I worked as a Project Manager for a UK London based charity client who presented some difficult challenges. The ITSM deployment was standard Ivanti ITSM with Incident, Change and Service Request modules. Workshops were held and a Gap Analysis document was produced for the customer.

A standard project included only one round of review and feedback with a view to any revisions, however the client was very indecisive and had a lot of questions which resulted in several versions of the GA doc being proposed. After the solution was deployed issues were raised over design decisions – they disputed the latest version of the GA, and insisted that one of the earlier versions was the agreed version.

To resolve this, I took some time to quiz the consultant on how much effort it would be to make the changes they require, and after clarifying that it was mostly some ‘flick of the switch’ settings – I agreed that we would accomodate their disputed requirements.

After deployment, we also had to arrange training on each module. The client complained about the first trainer, so I arranged for a new trainer for the second session. This trainer also recieved complaints, so I organised another consultant for the final round of training – who predictably also recieved complaints.

As they had substantial complaints about not recieving the appropriate amount of training, I took the decision to deploy a consultant on-site for some extra consultancy days (agreed with the vendor) to for them to essentially request whatever changes they wanted and provide hands on knowledge transfer. This finally seemed to satisfy them and they even gave good feedback about my final consultant.

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I acted as Project Manager to deploy Ivanti ITSM to a major UK law firm worth £20,000 in billable consultancy. I organised the workshops and kept track of time and change requests.

During deployment, I had to urgently manage a complaint from the client as our associate consultant had become stuck troubleshooting an issue and the clients confidence had been dented. I caught a train into London that day to meet the client and consultant onsite and, whilst looking at the problem, leaned on my own technical skills to troubleshoot the solution.

I then followed up with the vendor to confirm that it was a verified bug, and after giving a pep talk and advice to the consultant, I spoke with the client to clear up the misunderstanding and win their confidence back. I managed to convince them to keep our consultant onsite and continue the project.

The result is that I gained their confidence and they came back to us later for further implementations of ITSM modules.

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I project managed the deployment of a new ITSM system to an English County Council as part of their Digital Transformation drive. This called for multiple workshops to scope Incident, Service and Change management. One particular challenge was managing their changing requirements.

This would not ordinarily be difficult for a Project Manager to handle, but the consultant was not experienced with working under a PM or push back on requirements – therefore I discovered that the client had habit of going directly to the consultant with the changes they wanted, causing scope creep.

When I discovered this I instructed the consultant that they were to work to specification and not accept any more instruction changes from the client. This obviously did not go down well with the client who, rather than approach me, complained to the vendor directly. I defended my decision and cited the risks on delivery if the customer kept making changes to the scope without consulting the PMO.

Although they were unhappy, they did accept the points that I made. The business agreed with the vendor that we would extend the project and provide some free consultancy as a gesture of goodwill to the client, getting their agreement to stick to the budget and the plan.

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I have delivered training in person to locations in US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. Remotely 24/7 including Australia from the UK and also in pre-recorded material for inclusion in corporate training portal.

My perspective on the keys to effective corporate training are:

• Good pacing – particularly if the vendor material does not fill the time-slot
• Build in feedback and Q&As
• Extra material and real world use cases if you have time and appropriate
• Engage with students, don’t just sit in the chair and repeat a script! Move around, be expressive. Corporate training can be incredibly boring or incredibly rewarding.

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