Project Management Procedure At State Farm Insurance

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Projects are undertaken at all levels in a company. They may require the efforts of a single person or many thousands. Their duration may range from a week to more than two years. Some involve a single unit of one organization. Others (such as joint ventures and partnering) cross functional or even organizational boundaries.

A SWOT analysis is a technique that may be used by a facilitator to help a team analyze an organization's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are discovered by looking internally, while opportunities and threats are external. Once identified, results of the analysis should focus on leveraging strengths, neutralizing weaknesses, exploiting opportunities, and mitigating threats.

In an effort to continuously improve the execution of Business Architecture at State Farm, we are iterating on our feedback strategy and promoting a consistent and open dialogue between the Business Areas and BTIO. The opportunity to regularly incorporate what is working and areas of improvement has been and will continue to be a key to creating enterprise value of Business Architecture.

Project management concepts, procedures and issues at host business

A project is a always considered as a set of interrelated activities, usually involving a group of people working together towards a common goal or objective over a period of time. A good project management tactic requires extensive organizational, budgeting, staffing, controlling, and communication skills. (Unknown, 2012, p. 1 to 2)

Project Management – Phases involved

To manage a project, one needs to typically progress through the following four phases

Defining and organizing the project

Planning the project

Executing the project

Closing down the project

Let’s discuss each of the phases in a much more detailed format:

Defining and organizing the project

Identify the business need for and objectives of the project; Clarify competing demands and watch for scope creep; Define roles and responsibilities; Create the project charter; Develop high-level time and cost estimates.

Planning the project

Assemble the team and assign tasks for the team members; Develop a budget; Develop a schedule; Create a communications plan.

Executing the project

Launch the project with the assigned team; Monitor and control the progress of the team in terms of cost, time, and quality; Manage risk.

Closing down the project

The project team evaluates the team's performance; Archive documents related to the project; Capture the lessons learned; Celebrate the project's success and completion.

Project Management procedure at State Farm Insurance

The Project Management Process is the collection of process, procedure, template, standard, and policy documentation used to manage a project through four project management phases

Planning Phase - Defining and refining objectives and selecting the best of the alternative courses of action to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to address.

Executing and Controlling Phases - These two phases work concurrently. Executing refers to coordinating people and other resources to carry out the plan. Controlling ensures the project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress regularly.

Closing Phase - Formalizing acceptance of the project and bringing it to an orderly end.

Five sub processes organize process, procedure, template, standard, and policy documentation within the phases. They are Scope Management, Integration Management, Time Management, Facilitated Process Management and Documentation Management.

The Project Management Process results in the following major deliverables:

Planning Phase Deliverable - This document defines the project scope and identifies the product/services being delivered. It also contains stakeholder, schedule, product ownership, constraint, assumption and risk information regarding those products/services. This document is the guide for the executing and controlling phases.

Phase Deliverables - These discretionary deliverables summarize information regarding the status of the project. If this means for reporting project status is used, separate deliverables are created for each of the product phases of Requirements, Design, Development, Validation and Implementation which occur during the executing and controlling phases.

Closing Phase Deliverable - This discretionary deliverable is the final acceptance that the project has executed all identified work. This document is created in the event of full product deployment or if the scope changes and results in the project closing without delivering the originally scoped work.

Why is it important?

By managing projects effectively, we generate immense benefits for our company. Let me quote some examples below:

Ensures that things get done on time and on budget; these achievements add predictability to the organization's work

Minimize costs by finding ways to deliver on objectives within reasonable planning horizons, good project managers reduce costs

Utilize resources effectively; Sound project management makes more efficient use of money and valuable employees' time

Add value to the business; Projects are a key means by which organizations reach their strategic goals

Project viability – SWOT Analysis on an ongoing project

SWOT Analysis for Florida Zone for State Farm Financial Companies

Strength

Agency

High percentage of Select Agents.

High percentage of registered representatives.

Engaged agency team - an overall assessment indicates 67% of Florida agents are considered engaged in: Marketing activities, AFO Promotions, Production (Sales), Retention & Team Member Licensing. (Unknown, 2012, p.1 to 2)

Operations

Florida Zone currently ranks second in the Enterprise in employees per vehicle efficiency at 6.4 (5.6).

Florida has a highly skilled and engaged workforce that is committed with a positive focus.

Auto

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is financially strong.

State Farm owns the top auto market share in Florida.

State Farm’s strong growth in 2008 resulted in a 0.3% increase in auto market share to 17.8%. This year showed the largest increase in premium and market share in the Auto business.

Weakness

Agency

By August 2010, 22% of Florida agents will be 60 years of age or older.

There will be a large reduction in agents and staff members in 2010. With that, there will be fewer storefronts/customer access points.

There is a negative public perception around agents. They look expensive with a lack of meaningful differentiation. There is a need to increase awareness around the value of an agent.

Since we are not recruiting new agents, there is a lack of new agents to increase market penetration.

Operations

Lack of cultural acumen for leadership and employees.

State Farm has a slow execution/organizational agility. The company is also slow to re-skill employees.

Organizational silos within the Zone.

Auto

There is a rapidly declining Auto policy count at the same time there are new financial pressures being placed on the core product.

The perception of State Farm being a trustworthy Auto insurer continued to trend downward in Florida.

Opportunity

Auto

40% of auto defectors would consider returning to State Farm.

Opportunity is greater in Future Growth (Added Car) than other zones (30%).

Auto Market Opportunity Model.

Technological advancements in automobiles are decreasing claim frequency.

Brand/Marketing

Educate and capture the young adult market and the women’s market. Research shows that women make most of the household purchasing decisions.

Florida has a slightly larger African American market compared to the Enterprise.

Threat

Agency

Potential impact of loss of agent and agent staff and increase in PIF per staff member.

There are fewer and less experienced agents and team members to meet customer demands.

There are several markets with retiring Agents or Agents of retirement

Operations

Continued loss of auto policies due to Fire non-renewals.

Loss of several high-potential employees to other zones or other companies due to withdrawal announcement.

Florida has an older population and fewer graduates/advanced degrees. This could potentially make it more difficult to recruit employees and agents than in other Zones.

Auto

Florida is losing younger drivers ages 30-39 and 40-49 and has declining Auto sales.

Prospects seeking Auto Insurance overall are less agent-oriented and more price-driven.

As of August 28, 2009, Florida has lost 90,238 auto policies – a loss of almost 5% of Auto PIF for the Florida market.

Decline in the number of registered vehicles.

Higher PD and BI frequency and severity than the rest of the nation.

Features of a successful project management process

This Project Management Mentoring Program (PMMP) Guide is designed to provide general information about the preparation, rewards, implementation, and evaluation of a Project Manager mentoring relationship. It also contains information that may offer direction to new Project Managers.

Some of the specific information about the Project Management Mentoring Program includes mentoring events, timing, and sequencing, which is included in the "Project Management Mentoring Program – Orientation" (or Manager Training Plan and Manager Training Plan Supplement) document. (Unknown, 2013)

The Project Measures of Success describe how successful project completion will be measured. These metrics should be established within current metric gathering capabilities. The metrics should support all appropriate service level objectives (SLOs) impacted and/or related business areas.

The Project Measures of Success are documented in the Planning Phase Deliverable under the Scope Management section

Let us discuss the 3 main steps involved in measuring the project success:

Step 1

Identify Project Measures of Success

Performed by Project Manager, Project Team and Test Manager

Activities involved

Conducting few brainstorming sessions to determine the measures of success for each project objective by achieving the following:

For each project objective identified in the Complete Project Objectives Section procedure:

Write the objective on a piece of flipchart paper.

Identify the measure that will define success for that objective. General measurement categories include:

Quality - completeness, accuracy and conformance to requirements or standards

Cost - the relationship between resources used (e.g., time and money) and outputs

Timeliness - the measure of whether work was delivered on time

Move on to the next objective

Step 2

Validate Project Measures of Success

Performed by Project Manager

Activities involved

Verify that a metric exists that will support each measure identified. (For assistance, see Metrics on the Assurance Planning & Information (API) homepage on SFNet).

If a metric is not available, repeat step 1 to identify a measure that has a metric available.

Step 3

Document the Project Measures of Success

Performed by Project Manager

Activities involved

In the section of the Planning Phase Deliverable, document the Measures of Success from Step

Success Stories

Let us now discuss some of the success stories share by the employees here at State Farm financial companies.

Zone process improvement community: QI Macros is an add-on tool to Excel that exists within and has been approved for use within State Farm. This assists in process improvement work and statistical analysis work. This is basically a set of macros on Excel that takes the data collection and easily converts to charts and graphs saving a significant amount of time. An individual within the FL Zone discovered this tool and gave a demo to the community as well as providing tips for its use.

Wireless Enterprise Spend review: As a member of the current Wireless Enterprise Spend Review, I have been impressed by Share Point's ability to aid in the facilitation of work by people that are geographically separated. I believe that without Share Point available as a collaboration resource during the project, the potential for zone travel expense passed to the effort could have exceeded well over $50,000.00. Share Point helped us avoid this expense

Knowledge Sharing: This SharePoint site looks like a great way to not only keep track of all the documents but also to share them with the entire group with minimal confusion and effort. It should allow us to spend time more efficiently by keeping everything organized and not having to spend time searching for something or waiting to receive documents from others

Project Management Tools

Project Management Team

These are processes, and tool sub-sets of the main PMO Service Project Management Support as described below:

Process Support: PM Discipline, Risk Management, Research Tax Credit, Project Office Consulting Group, and Project Sponsors, Project Management Strategy, Project scorecard.

Process & Tool Support: Project Lotus Notes® / SFW-PHASE Collaboration database, Systems Programs & Projects (SPP) database, Methodology Manager, Primavera Upgrades, Program Evaluation Tool, Risk Management tools (portfolio, pre, and post), and Research Tax Credit in SPP. (Unknown, 2012)

Let us discuss each of the Project management tools at State Farm financial companies in detail:

Planning Resources and tools

Access, navigate, and identify the content and links located on the Project Management website.

Provide informational resources regarding project management

Further the progression of project management as a professional discipline.

Access, navigate, and explain the purpose of the Systems Process Architecture (SPA) website.

Understand the SPA website format

Be able to navigate the SPA website

Identify the deliverables required to be produced – using SWAT & Risk Estimating Tool (RET)

The Solution Development Methodology (SDM) Work Analysis Tool (SWAT) provides an efficient method for work effort teams to identify which deliverables and/or activities a team should produce or perform.

Improves accuracy in determining which deliverables and/or activities are needed for a work effort by providing a consistent review method.

The Risk Estimating Tool (RET) provides State Farm with a standard method for establishing a risk profile for projects. The RET is a questionnaire that assesses areas of risk within the project. The RET also generates an Overall Risk Estimate value for the project.

Determine an estimate of a project’s complexity and workload

The Project Manager (PM) Utilization Tool was originally created as a short-term solution to help Project Management Directors (PMDs) make decisions on the assignment of internal PMs to work efforts in Systems, based on their experience and ability to handle complex projects.

Storing Project information

Lotus Notes - Project Collaboration Databases

Know about and be able to use an SFW-PHASE database.

Know about and be able to use a Project collaboration database.

Know the appropriate use of public folders

Lifecycle Tool Suite

Rational® Requisite Pro

Rational® ClearCase

Rational® ClearQuest

Rational® Software Architect

Rational® Manual Tester

Rational® Functional tester

Rational® BuildForge

Status Reporting

Know how to meet departmental reporting requirements using the Systems Programs and Projects (SPP) database. Be aware of other status reporting obligations.

Monthly Progress report

Accomplishment document

Program or Solution Center reporting

Dashboards

Required forms and tools

Know how to submit a People Allocation Request (PAR).

Know how the use of the IT Solution Certification Tool.

Checklist for deciding whether process improvement is necessary

Worksheet for planning a process redesign

Worksheet for creating a functional activity flowchart

Process report card

Worksheet for process benchmarking

Work Initiation Tool (WIT)

Strategic Initiatives and Rating, Legislative, or Critical Maintenance (RLCM) project work must be initiated using the Work Initiation Tool on Lotus Notes. This tool provides on-line forms to document specific information about the effort. This information is used to establish the priority of the work prior to projects activating.

Project Closing

Project Closing Checklist

Research Tax Credit (RTC)

Records Management

Remove Data Access

Lessons Learned