How a large IT company develops internal digital projects

Cons: Less organized

An external project is a task that arises as a result of a commercial transaction.

There is a customer who pays, there is a performer. The contract clearly stipulates all (well, or at least a significant part) of the conditions, there is financial responsibility. Therefore, both sides pay great attention to the project. If the performer does not do something, he will not be paid. In turn, the customer has already spent part of the budget, concluded the contract, and if there is no result, someone will be held responsible. There is less uncertainty in such projects.

Projects inside are launched softer, they have more changes and progress. A specialist from another department may lose interest – and no one will fire him, for example, since this is not his main job.

Plus – more interesting tasks

Commercial projects usually go in a stream. Let’s say the team implements communication services – for one, second, fifth, hundredth customer. The process is established, there are differences in the infrastructure of clients, but they are rarely significant. Whereas internal projects are always a challenge. We do not need five identical services inside, ten CRMs. Accordingly, before the start of each project, our RPs immerse themselves in topics that are new to them and learn a lot.

Specialization is not accepted in our management, that is, certain types of tasks are not assigned to specific specialists. It is very difficult to find a strong PM with the right experience in the subject area. But there is a lot of room for development.

Since project managers are most often creative people, they find it very interesting to work on internal projects.

Start of digital transformation

Our department appeared after the company headed for the development of internal IT systems. From the very beginning, we were directly subordinate to the CEO, and this is a big plus – the chain of approvals is shorter, the protection of budgets is easier.

From the very beginning, my team and I were deeply immersed in business processes. I myself know all the nuances well, since I have been with Softline for 16 years. We do not work on tasks that are out of touch with life and cool features. Our goal is to improve the efficiency and profitability of the business, primarily for the sales team, but also for related departments. Optimize and automate processes, find ways to save money, offer and implement solutions, monetize data.

Among the recently implemented projects, for example, the introduction of a recruiting automation system, the development of our own solution for managing the adaptation of employees and their development.

Our projects are strategic and tactical business objectives

We have two main ways in which new projects come. The first is from the company’s long-term development strategy. There is a large pool of tasks for several years, all of them are aimed at increasing the internal efficiency of the sales team and related departments. That is, we help our colleagues to increase the profitability and transparency of processes.

The second way is projects from other departments. Colleagues come to us with their tasks – they have found an opportunity to automate, refine, change something. We evaluate what return, profitability can be – now and in the future. If we see potential, we launch the request to work. Sometimes such requests turn into large projects. As an example, this year we plan to introduce a solution for managing corporate certifications (various state licenses, partner statuses, engineering certifications, etc.).

We are migrating an existing marketing system to a bpms platform, integrating it with CRM, uniting the client and contact base, implementing lead scoring (maybe we will do this using AI), automating the ABM approach (Account Based Marketing), at the same time doing a little reengineering business processes in marketing management.

We also have organizational projects that are not related to IT. For example, we recently completed the development of customer segmentation rules. We determined by what criteria to divide the client base into segments, how, taking into account the specifics, to build work with each of them and increase its efficiency. Not so long ago, they began to discuss the initiation of a project to introduce process management across the company. This is a huge topic, a separate world.

We are constantly looking at the possibilities of integrating AI into our systems so that some operations are performed fully automated. While we are at the beginning of the journey, the future is all the more interesting!

And in general, we actively participate in various transformations within the company.

At the same time, we usually run 5-6 large projects and several small or medium ones.

Who is involved in projects

There are 30 people in our management, four key areas.

The first is project managers. According to our standards, one RP can conduct either one large or two medium-sized projects at the same time, no more – so that there is no overload and resources remain to search for non-standard solutions.

Then there are business analysts who examine the processes, goals and objectives of internal customers, work with requirements, helping to develop technical specifications or set a task for the development team. As a rule, business analysts work in tandem with the RP.

We also have data analysts. These are the guys who work with numbers and facts, extract information from them for our systems, process them and find business value in them. That is, these are the people who, within the framework of project activities, can say how effective the project will be, how much savings or profit it will give. For example, during the course of research, they may find out that somewhere there is too much cost that can be reduced, or there is a function that needs to be optimized. One of the projects that we are working on in the field of analytics is the development of a unit-economy model for our business.

At the moment we do not have such a role as Dada Scientist, but probably in the future such a specialist will appear in our team if GPT-5 does not learn to do this work for people 🙂

And the fourth direction is sales methodologies. Since, first of all, our management is engaged in the transformation of sales, we also undertake the development and implementation of new methodologies tailored to the specifics of the Russian market, taking into account our mentality and peculiarities. We are even thinking about launching our methodology on the foreign market as an independent product, because we have collected a lot of unique knowledge.

We engage contractors for many projects – these can be internal contractors – our colleagues from other departments or subsidiaries (for example, Develika, which is engaged in custom development and employs several thousand developers), or external contractors.

Several hundred people can work on management tasks at a time.

Project Management Approach

We are faced with very diverse tasks. Therefore, we do not set limits for ourselves, for example, to work only according to Agile, but choose the methodology that will be convenient in each specific case.

At the stage of project initiation, we confirm the readiness of the business to invest, we deal with the benefits. Here we form a team, attract people from outside, agree on how and to what extent we will involve employees from other departments, what will be the motivation.

Next, we set the framework – we clearly fix what should be done to consider the project successful, what should not be, and what remains in question.

The next step is planning, we set reference points in the project, we get a small number of them, usually three to five.

After that, we proceed to the implementation, which depends on the chosen approach. If this is Agile, then we go to task lists, if it’s a hybrid or classic approach, we draw up a detailed action plan.

We have a project office, but so far it is in its infancy and is mainly engaged in IT projects, although in the future it is planned that it will cover all projects in the company.

We have specifics on internal projects: often the deadlines and tasks are shifted in the course of work. Let’s say something has changed in a business – the project needs to be changed. Or, due to external factors, funding went to higher priority tasks, we were required to reduce costs. The current crisis has significantly affected the IT market. In many companies, internal digital transformation departments have closed. We have optimized costs on some projects, but none have been frozen or cancelled.

After the work on the system or solution is completed, we put it into operation. At the same time, we stipulate how it will develop further – in IT management, or by the forces of a separate formed team in our management.

Team Expansion

Our management is very dynamic and constantly growing. New teams and departments appear within, which means that employees have the opportunity to grow. For example, last year we had a head of business intelligence because the division grew despite the difficult market situation due to geopolitics. Developing, we recruit more specialists in our main areas.

Internal IT projects are a very interesting direction for specialists, an opportunity to get diverse, non-standard experience, improve skills, study project management, not their administration. If, as in our case, the team is expanding, and the tasks are growing, then this is also a chance to quickly climb the career ladder – to take a leadership position and learn how to manage teams.