Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Results
from Bureau’s various units participated in collecting the data and
presenting it in a series of workshops. The core program team of around ten
people and the consultants analyzed the data between the workshops. There
were altogether nine workshops during this phase, with a total of about 50
participants. The phase took six months and was concluded in a report
prepared by the consultants, summarizing the current state of Bureau’s IT
management.
During the program initiation, a new director coming from outside the
Bureau organization was appointed for the central unit involved in the
program. He was the new superior of the program manager, and he was
assigned as the program owner. He participated actively in guiding the
early program activities and he started to actively sell the program idea to
the top management of Bureau. With the results of the current state
analysis, he was able to convince the top management to make a decision to
continue with the program to the second phase.
The goal of the second phase of the program was to address the
weaknesses of Bureau’s IT management identified during the current state
analysis and to create basic solutions and guidelines for the proposed new
solution. The work method was similar to the first phase. The program
owner, the program manager, the same core team and consultants guided
the work that was organized around almost twenty workshops, with
subgroups concentrating on specific parts of the solution. During this
phase, nearly 200 people from different units of Bureau participated in the
workshops. Many participants were highly motivated as they felt they
finally had an opportunity to address the problems they constantly
encountered in their daily work. The core team and the consultants
elaborated the plans between the workshops. Contrary to the Bureau’s
traditional way of operating, the team also decided to open up. They
presented their framework openly to various external actors and also asked
for advice and offers from several IT companies, even though they were not
yet ready to send out the official requests for proposals. They also
benchmarked similar programs implemented in other organizations and
gained various ideas that could be used as a basis for solution design.
The series of planning workshops and meetings was concluded in a twoday
seminar where the development work was synthesized. After this final
seminar, the consultancy contract ended in handing over a final report.
Many participants of the planning workshops were satisfied with the
process and its results, although some described that the participants’
conflicting interests and varying knowledge in technical issues had made
the discussion challenging. Some interviewees also stated that the
participatory process resulted in several compromises and some sub-
108