Amit’s e-world

In my first assignment at work, I was required to manage the knowledge transition from our client’s previous IT services partner to our organisation. Apart from planning the session layout, I also had to create a framework to measure the effectiveness of the knowledge transition process. Not surprisingly, I went back to the benefits dependency model - my personal favourite.

For the benefit of those who haven’t still come across this piece of brilliance from Joe Peppard, and for those who have moved ahead to bigger & better things, the benefits dependency matrix is like a fish-bone diagram that starts with defining objectives in the right, then defines quantified benefits to measure the achievement of those objectives, followed by what programmes would be needed to achieve those quantified objectives & finally defines what IT projects are needed for the programme. This ensures that the "right" IT projects are implemented to achieve the required objectives. I built a variation of this model, by starting with the objectives of the knowledge transition project, that led me to define the critical success factors & sub-factors & finally I created a checklist of items to the left to ensure that the sub-factors were addressed. Such a representation makes it easy for the viewer to see the purpose / rationale behind having the items on the checklist, as each item can be traced back to the core objectives. A very simple yet effective model that can be used to report across different levels in the organisation, ranging from the CIO / CEO who had the vision to come out with the objectives to the manager who is responsible to manage the achievement of each critical success factor.