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• Projects that require onsite presence are being (understandably) delayed and communication is being provided to the organization.
• Re-prioritization of projects is a key theme for organizations at this time.
• Many training projects are relying on videos and online learning from business partners.

How is the pandemic affecting your ability to deliver on previously-scheduled projects?

• Speaking more to the training projects that we had planned and some scheduled... we had to pivot to Camtasia and deploy videos to our LMS (Savvy).  Definitely second to live training, but a nice "go to" option.
• For criteria we are looking at contract obligations, cost, criticality, onsite requirements and compliance.  We have decided to delay a number of projects that require onsite work.  We are handling the delays by communications to the stakeholders and all technology staff.
• We are still very much in a re-active state rather than pro-active.  If you can get your firm members to understand that decisions during the re-active state are often times not always the best in the long term.  Many times years of planning, budgeting and implementation (time and resources) go into these products that they now want yesterday.

• Take this opportunity to really look at current workflows and how they can be improved in the future.  Start conversations with firm management on how you can leverage the resources that might now be available.

• If your budgets are cut – focus on the projects that do not require $ or are already paid for.

  Be strategic in roll-outs.  Communication is important.  Let the user community know that yes, you are making a change (during a crisis), but that it will improve their workflow.

• I lead Kraft Kennedy's Project Management Practice Group and have had the opportunity to talk to some of our clients and ILTA colleagues on this topic.  A consistent theme that came from these discussions was that those firms that were positioned to quickly support their employees in a remote scenario, without overwhelming in-house resources were in a much better position to continue with active or scheduled projects.  Digging a bit further, most of those not prepared were forced to pause active and postpone the initiation of scheduled projects.  "Re-prioritization" seems to become the battle cry for project work. Those firms that had project managers on their team, were in a much better position to address project re-prioritization. Among other reasons, it freed up IT Leadership to focus on more immediate support requirements.  Some of the key criteria I see that is being used for re-prioritization, with different weights are:
  • Security, Supportability and Compliance Requirements. Does the successful completion of the project resolve a security threat, a supportability issue or other compliance requirement that can jeopardize the firm and their clients?
  • Budget. Has forecasted revenue change so much, that the project should be postponed or removed from the portfolio for this year?
  • Resourcing. Have we reallocated resources to support operational tasks, that we no longer have resource availability to support this project?
  • Project Dependencies. Does this project, require other projects to be completed before we can active it? Or must this project complete so we can active a high priority project?
  • Physical Presences. Do we need onsite resources to active this project?