Center of Excellence (CoE)

How to deliver a Centre of
Excellence
Generic construct
February 2019

3
Centre of Excellence
Everybody understands the state of the project(s)Everybody understands the state of the project(s)
Established cadence and communications across
program
Established cadence and communications across
program
Projects delivered on time and meeting the requirements of
the business
Projects delivered on time and meeting the requirements of
the business
Delivering planned value and addressing risk management
requirements.
Delivering planned value and addressing risk management
requirements.
Agility of the Business is meetAgility of the Business is meet
Aligning technology project with strategic organizational
goals
Aligning technology project with strategic organizational
goals
Costs are kept under controlCosts are kept under control Projected vs. actual budget used, value derived.Projected vs. actual budget used, value derived.
Drivers for CoE?
Drives Competitive AdvantageDrives Competitive Advantage Delivering Business solutions at the speed of the BusinessDelivering Business solutions at the speed of the BusinessThis document is a partial preview. Full document download can be found on Flevy:
http://flevy.com/browse/document/centre-of-excellence-3764

6
Agenda
Introduction
Benefit of CoE
CoE Models
CoE Lifecycle & Processes
CoE Roles & Responsibilities
Summary
This document is a partial preview. Full document download can be found on Flevy:

9
Enables Timely Delivery
CoEs drive process execution so that you can identify, prioritize,
assign, execute, and communicate while leveraging people,
processes, knowledge, and technology and at the same time
delivering real value to the Business.
KnowledgePeople Processes Technology

12
Agenda
Introduction
Standards
Benefit of CoE
CoE Models
Summary

15
Confederated Model – Benefits and Challenges
Informal command and control.
Independent Business Units, subsidiaries, or
companies.
Controlling company builds applications
consumed by other companies.
Controlling company provides best practice
advice.
Harder to develop Global / Regional Business
processes.
Best practices many be lost.
Possible environment explosion
Companies Architectural standards may not be
adhered to.
Support costs
Benefits
Challenges
Confederated

18
Agenda
Introduction
Standards
Benefit of CoE
CoE Models
Summary

21
• ProgramCharter(NorthStar)
DefineKPI(Definesuccess metricsstrategy)
• BusinessBacklog
Enduserfeedbackloop
• TechnologyReleaseManagement
• Collaboration & Communication
Acorn Processes

24
Establish change control processes
Fundamental to any successful program is to have a well documented change management
process in place. There are 2 major streams to change management
Business, It is important for the business to own the decision criteria for the prioritisation of
the Business backlog, this should be based on the clearly defined goals and strategies
documented within the program charter. (The same criteria should be used to decide on
the end user feedback, but remember adoption)
Technology, the customer should implement an enterprise development/configuration
process which will automate all changes from development, test, UAT, production using
freely available tools which can be used by all current and future implementation partners.
Also you should clearly document what can be changed in production.
It is also important to have a well documented roadmap when business goals will be achieved,
this roadmap should be widely communicated to all dependant programs & teams so they can
plan & deliver their components on time

27
Technology Change Management
Many organisations have well established SDL processes (Software development lifecycle),
however when they start using Cloud technologies, they ignore these best practices and
processes.
In the discussion around the core processes this one is about getting the customer to consider
implement some of their on premise best practices to the cloud such as testing
The core processes of technology change management will be discussed in other processes
Development Processes
Establish Change Control Processes
Establish Environment Management
Develop RoadmapThis document is a partial preview. Full document download can be found on Flevy:

30
What are the Crucial “Starter Set” Assets to Focus On?
Solution
Architecture
Data
Strategy
Security & Data
Sharing Model
Development
Standards &
Best Practices
Data
Integration
Approaches &
Execution
Change
Management
CoE
Drives
Innovation

33
What are the Skills Required for Key CoE Roles?
Enterprise
Architecture
Platform technical
Object-oriented design
Enterprise strategy
Data strategy
Project
Management
Agile methodology
Adoption strategies
Managing upwards
Scope Management
Business
Analysis
360º understanding
Value management
Business Architecture
Business Engagement

36
Key Roles & Responsibilities
Day-to-Day
Architectural
Develops the Solution, technical and data architecture
Own the relationship with the Enterprise architectural tier
Defines the application standards
Adoption/Training
Responsible for user on-boarding and adoption
Responsible for overall curriculum & training strategy
Owns the communication plan
Support
Defines the on-going support model
Manages the end-user support
Qualifies defects/enhancements for change control board

39
Everybody understands the state of the project(s)Everybody understands the state of the project(s)
Established cadence and
communications across program
Established cadence and
communications across program
Projects delivered on time and meet the
requirements of the business
Projects delivered on time and meet the
requirements of the business
Dashboard/KPIs re: schedules,
dependencies, etc.
Dashboard/KPIs re: schedules,
dependencies, etc.
Adoption is highAdoption is high Gauge adoption and usageGauge adoption and usage
Costs are kept under controlCosts are kept under control
Projected vs. actual budget used, value
derived, etc.
Projected vs. actual budget used, value
derived, etc.
What are the Indicators of a Successful CoE?
Best practices are reused & updatedBest practices are reused & updated
Regular architectural and project reviews
reinforce best practices
Regular architectural and project reviews
reinforce best practicesThis document is a partial preview. Full document download can be found on Flevy:

42
CoE Summary
The process to manage governance
Essential to enable innovation

45
Establish change control processes
Fundamental to any successful program is to have a well documented change management
process in place. There are 2 major streams to change management
Business, It is important for the business to own the decision criteria for the prioritization of
the Business backlog, this should be based on the clearly defined goals and strategies
documented within the program charter. (The same criteria should be used to decide on
the end user feedback, but remember adoption)
Technology, the customer should implement an enterprise development/configuration
process which will automate all changes from development, test, UAT, production using
freely available tools which can be used by all current and future implementation partners.
Also you should clearly document what can be changed in production.
It is also important to have a well documented roadmap when business goals will be achieved,
this roadmap should be widely communicated to all dependant programs & teams so they can
plan & deliver their components on time

48
Conduct stakeholder analysis
You need to highlight ALL key stakeholders. This may involve other business units, especially if
you have complex integrations etc.
It is very important to engage with the senior business leaders to secure their buy in and
understand their requirements and KPI. Note there may be conflicting requirements
Especially with global processes
Create a Executive steering group which will help to resolve conflicts and set direction
They should approve the Program Charter
Remember end to end readiness, that means you may need to engage the stakeholders of the
back end systems to line up delivery schedules and ongoing support
Note: a totally lead IT project will be unsuccessful but
Not forgetting key IT stakeholders eg secure & dataThis document is a partial preview. Full document download can be found on Flevy:

51
Define long-term data management strategy
As your data volumes grow, what is the strategy to export/delete old data. Also which fields
need to be audited? Which system is the “system of record” for each data item
System of record, which data fields are the system of record, if any. Note many of our customers
are developing a single customer master
Data Architecture, it is very important to follow the companies data architecture, remember to
keep to Object based systems, so consider keeping the Standard objects as standard and
possible and use Customer object to hold the supplemental data
Data Migration, if you are migrating data for your new project, its important to start developing
your migration strategy from Day1 since minor changes to the data model may make
migration simpler
Security & Compliance, need to define which fields need to be audited and encrypted
Integration & Data half-life: No system is an island, so its is important to have a clear integration
strategy and use the correct tool based on the data half life.
As your data volumes grow do you need all your records on-line, so need an archiving strategy

54
Business Backlog
Due to the nature of the development platforms, you are able to deliver solutions to the business
very rapidly. To achieve a high business value transaction, then the business needs to own the
backlog and hence the user stories
Using the Charter & KPI, the business need to priorities the user stories
IT need to help in the sizing of the user stories and what can be delivered in each release
based on IT capacity
If the Business has a practically requirement which can’t be met due to IT capacity constraints,
they can develop a business case to secure addition funding for this requirement which will
allow IT to increase their capacity.

57
Administrators
What's the overall structure of your admins and their R&R, including delegated admins?
(Who has access to production and/or sandboxes)
What is the R&R of your administrators
Adhoc training
Development of reports and dashboards
User management
Data quality management
Minor development
Should limit the number of full Admins per environment to 2 (DR requirements) per Geo and use
the delegated admin role for the other admins
Note Admins should not be moving changes into production, this should be done by operations

1
Flevy (www.flevy.com) is the marketplace
for premium documents. These
documents can range from Business
Frameworks to Financial Models to
PowerPoint Templates.
Flevy was founded under the principle that
companies waste a lot of time and money
recreating the same foundational business
documents. Our vision is for Flevy to
become a comprehensive knowledge base
of business documents. All organizations,
from startups to large enterprises, can use
Flevy— whether it's to jumpstart projects, to
find reference or comparison materials, or
just to learn.
Contact Us
Please contact us with any questions you may have
about our company.
• General Inquiries
support@flevy.com
• Media/PR
press@flevy.com
• Billing
billing@flevy.com

Center of Excellence (CoE)

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from Flevy.com Best Practices

More from Flevy.com Best Practices (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Center of Excellence (CoE)