Tragic Tale No.004

This is the fourth in a series of tragic transformation tales, shared by a diverse group of business leaders, in conjunction with the launch of Angie’s book, TransformAble: How to Perform Death-Defying Feats of Business Transformation.

In this episode, I’m talking to Pat Quint, chief information officer of Mastronardi Produce, as he revisits a tragic attempt at transformation from his past.

Angie: Today we’re talking about a technology-focused transformation, something every company faces many times in their life. Pat, tell me about this particular one.

Pat: This was at a large global auto manufacturer and the goal was to centralize from five regional solutions to one global warranty solution. It was a massive undertaking. It had to work for over 13,000 dealerships, with 170 different dealer management systems, support many languages and currencies, and replace a 30 year-old mainframe. And the business wanted a contemporary solution that did all that and more. There were significant savings associated with this.

Angie: A complex and significant undertaking. And I’m sure we’re talking over $50M at that scale.

Pat: Yes. And it was far more complex than we realized. We had a difficult time making our milestones, tried to fix things by changing our entire development process, but in year 4 had to pause the entire initiative to step back and regroup, replan, and ask for millions of dollars more. Though the program was cash positive each year, it ultimately took 8 to 9 years to roll out, which was a long tiresome journey. We had to reduce the scope, change technology decisions a few times, and use a variety of partners.

Angie: What happened over those first four years? That’s longer than most troubled transformations take to hit pause. Or cancel, as also often happens.

Pat: At the beginning, it took over a year just to create the business case, which included analyzing the industry.

Angie: So you assessed the disruption in your industry—that’s good.

Pat: But being that slow to create the case put us right into the 2008 financial crisis downturn. Fortunately, even then the case was compelling enough to be approved for over $50M.

Angie: You could have missed your shot. Fortunate that you got it through. When did trouble strike?

Pat: As we got 2 to 3 years into it, we were falling behind. We just weren’t going fast enough, not getting momentum. We couldn’t meet our milestones in this complex environment.
We looked for something to give the team focus. To bring a sense of urgency. And to break down that complexity level. It felt so overwhelming, with all those integrations and trying to harmonize the business process across all the regions which was an impossible task.

Angie: The teams were overwhelmed by the complexity and they were getting mired in all the details… 

Pat: So we decided to change our process, and jumped on the Agile bandwagon. Trained over 100 people in agile development practices, added coaches to the team, and started to break the problem down.

Angie: Did that help?

Pat: It helped in some ways. We were picking up the pace, starting to meet some milestones. Switching to Agile helped us focus and deliver on small parts of functionality. But something was still wrong at the core. The Agile practices weren’t solving the core issue of how we initially set up the program. And now we’re in year 4 or 5. The fundamental program estimates were never adjusted as we learned new things throughout the process. So even though it felt like we were making progress, we were about ready to fall of the cliff by not keeping an eye on the full picture.

Angie: Was a Recon Mission conducted? It sounds like you fell into the Too Deep Too Soon pitfall, which is a pretty insidious one. Teams dive into details too soon, get mired in the complexity, delay after delay occurs…it’s pretty hard to figure out that you’re even in a pitfall, at first.

Pat: In retrospect it is clear that we had missed Recon—that’s an important step you detail nicely in your book. We weren’t looking at the overall landscape.

Angie: Why do you think the Recon phase was skipped? Was it simply lack of transformation know-how?

Pat: Our discipline, tools, and estimating and delivery processes in IT were geared for following a waterfall methodology and we were immature with agile. The culture and financial processes compounded this, forcing solid agreements on scope, cost and timing into place way up front, at the vision stage.

Angie: So it created corporate pressure to dive into details directly from the vision. This is an extremely common transformation pitfall. You are far from alone in this. Approval is given, someone says “Go,” and people are feeling the pressure to produce so they start running. Fast. Right off the edge of a transformation cliff.

Pat: We benchmarked, analyzed the state of the industry, and included the best warranty process capabilities from our research as well as many of the current capabilities into the scope. We did map out the transformation at a high level, but not at enough detail to understand the chunks of work and how to get to the end solution, to understand how it all made sense together, if it all made sense. We also didn’t identify the minimal viable product (MVP), and the scope was much larger than it should’ve been. We didn’t take the time to properly complete the Recon step to rationalize the project and reset expectations, which is so important.

Angie: So what happened?

Pat: We had to pause the program, reset and do a Recon effort. You really don’t want to have to go back to the CEO and CFO in year 4 to explain this and ask for more money. Him asking, “Why are you guys out of control? How did you get to this point before you finally realized…?” Not where you want to be. Especially when your company is still trying to get out of the recession.

Angie: Not a fun conversation, for sure.

Pat: We got the money. And we delivered incremental value to the company in the end, more than enough to pay for the program, but nowhere near the expectations around timing in the original business case given that it it took 8 or 9 years.

Angie: This is a powerful experience that I’m sure shaped your later success.

Pat: It really did. Since then, I’ve done a lot of big technology transformations, and had the chance to apply these learnings. In fact, my team at Mastronardi Produce will be taking on a massive ERP transformation soon that will impact our entire operations, supply chain, and financials.

Angie: I know you’ll be deftly avoiding those pitfalls. Pat, good luck with your transformation and thanks for sharing your tale.

Pat: Thanks Angie. I really enjoyed sharing probably the biggest learning of my IT profession.

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Order Angie’s book TransformAble: How to Perform Death-Defying Feats of Business Transformation from your favorite bookseller. 

Angie Tuglus is a transformation expert and executive advisor. She has led numerous business transformations as a former Fortune 500 executive, and has worked in companies ranging from startup to Fortune 10. 

Pat Quint has led IT organizations in the automotive, financial, and produce industries, and he has implemented several enterprise solutions that have transformed company operations. He enjoys working with his team and business partners to achieve the desired results for his company. Learn more about Pat HERE...
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© 2021 Angie Tuglus