Background
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is an American international law firm, founded in 1945 with more than 900 attorneys. We have offices in Dallas, Washington, D.C., San Antonio, Houston, Irvine, Fort Worth, New York, Moscow, Philadelphia, London, Los Angeles, Longview, San Francisco, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Frankfurt, Geneva and Hartford.
Nineteen varying business services groups support fifteen legal practices at any given time. Our business services leaders are growing in lean legal sigma training and certifications. This enables a more proficient and sustainable approach to the business growth and process change requests needed. The firm partnership as a whole has shown great interest in growing their business services team.
Our Business Analysis and Project Management teams work within the parameters of Information Technology. Each member containing a kaleidoscope of history working within law firms, and within Akin in general. We provide a liaison between the many groups within IT, practice and business stakeholders, experience, process improvement and ROI in real time.
Defined Roles
We are fortunate to have team members within each group throughout the country. This allows for a deeper understanding of not only practice and stakeholder management, but also regional specific management.
Business Analysis
By design each Business Analyst work directly with specific practice and business groups. This provides a ‘white glove’ approach with familiarity between the Business Analyst, the Practice Group, the Business Development Manager(s) and staff.
From a technical standpoint, we are able to gather priceless information on how a business/practice group works, identify outdated processes, or notify IT groups when issues arise quickly. We also assist IT Management when specific business needs/trends are changing. This assists them in planning and forecasting on what will work best for the organization as a whole. We learn, manage and update business/practice specific applications, maintain servers and work within the IT group for weekly and monthly updates/upgrades to the firm network(s).
Project Management
Our Project Management Office works for the firm with an umbrella view of ALL projects. From firm wide, short-term implementations to the smaller, office-specific ongoing projects, they are there to run a project, or provide advice when needed.
From a technical standpoint, they are able to gage the long-term availability of various IT groups (Security, Operations, Design, etc.). Their ability to provide those intricate layers to a project is invaluable in providing key details to a Stakeholder, which aids in a business/practice group the understanding what is required and how long it will take to completely design, deliver and implement a project.
Working Together
Business Analysts work on all on-going projects with their respective business/practice groups. We are sometimes a ‘secondary BA’ on projects to keep the workload even, and to support each other when we travel, etc. In these instances, we also provide on-going project management.
Project Managers work on requests requiring more than 100 hours and that may be over $100,000 in costs. They are also available when needed on smaller projects or for consultations.
When both groups work on a project together, we will have an internal IT meeting to determine roles. Both stakeholders and IT have a kick-off meeting, at times with external vendors to discuss roles, set benchmarks and discuss communication.
Communication is always key between the PM and BA on every joint project as our roles, at times, overlap. Both of our groups are still in a continual growth within the organization, which his exciting. I only see each role continuing to expand.
Real Life Examples
The firm just completed an iManage FileSite to NetDocuments implementation. It spanned all offices, and touched every business and practice group.
The Project Manager and Business Analyst had clearly defined roles. While the Project Manager kept abreast of key communications between the needs of Management’s business directives, timelines and associated costs, the Business Analyst gathered and provided intellectual information on how each group worked. This enabled the vendor to provide an overall view of best practices to fit the organization as a whole. Information sharing and availability coordination was necessary between all IT teams. Lastly, determining how to market and deliver changes to existing processes was key. Roles overlapped at times, but communication was as essential as the air we breathe.
We have followed up with project reviews and it was very crucial in determining:
- What we can improve on in the future;
- A Phase II or Phase III; and
- Valuable feedback from users in all populations.
Industry Growth
I do see the need for both project management and business analysis. Employing both within a smaller organization will usually depend on trends within specific regions, as well as, the buy-in from a firm’s Partnership.
Having both a Project Management and Business Analysis team is truly beneficial. If both teams grow and work together – it creates a system of checks and balances that is healthy for a firm.
#ProjectManagement#Practice Management and Practice Support
#PracticeManagementandPracticeSupport#BusinessandLegalProcessImprovements