Getting a DWH Development Project with 2 Subcontractors and 30 Stakeholders Back on Track

Summary

A leading stock market regulator had split a data warehouse project between two contractors and more than 30 stakeholders, and it was falling behind on fixed deadlines because of runaway scope, communication gaps, and contractor co-dependence. INNERLUXES provided project management consulting that formalized requirements, restructured the delivery team into micro-teams, and put structured reporting and risk management in place — cutting scope creep, speeding up development, and reducing risk.

About the Client

The Client is one of the world's leading stock market regulators.

A Stalled DWH Project With Two Contractors and 30+ Stakeholders

The Client had delegated the development of a data analytics solution — built to detect potential violations of stock-exchange speculation rules — to two contractors. A subcontractor was building the data warehouse, which had to connect to a number of internal and external resources, while the main contractor prepared the data for it. With fixed deadlines, the Client was unhappy with the pace, which was hampered by:

• Frequent change requests that expanded scope and made scope planning difficult.
• Communication gaps and low progress visibility across two contractors and more than 30 stakeholders.
• Inefficient communication between contractors, since the subcontractor depended on data prepared by the main contractor to continue work on the data warehouse.

The Client needed consulting on how to streamline both project management and the development process.

Project Management Consulting to Put the Project Right

A senior consultant from the INNERLUXES Project Management Office joined the project, analyzed its workflows and communication processes, and identified three areas to improve — controlling scope growth, speeding up development, and raising communication efficiency, which was taking 40% of the project's time.

• Controlling scope growth. The consultant started a requirements formalization process with the subcontractor's business analyst, building a traceability matrix of all known requirements and turning them into tasks with a Definition of Done, a responsible owner, and a completion checklist. Through several meetings, the resulting scope was negotiated and secured in writing among all parties.
• Speeding up development. The consultant ran internal brainstorms with the subcontractor's PM, QA, and tech leads to prioritize requirements and set a roadmap that could meet the deadlines, and proposed splitting the team into micro-teams — BA + 2 developers, QA + BA, QA + developer. Ten micro-teams, each with its own tasks, supported and checked one another and collaborated tightly with the main contractor's team.
• Raising communication efficiency. The consultant formalized regular meetings with primary and situational stakeholders (for example, finance representatives when financial matters came up), using them for risk management and 360-degree progress reporting, and created a comprehensive shared project repository on Confluence so the Client could track the status of every task.

Removed Scope Bottlenecks, Faster Delivery, and Lower Risk

Formalizing the requirements removed scope-planning bottlenecks, and together with the micro-teams approach it increased the pace of development. Formalized reporting and proactive risk management during joint meetings helped the Client reduce the risks tied to the contractors' co-dependence.

Methodologies and Tools

Project management consulting, requirements formalization, traceability matrix, micro-team organization, Atlassian Confluence.