[Thant Coleman]

Once Synergies have been agreed upon by senior leadership, my method of decomposing synergies and creating high level goals and action items for functional areas is to ask 2 simple questions. Answers to the questions may be as detailed as management feels is necessary, however I tend to summarize for myself being as concise as possible while ensuring the point is still understood.

1. What can/must this functional area dot the help the organization achieve this goal?
2. What would the possible impact (within the department) to People, Process and Technology be?
With answers to these question from every function area/department in the organization, I typically create a draft Work Break Down Structure. With this WBS, I direct teams to further vet the feasibility of these departmental goals. Goals that pass the vetting are then further decomposed into smaller “buckets” of work until I have 4-5 buckets under each goal. This WBS will also serve as something of high-level scope.

With an enterprise wide WBS in hand, I then segment the work into projects and assign to a project manager. Having a WBS of this type allows a top-down view of the entire effort. I typically also use the WBS to track and monitor the enterprise wide effort through to completion.

This simple approach has served me well over the years. I would love to hear strategies for managing integrations and organizational efforts.

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