Business Problem

The APM project was initially thought of as another kind of audit or requirements gathering exercise. So with the right stakeholder involvement and communication management, people were brought on board to support the project.

The drilling business value chain spans multiple value segments. Each segment is supported by a different set of applications accumulated over the years; some of these applications were introduced in the late 1990s and were running at the time of the project execution. Naturally, it is expected that there would be technical and functional issues for such a portfolio of applications. However, identifying these issues was a challenge for quite some time. While some of these applications imposed technical debit on the organization, they were still in operation for varying reasons. The hardest reason concerns the emotional attachment ADNOC IT or business stakeholders have with them. This is one of the key areas where the project was challenged during early communication with the stakeholders.

The applications had a wide user base that includes Drilling User Support, Engineering, Drilling Operations, Equipment, Well Services, Business Planning, Drilling Services (Planning & Cost Estimation), Reservoir Engineering, and Operation Subsurface Management. This wide spread of users has varying levels of experience and maturity which led to different levels of acceptance, in many cases for the same application. This imposed a challenge on the project to have a sound sample of business stakeholders during assessment workshops. In some cases, seven stakeholders, from different disciplines, participated in the assessment of a single application, all with different views and perceptions. Getting them to agree on a common set of findings, be it negative or positive, was a true challenge.