The M&A activities are one of the most complex projects PMs get to manage due to the number of moving parts involved between the different items being conveyed, the number of people involved, and including two separate companies. They are the cat herders where the three most important details is a accounting of the state for all tasks, who’s doing it, and when it will be accomplished.

Borrowing from the software world, what does it mean for a task to be accomplished?

This is the definition of done.

When breaking out the work, you have a description of the work to be done, who’s going to do it, and the critical acceptance criteria to indicate when it is ready. This acceptance criteria would outline the expected behavior and optimally validation tests.

Unfortunately, this is the one thing that is missing in most MS Project managed projects or spreadsheets that would normally be used for tracking your integration work. You may get a task title, ownership, date, and possibly some dependencies.

Where these matter is that the PM has more than enough going on that they lose track on the nuances of the task and what the actual state is. They are not able to communicate the needs required to complete it without outside help. Additionally, this allows teams to claim victory before the work is actually completed resulting in massive gaps uncovered towards the end of the integration work, or deferred into some indeterminate date eating away at the true value of the acquisition.

In both cases, the gaps can prove detrimental to the integration work and the overall success of the M&A activity.

There are two sets of audiences: the executive steering committees that are the true owners of the integration effort and just need to know what’s where, and the guys tasked with doing the work. The PMs sit in-between as the truth teller: not bogging the executives down in details, but still able to accurately track and task the work.

cab