The core competency of Reliance chiefly lies in the project management abilities of its businesses in the fastest possible time and at the lowest possible cost. The company’s ITPMS (Information Technology Project Management System), for instance, gives a single-window view of the status of the Group companies’ IT projects: initiated, in-process, and completion stage.

The ITPMS also displays the project end date, upcoming review date, pending status of resource requisition, IT requisition, time sheet management, application portfolio, pending status of change request, and pending tasks. Strategically, the ITPMS is integrated with Reliance’s intranet.

The need for ITPMS

The Reliance Group has over 40,000 employees across various verticals, spread over a hundred locations. Every business function is essentially about planning, executing and reporting on projects. It is indispensable to have an IT tool that knits these processes together. To guarantee an enterprise focused on project success, the company needed a tool that was designed, empowered, and equipped to serve the entire enterprise. The IT initiative had to be managed on a project management basis and, to implement this, a PMO (Program Management Office) was set up and the ITPMS was launched.

“On April 1, 2006, the Reliance Group formed Reliance Infosolutions; the initiative was to make IT more accountable for the work they had been doing like departments earlier,” says Alok Kumar, senior VP, Reliance Infosolutions.

The ITPMS, launched in July 2006, was initially limited to billing. Project Management was included in March 2007. It took about six months for the system to be rolled out. It captured information about IT projects and routine work. Each project was assigned team members who would fill in the timesheet as to the number of hours they spent at work. Calculation of work hours and productivity was simple, and based on the result bills were drawn on RIL and other group companies for payment to Reliance Infosolutions – in a purely internal understanding.

Overcoming hurdles

Among the challenges the group faced before implementing ITPMS was the unrestrained growth of redundant and duplicate applications. For example, while integrating 600 different applications during ITPMS development, it was observed that about 250 were engaged in duplication of data.

Some other hurdles were lack of IT performance management metrics and accountability, poor visibility to the management of the IT accomplishments, lack of clarity of requirements, poor change management processes, missed deadlines, and cost overruns. “Coding was not a challenge; Indians are very good at coding. However, there were implementation challenges,” admits Kumar, adding that conceptualising the system proved harder than the actual development.

The system currently tracks around 1200 running projects, of which 400 are development projects. Various infrastructure rollout projects constitute 250, and the remaining are operations and maintenance related.

The sheer number of projects made the initiative an adventure in itself. The nine-member team had to map out the system and seamlessly merge about 600 applications running in tandem. “We met this challenge by capturing information about companies’ specific IT departments and specific IT requirements,” explains Kumar.

IT heads were taken into confidence and asked about their roles as a part of the project, and the information was added. Members of the IT team were also included. Other common services (such as SAP) were also asked for information on running projects. Ultimately about 35 business heads came up with their requirements.

The Execution

Subsequently, a team was constituted to coordinate with the respective IT heads. The team was based at the PMO (Program Management Office), which was a part of the CIO or Director’s office acting as a proxy to their requirements. The team had the responsibility of managing operations under one umbrella, with the help of ITPMS.

Says Kumar: “As we run the system, we’re also developing a new process under the system.” Any system development request is initially put before the corporate level PMO or the local PMO. The PMO finds out the availability of the application, and if a look-alike is already being used at any of the Group companies. Eventually a decision is taken to either accept the request or drop it. If the request is accepted it can be done in any of the three formats: the IT team can roll out the requested application, modify an already developed application, or develop the application from scratch.

Requests can be classified under Red Channel (fast-track development), Blue Channel (semi-fast process), and Green Channel (rollouts that go under the Software Development Lifecycle or SDLC). Red Channel requests need immediate attention while Blue represents standalone applications that do not call for much time and energy and can be done quickly. Requests under the Green Channel have to take the conventional path of SRS, UAT etc, after which they go under production and are finally handed over with the documents.

Controlling Disparate Systems

The system provides a set of controls and directions for decision-making. Says Gaurav Singh, project manager, ITPMS: “The user knows that if he has an issue he will report to the PMO; in the same way the PMO will order the BIO (Business Information Officer) if he wants to get the issue resolved.” The major benefit of the system is the central control of all the disparate systems used by various group companies.

The modules constituting the ITPMS are Programme Management, Resource, Requests, Issue Trackers, Time Sheet Management, Application Management, Budgeting, and Reporting. To strengthen the MIS, the team is working on an additional Budgeting module. Training Needs Management and Project Review will come up soon.