2023 · Montpellier, France · Hybrid
Project manager (Salesforce maintenance) — rail
CGI — Global leader in railway signalling systems
Following the sale of the rail business to a new group, the organisation had to align on its acquirer's practices, in which Salesforce is the customer relationship platform. An engagement of around a year, at a fixed price, migrated the old CRM to Salesforce. It ended leaving forty change and fix tickets open: the application maintenance takes over that tail end and makes the tool's use durable.
Three distinct envelopes, all on a best-efforts basis: working through the backlog from the migration, delivered in releases; a quarterly envelope for administration, operational upkeep and small changes, invoiced as it went; and a project to connect SAP and Salesforce. A team of three — a project manager, the role held here, a functional consultant trained in Salesforce administration and a second functional consultant retraining towards development. Material entirely in English, half the meetings too.
The first quarter consumed the envelope without exhausting the backlog, and the SAP project was stopped after a few workshops, its entry assumptions having proved wrong. The engagement was not renewed beyond April; the client then brought Salesforce administration back in house. Work to reconstruct the traceability records continued sporadically through to September.
Achievements
- 75 % of the migration backlog delivered
Taking over the migration's tail end
Forty change and fix tickets inherited from the migration, each estimated at two to two and a half days. Two large change topics turned out, once priced, to weigh fifteen to twenty days on their own; the overrun was absorbed by the services company. Three quarters of the tickets delivered in releases; the remaining quarter, not a priority, was not addressed.
Tooling an engagement built from nothing
A new account and a new application maintenance: setting up the internal Jira instance, Jira in service mode with a ticket-creation portal open to the client, the tracking files, the welcome pack, the document tree and the SharePoint.
First and second line support and access management
Access to the client's ticketing tool to handle users unable to log in to Salesforce. Access management handled by the application maintenance.
Traceability of a best-efforts engagement
Each task priced independently, sent systematically for approval, then worked and reported weekly with the envelope drawn down as deliveries went out. Approvals being given verbally and committee minutes not countersigned, the chain of evidence rested entirely on this arrangement.
Reconstructing the record after a challenge
The engagement was challenged at the end of the first quarter. Reconstruction work carried out with the project directorate, the internal teams and the client's procurement contacts, sporadically from April to September: emails, minutes, estimates and envelope drawdowns brought together to demonstrate point by point what had been committed, approved and delivered.
Framing of the SAP connection project, stopped
Framing workshops on the interface between SAP and Salesforce, run with contacts who were thin on availability. The requests proved unachievable as they stood and the entry assumptions wrong, forcing a complete revision of the budget; the project was stopped.
Skills applied
- Application maintenance and operations management
- Application support and production support
- Excel
- Jira
- Project alert handling and escalation
- Project financial tracking
- Project management
- Salesforce administration
- SharePoint
- Team management