Celemi Cayenne

Securing project success

“Preparing people for the challenges of project work.”

A company has just completed a large project and, in hindsight, it did not deliver as much business value as was originally expected. There were budget and time overruns, and neither the project sponsors nor end users seem very satisfied with the result. Participants are asked to go back in time to see if they can identify the hot buttons and deliver a better result.

“They say that you learn from your mistakes. That is true only if you understand what happened.”

The Celemi Cayenne business simulaiton lets participants diagnose signs and symptoms of potential problems, and mitigate them using limited resources, just like in real life. While the storyline loosely follows a typical IT implementation of a new business system the learnings are clearly applicable to any project. The challenges are universal and easily recognized, such as:

• Key stakeholders are not engaged… get their attention or trust your own judgement?
• New insights arise… revise the scope or stick to the plan?
• Project team is overloaded… take quick action or make systematic changes?
• Actuals are not in line with budget and timeline… adjust figures or adjust ambitions?

Participants quickly recognize that you cannot please everybody all of the time. The art to project work is to balance the needs of key stakeholders – sponsors and steering committee, the project delivery team, and the end users of the organization – in order to create maximum business value.