New Product Launch in 6 weeks

Summary

How we delivered a new product offering in 6 weeks including supplier negotiations & contracts, business processes & reporting, and the website solution which was functionally and security tested.

What We Did

Our client had an online offering that had two main products, car parking and hotel rooms. Each product was provided by different suppliers using different technical solutions. We identified the value of offering a new product that was effectively a product bundle of car parking and hotel rooms. We identified an number of options but with the peak booking season coming up it was decided that speed to market was important. This required us to negotiate, contract, design, test and implement the new solution in 6 weeks. By following our Project Management Framework©  deliver in 6 weeks is what we achieved.

How We Did It

Using the Project Management Framework© we started by tightly defining the scope and the plan. The 6 weeks gave us 6 time periods (timeboxes) which we planned out as follows:

This plan was then reviewed and verified, confirming time, cost, resources and issue & risk mitigation. Quality and benefit checks where applied to every deliverable. At the heart of our approach were three key activities that became the way of life for this accelerated project:

1. Relationships – We built strong relationships quickly with suppliers, internal stakeholders and product partners by clarifying roles & responsibilities and continuously communicating what we were doing, what the issues were, and how we would go about the launch.
2. Risk mitigation – We continuously reviewed and identified risks and put in place mitigations or fall backs. This meant that we were fully prepared for all eventualities.
3. Living plan – We closely monitored and managed the plan, updating it with any time gains or to take account of new risk mitigations. Where activity completed early we would prepare for follow-on activity to start early. Where activity completed late, we would decide the right mitigation to alleviate the risk of reduced timescales. Each revision kept the target implementation date and was communicated back to the responsible leads in the project.

The Outcome

Fully functioning and secure car park and hotel product bundles available for sale online, communicated and distributed through existing channels and with xxx sales that met/exceeded the business case.