Delivery Framework in Multi-Supplier Environment

On a recent engagement we had an opportunity to unite a multi-supplier team to deliver a data migration project.

Here were the key takeaways from creating a delivery framework and road map.

The who and the what

1. Start by being clear about roles and responsibilities and make sure that they map back to everyone’s commercial agreements
2. Get a really good understanding of the ask, working with the client to clarify any uncertainties
3. Map the high-level process of what is required for migration down to individual teams and call out key milestones
4. Call out dependencies and the handshakes

The how

Once you have an understanding of who will deliver what you can then start to build a picture of how it will be delivered:

1. As a team agree on entry and exit criteria for each step of the high-level process
2. Agree how the status of each step will be communicated across the team, especially important where dependencies and handshakes exist
3. Where dependencies exist, agree how teams will manage this process to ensure that sufficient time and detail is provided to deliver anything required by a team upstream

At this point you will have a set of principles that can be documented and published, that articulate the delivery framework for the project. This should be reviewed and improved regularly by the project team – ideally at a Retro.

The when

Next you can begin to bring the whole project to life by creating a Road Map. The first iteration should highlight any unknowns and potential blockers that may impact the delivery timeline. These can be removed at the project progresses and the amount of uncertainty decreases. There are many processes for providing estimates, as a rule they follow this pattern:

1. Each team should estimate how long each of their steps in the process will take to complete and give a confidence score
2. If a team has a dependency on it, they should also provide an estimate and confidence score for the dependency
3. These time frames can then be added together taking into account entry and exit criteria for each step to produce a road map for delivering key milestones
4. Importantly there should be one master Road Map, each team can have sub plan but they should all inform one Road Map.