The London Borough of Lambeth has devised a business
transformation toolkit to help increase the success rate on its IT
projects.
The Lambeth Transformation Academy is the result of a national
project that was led by the London borough. The E-Capacity Building
Programme was taken over by Lambeth when the former Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister stopped funding the project.
The toolkit was designed to improve management awareness of the
value of structured project management methodologies.
Council officers needed to develop business transformation
skills when the elected members tasked them to create a single view
of users of public services.
Other aims were to encourage people in different departments to
work together on projects and to run projects to tighter
deadlines.
Three business transformation methodologies were set out in the
toolkit: project and programme management, business process
re-engineering and change management.
The toolkit’s project management methodology sets out templates for
running business change projects that are specific to local
government. The templates are used to monitor budgets, identify
risks and allocate work.
The business process re-engineering methodology is a structured
approach for local authorities to redesign their processes after
re-examining their business objectives. Using the toolkit to
re-engineer their processes can help councils improve the cost,
quality, service or speed of their work.
The third methodology – a change management toolkit – is a set
of processes and activities designed to enable council officers to
move to new ways of working. The content covers the changes in
employee behaviour that are needed to make a major business
transformation project work.
The Lambeth Transformation Academy also integrates the three
different methodologies so that managers of major local authority
projects can monitor overall progress.
Lambeth has used the toolkit for its own business transformation
projects. It has also posted the toolkit online to make it
available to other local authorities.
The toolkit cost Lambeth £50,000. Some £20,000 was spend building
the toolkit, £15,000 was spent on developing training programmes,
and another £15,000 was spent on delivering staff training.
Vote for your IT greats
Who have been the most influential people in IT in the past 40
years? The greatest organisations? The best hardware and software
technologies? As part of Computer Weekly’s 40th anniversary
celebrations, we are asking our readers who and what has really
made a difference?
Vote now at:
www.computerweekly.com/ITgreats