Möbius Partners was assisting Rent-A-Center (RAC) by migrating its existing on-premises data center to a new co-location data center. The project was going to impact the entire company and required communication and coordination among the entire information technology team, including the infrastructure and applications teams, as well as business users.
Going into the project, all knew that while this was not going to be a complex technical problem to solve, communication and coordination would still be one of the keys to successful execution. Möbius Partners focus was to facilitate that for the benefit of all parties. Placing a priority on communication really set the tone.
Most clients don’t expect a tech company to put so much value on communicating clearly. The team calls it the Möbius Methodology.
The Möbius Partners team broke the project out into small, manageable phases of work. They decomposed the overall problem into small enough phases to successfully manage the project and eliminate the noise caused by non-prioritized activities. Granted, all the phases must fit together logically to obtain the ultimate goal, but the emphasis was to stay focused on one phase at a time and save any items for subsequent work for those phases.
Möbius Partners also made sure everyone knew who was responsible for what and by when. By publicly assigning tasks with clear ownership, the group outlined the accountability needed to keep the project on schedule. This also allowed for immediate identification and quick resolution of any roadblocks. This was accomplished by using daily stand-ups attended by the entire team. When done correctly, these stand-ups only took about 15 minutes every morning, and they kept the team focused for the day.
While the original project schedule was extended to accommodate the unforeseen global pandemic, meeting the original schedule would save RAC additional tangential costs. Working together with the RAC team, Möbius Partners was able to meet its objectives while also addressing the challenges of the extended timeline brought on by the global pandemic.
