What is a total metrics-driven modernisation approach?

The way we see it,

The work starts well before any technical decisions are made with defining the underlying drivers for change, mapping where the organisation is today, where it needs to be in the future, and agreeing on what success should look like, both in terms of business impact and operational readiness.

Only when the direction is clear, is the modernisation effort guided by:

• Key success metrics – clear indicators that the modernisation has delivered the intended value. These might include ROI, increased operational efficiency, reduced time-to-market, improved system availability, or measurable gains in user satisfaction.
• Delivery metrics – reflecting the relevance, quality and speed of the process, including predictability, technical stability, and effectiveness of implementation.

The method is simple on the outside, yet rigorous on the inside: the real impact happens when delivery is tied to measurable outcomes.

Total metrics-driven approach: the benefits

What makes this approach work is what it delivers early on. You see results fast, and you know it’s working because outcomes are measured from the start.

• Clear definition of success
  The goal of modernisation effort is clearly defined up front, in terms of outcomes and business needs.
• Measurable results and accountability
  Every milestone has a clear set of metrics attached to it, making the progress traceable and any issues visible early.
• Faster time to value
  First tangible results show up within first weeks of work. This early feedback confirms the direction and builds momentum without stalling on long timelines.
• Result-focused collaboration
  While delivery is scoped to the most urgent goal, the team works holistically, proactively identifying improvements that can amplify impact elsewhere.
• Commercial predictability
  Built around Performance-led Engineering, the model ties delivery to metrics and holds the vendor financially accountable for results.

The true value of the framework, however, becomes clear only when it’s tested under real-world constraints.

Performance-led Engineering

Shift your team augmentation towards our pay-only-for-performance model, and gain financially guaranteed efficiency and predictability of delivery.

Find out more Contact us

How is it different from a traditional modernisation approach? A case study

Before working with us, one of our clients in the transportation industry put it bluntly:

What sounded like pure outsourcing frustration was a symptom of a much deeper issue – the company’s business continuity was under threat due to a failed modernisation attempt.

By the time we first met, the company had already spent over 18 months and tens of thousands of dollars working with external vendors on a big-bang back- and front- office tech rebuild which had collapsed under its own weight.

Despite all that time and all that money spent, no feature had gone live, as the modernisation stalled before any outcomes were delivered. The business was still stuck with the same monolithic on-prem .NET app, expensive to maintain, increasingly unsupported, and poorly aligned with how teams wanted to work.

And without the ability to respond to market opportunities, the risk of business stagnation was becoming real.

Why did they fail?

On paper, that modernisation looked ambitious, yet feasible. In practice, however, it lacked the foundations to succeed. Why?

• First, there was no clear plan: no defined goals or success metrics. Without a clearly defined “why”, the initiative lacked direction from day one.
• Second, there was no way to measure progress or course-correct along the way. Without metrics, success was impossible to define. And worse, issues that grew along the way were impossible to spot until it was too late.
• Finally, the entire effort relied on a full tech rebuild delivered all at once, with no room for early wins or iteration, and causing even minor missteps to snowball out of control.

What did we do differently?

Instead of repeating the big-bang mistake and trying to solve everything at once, we focused on what would deliver the highest value and built from there.

Discovery

Before deciding what to modernise, we needed to understand how the current system actually worked and where it held the business back. That meant running a series of structured discovery activities:

• First, we looked at the core process and timelines to understand which areas were most business-critical and time-sensitive.
• We conducted a comprehensive audit of the existing system (covering the codebase, databases, user interface, and operational processes) to understand how it supported key workflows and where it introduced friction, from outdated UI patterns to performance bottlenecks.
• We mapped out the stakeholders’ roles to surface any gaps between ownership, priorities, and expectations.
• And finally, we used activity design methods, like service blueprinting and story mapping, to reveal where day-to-day friction was the highest.

Across all the areas we explored, the process for setting dynamic pricing stood out: the point where technical debt most clearly collided with commercial needs. What should have been a fast lever for pricing decisions, took a week of manual coordination. Adjustments required input from both sales staff and a database engineer, all working within outdated, legacy-bound workflows.

It was a narrowly defined part of the system, but the implications were broad. This single feature had become a bottleneck with outsized commercial impact. It offered a rare combination: high strategic value and relatively low effort to address. And that made it the obvious place to begin.

Implementing proven frameworks

This also raised a practical question: what’s the best way to move the project forward without repeating the past mistakes?

We used the 7R framework from AWS to assess our options, focusing on the best balance between effort, cost-effectiveness, and business impact.

While rewriting the entire system meant returning to the strategy that had already failed to deliver, all off-the-shelf tools lacked the flexibility the pricing model required. Therefore, the best path was to build a dedicated cloud-native module from scratch. Crucially, it had to be designed as a standalone, microservice-based component, ready to grow with future features.

Defining success metrics

Once the goal was clear, one thing still needed to be nailed down: how to recognise success and how to prove it in real, measurable terms.

We worked with the client to define that together and share that understanding across the whole project. Success had to be measured in terms of how the change would support day-to-day operations and unlock real business value.

From that shared understanding came a clear set of business-related metrics, providing a measurable representation of the outcomes we aimed to achieve:

• Deadline: go live in under 3 months with the dynamic pricing functionality,
• Efficiency: reduce the dynamic pricing process setting from 1 week to under 10 minutes,
• Ownership: cut involvement in the process from 3 roles across departments to 1 product owner, with no database knowledge required,
• Frequency of updates: shift from quarterly to weekly changes in pricing logic, without engineering input.

With that in place, we focused on finding the most effective way to deliver results we agreed on.

Performance-led delivery

After a failed all-or-nothing modernisation efforts run by another third-party vendor, our client had every reason to be sceptical about delivery promises. That’s why they needed a plan that would work and a way to know it was working.

What made our modernisation attempt different was that we approached delivery through our Performance-led Engineering model. How did it look in practice?

Knowing the goal, we chose the tech stack, delivery standards and the team setup best suited to make it happen. But the tech alone wasn’t enough. This is why we sat down with the client and agreed on how success would be measured – what to track, how to read the numbers, and where the line between “done” and “not done” was.

Read more: Beyond the code: achieving business goals with Performance-led Engineering

To track progress throughout the project, we implemented a metrics framework built around industry-standard, recognised benchmarks, including DORA metrics, SLA targets, and operational thresholds.

To strengthen predictability and accountability even more, we tied performance of delivery teams to commercial terms: the client paid only for outcomes that met the agreed performance thresholds. Within this framework, we prioritised a core set of delivery indicators reflecting speed, reliability, and efficiency, including:

• Lead time for change
  • Before: not tracked, releases required manual coordination and typically took weeks
  • Target: cut lead time to under 48 hours from code commit to production
• Deployment frequency
  • Before: 1-2 releases per quarter, typically requiring bundled deployments
  • Target: At least 1 deployment per week for the new module
• Change failure rate
  • Before: No clear data, as rollbacks and production fixes weren’t tracked consistently
  • Target: Keep failure rate under 5%, supported by automated testing and quality gates
• Time to restore service
  • Before: Reactive fixes with unclear ownership and variable response time
  • Target: Restore in under 30 minutes for any deployment-related disruption
• SLA: system response time and availability
  • Target: Response time under 200 Ms for key API endpoints under normal load, availability of 99.99% across new components.

Adaptive team for scalable delivery

To implement and deploy the new solution efficiently, we shaped the team around the intended outcome, starting with a Solution Architect and a Business Analyst to define priorities and constraints. A UX designer joined early to ensure the interface was both intuitive and visually engaging. As the work progressed, the team was scaled up with developers and DevOps specialists to accelerate delivery.

The new app ran in the cloud from day one. Lower environments were spun up on demand, optimised for cost and speed. The setup gave the team the flexibility to move fast and gave the client a delivery process that was measurable and built for impact.

Result

The new pricing module went live in under three months, just as planned.

The dynamic pricing process, previously a full week of cross-team coordination, now took less than ten minutes. Ownership shifted from three roles across departments to a single product owner and pricing logic could be adjusted on the fly, without engineering involved.

Our solution became a working part of the business. Thanks to its modular, cloud-native architecture, it opened the door to modernising other features by gradually replacing old functionality with new components through a strangler fig pattern.

Modernisation did not stop with the dynamic pricing module. It evolved into an ongoing, agile, and iterative process, expanding to other parts of the system. Together with the client, we prioritised further opportunities based on the highest business impact and lowest effort, building a clear and adaptable roadmap, ready to adjust to shifting priorities and emerging opportunities.

Will total-metrics driven modernisation work in my business?

Although the total-metrics-driven modernisation isn’t a plug-and-play framework, it is repeatable.

It works across industries, stacks and setups because it reframes modernisation as a business-critical, data-backed initiative, not just a narrow exercise in system replacement.

The total metrics modernisation: step by step

Modernisation is always triggered by a concrete business need, like the pressure to prepare for future growth, fix costly inefficiencies, accelerate product delivery, or ensure business continuity. The problem might be operational, financial or strategic, but the solution can’t be technical alone.

While every modernisation engagement is unique, the process follows a repeatable structure that keeps the work focused on what matters most.

Each phase stays grounded in business impact and remains traceable to working results.

Understand: define the goals

Before any design or delivery work begins, there needs to be a shared understanding between the business and the tech partner of why change is needed and where it will have the most impact. In a total-metrics driven approach, it means investigating both internal and external forces shaping the business context:

• Interview stakeholders to know where the pressure comes from. This step uncovers the true cost of staying still and surfaces where value might be trapped
• Review internal materials and external market reports to gain critical context on company performance, market dynamics, and structural constraints
• Run an initial assessment of business processes and systems to clarify what’s in place and where the most critical inefficiencies live
• Assess risk and constraints to pinpoint and remove all factors that may block or delay the process. This step helps set realistic expectations and prepare for trade-offs before delivery begins
• Define non-functional requirements, like scalability, performance or cost. These set the ground rules for what success looks like once the modernisation is delivered and help narrow solution paths well before any tech is chosen
• Align on the desired business outcome through structured workshops. Define what a successful modernisation means in operational terms.

Once the business goals are uncovered, translate them into measurable KPIs, so that progress can be tracked from day one.

Deliver

Once the metrics and the modernisation path are defined, delivery becomes the engine of the transformation. The right process should be predictable and designed to stay accountable from start to finish.

• Choose solutions based on impact and efficiency, prioritising solutions with the best alignment with success metrics
• Apply lessons from similar projects to avoid unnecessary detours and double down what’s proven to work
• Look beyond the scope: even if the project scope covers one area, stay alert for inefficiencies that may arise elsewhere. Look for any factors that may derail or amplify the outcome
• Avoid the pitfalls of vague, big-bang modernisation initiatives. Instead, deconstruct the scope into smaller, outcome-driven components built incrementally, following the strangler fig pattern. Each part should serve a clearly defined business goal, with measurable impact tracked throughout the delivery process.
• Build the team with the milestone in mind, ensuring the setup is tailored to the current project need with just the right skills, roles, and capacity to deliver the next outcome without unnecessary overhead
• Optimise for efficiency with the right delivery model, pairing it with operational metrics that show how efficiently the value is being delivered
• Follow industry-recognised frameworks like DORA, CI/CD, Lean IT, Agile or ISO-9241, selected to bring clarity, repeatability and traceability to the delivery process
• Stay aligned and accountable by ensuring that roles and responsibilities are clearly assigned across in-house and external teams. Keep communication transparent to share understanding of what success looks like for both sides
• Tie tech partner collaboration to the outcomes, using the right collaboration model (like performance-led engineering) that links effort to results with metrics and shared accountability

Monitor

Once the delivery is underway, metrics must remain in focus. Review progress at both operational and strategic levels to ensure alignment with business goals and to spot early signs of drift or inefficiency.

• Stay on course with executive-level visibility: review progress at both operational and strategic levels, ensuring decisions stay aligned with business values. Introduce regular checkpoints, like demos, retrospectives, and quarterly checkpoints, to validate direction and adjust when needed.
• Document key risks and decisions as they emerge, maintaining a shared risk log and decision log to ensure transparency and informed stakeholder oversight.
• Establish a clear cadence for sharing risks, so that everyone is on the same page, unexpected issues are reduced, and ownership stays shared.
• Surface and manage risks early, especially when goals are at risk. Give every team member the ability to flag risks, ensuring issues are spotted and addressed properly before they spiral out of control

Making modernisation work

As there is a difference between moving fast and making progress, total metric-driven approach helps make that distinction clear, by connecting action to evidence and every project scope to measurable impact.

For organisations under pressure to modernise and adapt, that clarity brings the unprecedented value.

Stay competitive and ensure long-term business success by modernising your applications. With our approach, you can start seeing real value even within the first 4 weeks.

See how we can help Talk with us

It’s definitely no easy feat, especially when there may be a lot of specialists and organisations involved. You have to be able to reconcile often conflicting interests, ideas and views, and manage to deal with different personalities, all the while staying calm and rational.

There are a few parts of the process, and each one can be broken down into smaller chunks. We’ve been through all of them and in this article we want to share an ultimate checklist of all the best practices, helpful hints and universal lessons that we’ve learnt.

This article is based on our own real experience with transitioning an IT project – a situation where we had to pass a project to another provider. In order to give you an idea concerning the scale of the project, we present you with some of the most important numbers.

Close picture

Throughout the duration of the entire project, our company was responsible for 5 different IT systems.

Below, you’ll see how we managed to deal with each part of the process – from preparation, through the actual transition, to the completion of the project. We learnt a lot along the way, picked up some excellent moves, and also made a few mistakes — from which we were able to draw some valuable conclusions. May our invaluable experience help you with your own IT project transition as well.

First things first: know the universal truths

Whether you’re about to start managing a project or hand it over to another entity, there are some universal rules you should bear in mind if you want to avoid chaos.

Problems should be named and the right people notified

The entire cooperation needs to be based on a foundation of openness and loyalty. There’s no wiggle room for downplaying any emerging issues either, as this may undermine the project.

Governance meetings are necessary

Upper-level meetings that structure the work on every level will help resolve the problems that are voiced.

Read more about related topics:

• Governance structure – why is it so important in project management?
• Cloud governance: framework, challenges and benefits

Communication is the key

The bigger the teams, the harder it is to maintain effective communication. Therefore, it may be a good idea to identify a person who will not only be responsible for communication within and between teams, but also for synchronising their work.

Documentation can be lifesaving

Always remember to keep detailed and up-to-date documentation, in case any of your experts have to leave the team. Their knowledge about the technical aspects of the project should be explicitly written down on paper, as they may not be able to pass on all the necessary information in person.

Some of the points above may sound cliché, but our experience shows that they are very often not implemented at all, so their importance is worth underlining. And now, after covering all the basics, we are ready to move forward with the transition.

Phase 1: Preparation for IT transition

Step 1: Choosing a new IT service provider

If your company is the one handing over the project, it should remain involved during the entire process of selecting the new IT services provider, preferably from the point of preparing the RFP to making the final decision.

Find out how to choose the right business partner, depending on the type of your project:

• 4 steps to start a digital partnership with a software development company
• How to choose a Digital Transformation partner?
• What to consider when choosing a Cloud Provider for your business?

Your role at this stage is complementary, yet significant, as you may have to help your client ask the right questions and provide potential candidates with all the necessary information about the project. You could also be asked to support the process of analysing their offers, selecting the most promising ones and identifying the best overall option.

Close picture

Step 2: Kick-off

The kick-off step is basically a meeting (or a series of meetings) during which both companies – the ones handing over and taking over the project – can establish the processes and plan future actions. What you need to remember is that the transition is just a project (consisting of numerous tasks) and should be treated as such, therefore it needs a proper plan.

From our perspective, these points are particularly relevant:

• drafting a high-level transition plan:
  • preparing a schedule,
  • establishing and specifying certain roles and their scopes of responsibility,
  • defining project risks along with adequate mitigation plans,
  • determining staggered milestones (in order to make sure that everything goes as planned);
• checking the availability of key people involved (don’t forget to include e.g. vacations or maternity leave),
• preparing important documents’ templates, like a License and Software Register, Application Access Tracker or Environments Tracker,
• determining methods (e.g. stand-up meetings, weekly calls) and channels of communication (e.g. Skype, Slack),
• figuring out the most appropriate frequency and methods of reporting progress.

Close picture

Step 3: Establishing roles

It is necessary to establish clear roles early on within each of the following three organisations: the company handing over the project, the company taking over the project, and the client.

Before you begin the process, it’s a good idea to create a special Transition Team that will be solely and exclusively responsible for transferring knowledge to the new service provider. When it’s done you should establish some more specific roles, like the ones mentioned below.

When establishing the Transition Team, you should consider individual experience, knowledge, both hard skills and soft skills as well as personal preferences (whether someone wants to be on the team).

Main roles include:

The steering group

Establish a joint body to make final decisions, as well as to verify and approve the progress of the transition and set goals.

Transition lead

Generally speaking, this is the person who will be responsible for overseeing the transition. From our experience, there should be three Transition Leads – one for each company – who will be responsible for all actions within their individual organisations.

One of the leads should be given priority, so he or she can fully coordinate and control the work among all of the participating companies. In our case – this was a manager from the transferee company.

Service management lead

This is a role responsible for defining processes and organising workflows related to the second and third-line support that have to be structured from scratch.

Knowledge transfer lead

This is one of the most important roles in the transition — if not the most important.

Knowledge Transition Leads are responsible for planning and coordinating Knowledge Transfer Sessions and choosing the right people to lead each one.

They also have to make sure that session owners are always well-prepared. These experts should not only have broad technical knowledge about the project but also be very familiar with the team members involved and possess excellent communication and organisational skills.

Additional significant roles include:

Transition lead developer

This is the person who will be responsible for the vast majority of substantive knowledge transfer, and who will answer to all the technical questions.

DevOps engineer

This role is crucial in terms of coordinating the migration of tools and servers to the new service provider.

Members of the development team

Individual developers with the broadest domain and technical knowledge should always be involved in the transition process and take part in all meetings and calls.

They should be assigned to each thematic session according to their areas of expertise by the Knowledge Transfer Lead.

Close picture

Phase 2: Transition

Step 1: Preparing a solid ramp down plan and project documentation

There’s a big challenge that every company handing over a project has to face. Namely, what to do with a team (or teams) of engaged specialists when the transition is over?

The larger the team, the more difficult the problem. If you are left with a relatively big team after the transition, you may find it difficult to find other projects for them within your organisation. That’s why it’s a smart move to prepare a ramp down plan in advance and gradually relieve people from the project.

Another significant challenge is collecting and unifying all the documentation, as everything may be scattered in different locations. The documentation doesn’t need to be extremely detailed, but it certainly has to be specific enough to fall back on when some of the original experts are no longer available for the project.

Close picture

Step 2: Knowledge transfer

Knowledge should be transferred to other company during Knowledge Transfer that are run through the selected communication channels (like Skype for Business). In our case, we had to go through about 70 sessions in a span of 1,5 months. This means that we had 1 to 3 sessions per day.

Before we could start the Knowledge Transfer Sessions, everything had to be planned and structured in advance. When it came to the people involved in the process – virtually every member of our Transition Team had to run at least one session, so all of them had to be highly committed.

Close picture

Step 3: Job shadowing + reverse job shadowing

Job shadowing is another way to learn and receive knowledge during on-the-job training sessions. This way, teams from the new IT services provider can become familiar with how everything works in practice.

The ideal scenario for a job shadowing session involves having specialists from the new provider work together with specialists from the initial provider to solve daily development problems, through active participation in the development process.

In our case, job shadowing took place within our company. After that, there was time for reverse shadowing sessions, which took place in the transferee company, with the participation of a few of our leading experts.

Close picture

Bonus: Work organisation & technical problems

Before we move onto the last phase of the transition process, it may be interesting to see how work organisation can be structured and what additional problems you may want to consider in advance.

Work organisation

We had several types of meetings that were held at equal intervals:

• Daily Knowledge Transfer Sessions were always followed by the Transition Daily Status – which was a sort of stand-up meeting summarising what had been done on a given day and what was to be done during the next day. It was also the time when all problems and obstacles were reported to the designated person.
• Weekly Transition Lead Meetings – for the higher management level. These weekly meetings were necessary for the Transition Leads to stay on top of the process so that they could plan the next steps.
• Bi-weekly Governance Meetings – were held on the highest level, regarding, among others, contracts, critical problems, delays, along with analysing reports and emerging risks.

Active development

Even if you plan a code freeze, this may be quickly overturned by the client’s needs and project requirements. Instead, you may be forced to run active (yet significantly slowed down) development with a gradually shrinking team.

Pros:

• It’s easier to keep the team motivated when there are still development goals to achieve.
• A transferee company has the chance to observe active development and practice running some code releases to the production environment.

Cons:

• In an unstable environment, there’s a risk that the code will also be unstable, or not finished on time.
• Every milestone that is deployed has to be followed by two additional introductory sessions – business and technical – in order to:
  • let the transferee company know which of the client’s needs have been fulfilled,
  • do the code walkthrough for developers.

Data and environment migration

During the transition process, all scattered development and test environments have to be migrated to the client’s business space. From as far in advance as possible, these environments should be kept in the cloud or on the client’s servers.

Any knowledge that is related to this problem should be wisely distributed among team members, since relying on just one person for information may increase the project risk.

Progress reports and tools

Reports are essential in terms of tracking progress and making sure that everything is moving according to the plan, especially when many people from different organisations are involved in the transition process. Reports should be simple, clear and brief. Plus, they should always be sent on the same day and in the same form.

No less important are the tools that you use. For example, we worked with Confluence to keep all the documentation nicely organised while providing official information, and Slack for quick and less formal updates. We also learnt that open Slack channels are better than private ones – so everyone can join the channel they want and the workflow is more transparent.

Phase 3: Transition completion and sign-off

Step 1: Technical steps

When finishing an IT project, there are plenty of technical steps to think about:

• deleting or archiving all the project data,
• cutting off the team’s access to all the tools and servers that they had been using,
• requesting the removal of all your team members’ accounts on the client’s side,
• terminating the VPN connection between you and your client’s company
• making sure that all involved team members are moved to other projects,
• finalising all issues related to active development.

Step 2: Social steps

Last but not least: try to organise a farewell meeting for the entire team. It’s very important to end the collaboration on a positive note and thank everyone for all the effort that they put into the process.

Close picture

Guide to IT project transition: a summary

Apparently, handing over a project to another IT company requires weeks or months of combined effort, depending on the scale of the project. However, by putting the above-mentioned tips into practice, the process can be led in a much more manageable and smooth way than expected.

If you are looking for additional information (such as benefits or best practice in the project transfer process) take a look at our other article:

• IT Project Transition: planning, benefits and value

or see how we can help you: IT Project Transition Services

Top 10 factors of success in IT project transition

To sum up, we want to distinguish the 10 most essential factors of project transition success – that are significant for all organisations involved.

1. If you’re a potential new IT services provider trying to win a contract – make sure you emphasise your skills and professional experience. Be proactive in the presale process and show that you care about more than just the relationship with your future client, but also about your relationship with the company handing over the project, as they may have a final say in the matter.
2. If you’re the one handing over the project – create a gradual ramp down plan, keep your team motivated by organising their work in a thoughtful way and try to understand their needs and concerns.
3. Keep your team members informed and facilitate transparent communication.
4. Establish clear roles and determine the availability of key persons to prepare a solid transition plan.
5. Close the gap between the old and new teams by organising some after-hours activities. Grab a drink together, have some fun, and create a pleasant atmosphere that keeps the door open for future cooperation.
6. Prepare a plan for the Knowledge Transfer Sessions and keep it up to date. Create a knowledge transfer team with broad competencies and experience.
7. Maintain solid documentation.
8. Report on progress during daily stand-up meetings. Introduce Playback Sessions in order to make sure that the new provider has acquired all the knowledge presented during the Knowledge Transfer Sessions.
9. Don’t forget about the practical side of the project – plan job shadowing and reverse job shadowing sessions. Bear in mind that the transition is not only about the code but also the tools to be used.
10. Take the final steps to close out the project after consulting with all concerned departments. Finish the transition in a pleasant atmosphere.

Leverage our comprehensive service and transfer your IT solution to another supplier smoothly and effectively.

Evaluate your readiness to undergo a successful IT project transition.

Accelerate your success

Business case skills

• Be able to judge if a project is desirable, viable and achievable. If not – it shouldn’t be initiated, and if it’s already an ongoing process – it should be closed. However, it’s not your job to decide what to do. You should ask the right questions, present your point of view, and let the stakeholders/investors decide on their own.
  
  
• Understand why you are running the project in the first place and make sure you are clear on the expected goals and benefits, so that you, your team and your client are all on the same page.

Stakeholder management skills

• Identify the stakeholders so that you know who is who in the project.
  
  
• Determine individual attitudes, influence/power and interests. This will help you cooperate with everyone more effectively. The most important thing here is to recognise key players so that you know how to always keep them satisfied and well-informed.
  
  
• Establish and follow a communication and engagement plan that lines up with the specific descriptions of the stakeholders that you’ve prepared.

Risk management skills

• Determine threats and opportunities, and try to predict any possible scenarios they could lead to, should they become a reality. Remember that risks can pertain to every area of your project, from the way that it’s organised and the business environment, down to technological limitations, security issues, resources, finances, brand image aspects, and legal matters, etc.
  
  
• Determine probability and urgency for these risks, so that you know what you need to deal with first and how likely you will succeed or fail. This will give you a much better sense of security and control.
  
  
• Prepare an action plan for:
  – Avoiding risks – is there a way to improve your current strategy?
  – Mitigating risks – how can you reduce the likelihood of occurrence for certain risks?
  – Sharing risks with a client – could you and your client share responsibility?
  – Facing threats when they occur – what should be your next step?
  

Gross Profit Margin (GPM) calculations

• Calculate how much your team costs. Sum up their salaries and any overtime payments. Don’t include expenses that are not people-related (such as tools, licences, and rent, etc.).
  
  
• Calculate GPM for the project. Take your total revenue minus the costs that you need to bear, and then divide this amount by your total revenue. Next, multiply this figure by 100%. This gives you the project’s profitability ratio.
  
  
• Constantly optimise costs so that you can cut any unnecessary expenses. For example, maybe you’ll find that instead of adding another senior developer to your team, a mid-level developer will be more than enough.
  
  
• Always look for cross-selling opportunities. Maybe you’ll be able to expand the scope of cooperation.
  

Change management skills

• Analyse the change. Begin analysing the effects of the change as soon as it’s been implemented.
  
  
• Estimate the costs of this for the client, if this is something that needs to be paid for separately.
  
  
• Discuss this with client beforehand, and act in accordance with the agreed upon arrangements.

Acceptance testing skills

• Prepare the team so that they know what steps to follow during the acceptance testing procedure and how to react to the problems reported. And make sure they are aware of any potential issues that could trigger the client’s concerns, etc.
  
  
• Determine the time, place, and resources that you need to run the tests.
  
  
• Prepare all the instructions/criteria/equipment for your client to review as well. They need to have a clear understanding of the process.
  
  
• If acceptance testing is not included in the plan, come up with other verification procedures with your client. They need to know how to determine whether the product or system works for them and who is going to test it, etc. This is one of the most important parts of the development process, and should be done by the book.

RACI matrix skills

• Determine which stakeholders will be engaged in the project – from the list that you already made earlier.
  
  
• Identify project members who are:
  – Responsible
  – Accountable
  – Consulted
  – Informed

The RACI matrix is not just for stakeholders, but also for other key persons in your project, such as the Product Owner, Team Leader, Lead Developer, Project Manager, and Engagement Manager, etc. The matrix simply shows you a clear division of responsibilities, so that everyone knows what to do, and there are no overlapping duties.

Close picture

MoSCoW method skills

• Assign each of the project requirements to one of the prioritisation categories below:
  – Must have
  – Should
  – Could have
  – Won’t have

This will help you find out what definitely needs to be done for the solution to work, what should be done (one way or another), what would be nice to have but is not strongly required, and what doesn’t have to be finished now, but can be implemented in the future.

• Use the MoSCoW method throughout the entire project, especially when you need to talk about the project requirements – whether it’s with your team or with the client.

One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) skills

• Reduce your project down to a simple one-page document by leveraging OPPM. This tool will allow you and your client to keep all the most significant information and metrics in one place, so that you can maintain control over the progress of the project and make quick adjustments, whenever needed.
  
  
• Determine project owners, priorities, milestones, tasks, responsibilities, and costs, etc. And don’t forget to include a short summary, along with some predictions for the future.

Project diary + Minutes of Meeting (MoM) skills

• Write down all relevant events in chronological order. This will be your project diary, containing all the data from the project’s lifecycle. You can use it to draw on lessons learnt and then apply this knowledge to your next project.
  
  
• Write up a summary of any meetings or hearings, and then send it as an email. This is called the MoM and it allows you to have a written record of everything that was agreed upon, so that you can refer to it whenever necessary.

Wrap-up

This may seem like a lot to learn – especially if you are a new team leader – but, actually, these are just some basic hard skills that are not so difficult to master. Not only that, they will also allow you to move freely and intuitively within any project, so that you can organise your work better and manage your team more effectively.

Achieve business goals with the right experts

Engage a team of talented software development engineers or specialists in chosen technologies.

Accelerate your success