After Action Review Themes: May 2024

This is the monthly update on the themes that came out of our After Action Review sessions in May. 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?

Preparing the Client to be Successful in an Implementation 

• As a best practice, team members found that getting ahead on integrations and providing the client with pre-work to begin granting Stoneridge appropriate access helps achieve tight milestones on budget and timelines.  

• Be cautious about providing the client with too many options, particularly when functionality needs to remain as simple as possible for the sake of scope / budget. Based on the client’s requirements, provide a few narrowed down options with pros and cons for each option, rather than demonstrating all possible configurations.  

• While working through a project, team members found that doing “side by sides” was an effective way to visually and clearly demonstrate to the client the differences between current functionality and how adding new elements will change the system as they are added throughout the project.  

• Team members find it typical for the client to have little experience or skill working in Azure DevOps (ADO). Building time into the budget to accommodate introducing and training the client in ADO ensures clearer alignment in ways of working, processes for tracking, approving, and updating requirements, and helps create efficiencies downstream. 

• Team members highlighted that facilitating a PI (Predictive Index) review session with larger teams and projects with long timelines helped improve how individuals collaborated and communicated with each other. If possible, schedule a PI session as part of the team alignment & onboarding activities in the Define phase to supplement the clarification of roles and responsibilities within the team.  

Operations Enablement

• When it comes to multi-workload projects, there are some differences in processes for change orders between product lines. The ongoing Operations enablement initiative is working toward a common process for consistency in how we create and manage SOWs and/or change orders. Outcomes from that project will be shared and implemented this year.  

Proven Process

• Team members found success on projects that had clearly defined roles and responsibilities from project onset, that were refined or adjusted as the project progressed. The Project RASCI Workbook is an excellent resource for project leaders (PMs, EMs, SAs, TAs) to facilitate team conversation about roles and responsibilities tied to key activities within each phase of the Proven Process. Reviewing the Project RASCI Workbook prior to beginning a new phase in the Proven Process is also a great opportunity to reassess how things are going and make any necessary adjustments prior to proceeding. 

• Maximizing ADO’s abilities to track requirements, risks, and issues provides efficiency for the Stoneridge and client teams. The ADO Usage & Standardization workstream within Proven Process Baselining is currently refining processes for usage of ADO and how we train and talk to clients about utilizing the tool.  

• Team members found that following the Proven Process and utilizing resources in the Playbook provided a solid structure for how to approach projects while remaining flexible enough to accommodate scalability factors based on project and client needs.  

• The Proven Process Refresh aims to ensure company-wide alignment on the Proven Process, including how we perform scoped work, roles and responsibilities, decision-making, and collaboration within the context of a client engagement; along with further guidance on how to utilize existing resources such as templates, guidelines, and client samples that can be found in the Playbook.