How to Implement the BVA in a Large Organization

23 Jun How to Implement the BVA in a Large Organization

Posted at 21:22h in News & Press by

After learning about the Best Value Approach (BVA), professionals become excited about the benefits of the approach (5-50% cost savings, 10X productivity, 50% reduction in procurement and project management time, and increased client satisfaction). It seems like an easy choice to use a method that has 20+ years of research in the industry with over 2,000 test projects worth $6.5B and 64 licensed organizations worldwide. The results and documentation make it a no-brainer to use in their organization but there is one big question that remains “How can we implement it in our own organization?”.

From years of research in implementing BVA, I have come up with five simple steps that will help any practitioner implement BVA in their organization. The fives steps are:

  1. Learn and understand the Best Value Approach
  2. Understand the pitfalls of implementing BVA
  3. Create a strategic plan
  4. Executing the plan by showing the performance metrics
  5. Documenting BVA

In the next sections of the article, I will go over each step in greater detail.

1 – Learn and Understand the Best Value Approach

This first step might seem obvious, but learning and understanding the BVA is essential to implementing it. So, what do I mean by “learn and understand BVA”? Learning and understanding BVA is more than just going to a workshop or conference. Most professionals think that after learning about the approach that it is simple that they can run it themselves. Even though BVA is simple, professionals usually need assistance in running their first project.

I have provided a list of simple things that professionals can do to learn and understand BVA:

2 – Understand the Lessons Learned of Implementing BVA

Hopefully, professionals don’t want to make the same mistakes as previous organizations. It is important to learn from those who have already implemented BVA in their organization. By understanding lessons learned from other practitioners, we increase our chance of success, and reduce our risk of implementing BVA.

Here’s list of things that can be done to understand lessons learned from implementing BVA:

3 – Create a Strategic Plan

Most practitioners do not have a strategic plan when implementing BVA in their organization. The strategic plan is essential to the success of implementation. It is important to treat this implementation like any other project. The strategic plan should have the basic items:

Core Group (who will be involved)

  • Choose wisely who you work with (only experts and visionaries)
  • Choose people that are already thinking “BVA”
  • Don’t choose people that need a lot of training

Schedule

  •  Realistic dates and milestones

Performance Metrics

  • What results will you have at the end?
  • What metrics will you be tracking?
  • How will you document the success?

Risks and Politics

  • What are you biggest risks?
  • What are the politics involved?
  • What type of organization do you have?

These are basic items that should be in each strategic plan to make it a success. I highly recommend that practitioners have a BVA Expert in their core team to ensure success.

4 – Executing the Plan and Showing the Results

Once the plan is set and everything is ready, the plan needs to be executed. If the strategic plan is simple and straight forward, then the execution will be smoother. The only way that the strategic plan works is if there are significant results that can be shown. The results can’t be 5% cost reduction or 10%-time reduction. These reductions are too small for an organization to justify using an approach. An example of significant results has been taken from a client and shown below.

Once the core group has results that can be showed to justify the implementation. They move to the next step.

5 – Documenting BVA

Now that there is justification to use the BVA, the next step is to document the effort to make sure that the process can withstand political and internal criticism. Here are some things that can be done to document BVA:

  1. Purchase the license from Arizona State University
  • This will allow you to get all the licensed material that can be used by your organization in running BVA with all the templates.
  1. Document projects in research papers and publish in journals
  • This can be done in any journal.
  • PBSRG has their own journal that accepts research papers.
  1. Integrate BVA in your internal processes
  2. Consult with BVA Experts

Conclusion

In this article, I have provided a process for practitioners to implement BVA in their organization. If practitioners follow the five steps provided in the article, they are ensured success in their organizations. I have seen many practitioners fail in implementing BVA because they were unprepared to face what was ahead of them. I invite all practitioners who are determined to use BVA and receive the results to follow the steps and reach out to me if they have any questions! I wish you the best of luck in your organization!