Maintaining the integrity of a project team’s roles and responsibilities is most important for a CRM implementation. If not paid attention to, this becomes a major risk on implementations and that is why I am writing about this here. Integrity is often compromised  due to mismanagement of resources  and as a result of which many talented resources are lost leading to employee attrition.

This aspect needs immediate attention by all players in the enterprise application implementation and delivery value chain.

 Let me quickly explain this through the following points

• Summary of roles and responsibilities on a Salesforce CRM implementation
• How the integrity of roles and responsibilities is violated on implementations?
• Negative consequences of the violation of roles and responsibilities

Summary of Roles and Responsibilities on a Salesforce CRM implementation

Project Manager- Responsible for Project schedule, scope, estimates, Agile delivery User stories etc.

Solution Architect– Responsible for over all solution design which includes functional design and blueprint, data modeling (ERD), integration design, data and platform security,  UI and UX  design and process automation.

Technical Architect/Lead– All technical design including dev ops, code migration branching, release management, integration built and design, customizations and code coverage along with all the governor limits.

Business Analyst/Salesforce Admin– Gather requirements from business, design current and future state, prototype the application, configure the application during development.

Developer- Write code (Apex, Triggers, Lightning components), build complex process automation scenarios.

Testers- Test the application

How the integrity of roles and responsibilities is violated on implementations?

Team Dynamics– 80% of the team feeds on 20% talent. This gets worst when consultants try to be on a project longer then their shelf life. For example – Project manager doubles up as an architect when the architect is available on the project. This undermines the role of the Architect. Lead developer starts taking credit for the work of other developers. Project manager or one business analyst starts speaking about the user stories of other team members in scrum meetings. By all these means the work gets mis-represented and responsibilities are mismanaged.

Vertical/Horizontal Politics– Vertical/Horizontal is the internal organization of many of the system integrators and IT consultancies. Vertical is the industry and horizontal means the capability. For example Utility industry is the vertical and Salesforce CRM is the capability. Within the capability managers are dedicated to verticals for example within Salesforce there is specific alignment to Healthcare/Utility/banking verticals.

Responsible managers have the directive to keep resource busy on projects and billable and hence all kinds of politics happen for the same objective. This gets even worst when one of these managers along with his/her direct reports is on the project. 

Lack of Talent and motivation to learn– This is a field where continuous learning is required. Unfortunately a large number of consultants limit their time to learn and want to maximise their billable time with limited talent.

Client’s lack of attention– It is important that the end client should be evaluating the project implementation team on a regular basis. It does not matter whether the project is T&M or fixed price. Client’s while making resourcing decisions should consider the whole program rather than focusing on immediate requirements.

Negative Consequences of the same

• Consultant disengagement and dissatisfaction
• Loss of key talent
• Sub-optimal performance of the team
• Communication breakdown
• Imbalance in resource loading
•  Negative perception and goodwill
• Increased bench time of consultants which is detrimental for a practice
• Employee Attrition
• Often leads to risk in the project delivery schedule and timeline

There are many ways by which this can be avoided which I will discuss in a later blog.

I hope you have liked this write up and it has given you some perspective on what happens on implementations and how are resources compromised.

Your likes, share and comments will keep me motivated to keep writing.