How do you know your project is a success? Some will say the success is that the project was delivered on-time and within budget. Others will say it was successful as it provided benefits. Still, more will look at whether user adoption measures success.
Brenda Nichols says it’s possible to have all three!
With extensive experience across IT and Global Supply Chain, Brenda leverages her nearly 30 years and countless roles within supply chain and information technology to share her 3 key drivers to create best-in-class project delivery at YMX.
Key Drivers to Create Best-in-Class Project Delivery
1. People
“Relationships with the users; Seek to understand, watch, listen, and if possible, do the work; then deliver with those concerns in mind.” Creating this type of relationship is easy for Brenda as she can relate with the operational user. Having worked directly within operations/supply chain for over half of her career, Brenda understands the daily operational fires that may occur and how to not allow the “issue of the day” to derail the right solution. Brenda leverages her knowledge to help the operation look at the underlying causes of a fire and seek to eliminate them. She can ask the right questions, and seeks to incorporate the best ideas into better solutions. At YMX, relationships with our internal family, including drivers, mechanics, dispatch, etc., extend externally to treat our customers with the same high regard as our own.
2. The change is real… Do not underestimate the impact of change
It’s true that change management is a typical step within traditional project delivery. It is also true that the change management tasks are often the ones that shrink with a tight timeline or aren’t well executed as the goal is “project execution,” not process adoption. If project completion is the goal, users often feel unsupported and lose hope regarding the initiative. Hopelessness is magnified if the project benefits are not realized.
At YMX, Brenda leverages her skills with process excellence and lean value stream background to address these concerns to take the change to the next level. Simple statements like, “You can’t change what you aren’t measuring” and “Work to define the process upfront” make the changes more tangible to the user and provides a trusting environment to navigate the outcomes to get the desired results. Brenda drives process excellence at YMX for all changes, ensuring adoption, value, and efficiency.
3. “Technology is not the holy grail. It’s an enabler.”
“A goal of any operational project should not be to “have” technology. "That is a recipe for failure," states Brenda. She continues, “It must be deployed correctly, then technology within supply chain operations is a very powerful tool.” Technology provides heavy lifting to streamline and automate operations; data can be processed with ease, “but that is only one part," Brenda explains, “to truly leverage technology, you need to have the process and people correct and all three need to work in alignment with the new tools." Brenda continues, “If the process and people are not aligned, you have a very expensive tech that is considered sub-par with the users."
If you want to unlock the value technology can bring, processes and people need to be aligned with the tech.” At YMX, the right people, following the right processes with the technology, is the trifecta to sustainable value. Brenda coaches and monitors all three areas within project delivery to ensure YMX is successful for our customers.
