticipated in June.  

• Management of the Solution Blueprint spreadsheet can be difficult when multiple individuals are utilizing different sections at the same time. Coordinating usage and understanding the tool can be time-consuming, particularly with larger teams.  

• During Roadmap engagements, more time should be considered for larger teams moving forward.  

Roadmap Feedback

• Following pre-implementation engagements (Roadmaps / Assessments), there is an opportunity for an additional Sales and Delivery touchpoint to discuss initially perceived scope and actual scope following the engagement to help further refine future approaches for all team members. 

• It has been recommended to update the Project Close Checklist for these types of engagements with a post-engagement update on project status at the administrative project close. This action item will be taken up by the Artifacts and Playbook Workstream to update the Project Close Checklist.