Managing the massive
‘Technology tunnel vision’ is a phrase Ivan Lloyd, director at Corporate Project Solutions uses to describe IT projects that are selected based on a desire to implement a particular technology as opposed to aligning to business objectives. Here he considers the best way to manage these issues and processes during large scale projects.
When it comes to large IT projects and indeed IT projects of any scale, there are still a range of issues that need to be tackled. I don’t believe there should ever really be an ‘IT project’ as such, Information technology may be the largest element of a projects delivery, however IT itself should purely be used to help deliver as part of an overall business project.
The press is frequently dominated by stories of large government IT project failures in terms of cost and schedule overruns, however most organisations will also have more than their fair share of IT project failures. These failures are easily recognisable when viewed as late delivery or overspend, however far fewer organisations seem to recognise project failures when it comes to quality and even fewer when it comes to understanding whether the project delivered the benefits that it set out to – if in fact they were ever agreed at the start.
Many businesses do not have documented and prioritised strategic business objectives as an organisation. The fallout from this is that without business objectives how can you ensure that each and every new project or programme that is initiated clearly aligns and will therefore contribute to driving the business forward.
This portfolio management process needs to be understood and brought into a CXO level. If each project is then assessed against business objectives during initiation, businesses would realise there is no need to spend time, money and resources on a significant number of IT projects.
Change of any sort is not easy to implement successfully and all projects deliver (or should deliver) change. Undertaking large projects with significant change and therefore significant timescales and costs are never going to be easy. People, by their nature, are change adverse. However by ensuring that the change is staged and delivery is incremental, risks will be reduced and benefits and progress can be monitored and controlled far more effectively.
Projects that don’t adhere to this philosophy because they feel that it will be cheaper and quicker to deliver in one big hit will be far more likely to fail. Always remember; the longer the project the more likely the scope will creep and the technology will change, the bigger the single change the less likely it will be adopted.
Requirements capture, prototyping, testing and indeed project management are all viewed to a greater or lesser extent by many senior executives as overheads. What counts for executives is the number of lines of code cut and the number of screens written ie, the physical product output.
How many times when you look at project plan do you see 80 percent of the effort with development and 20 percent of the effort with other activities and then how often do you hear from the user ‘the product doesn’t do what we wanted, the product doesn’t work or when am I going to have my product?’ Without the correct level of spend on all of these ‘overheads’ IT projects are doomed to fail or at best perform poorly
Crosshead: Benefit realisation
Organisations rarely have effective benefit realisation approaches in place either during or after the project has finished. The philosophy frequently seems to be along the lines of ‘we’ve started so we’ll finish’ or ‘we’ve spent half the money so we might as well spend the rest’ or ‘we’ve spent all the money now so why check’.
Without an effective benefit realisation process, ie checking at regular intervals during the project that the original benefits and indeed potentially new benefits are actually going to be achieved organisations will never stop poorly performing projects. If the right level of benefit is not going to be achieved then the project needs to be stopped. Once the project has been completed ongoing benefits still need to be monitored otherwise organisations will never learn from mistakes or understand success correctly.
There is a misconception that managing projects is simple. Project management as a discipline is frequently undervalued within an organisation and indeed in some it’s viewed as a necessary overhead. Many people believe project management is common sense, which to a degree at its basic level it is, yet so many managers seem to lack the required planning and management skills when managing large projects.
Very few project managers seem to be rewarded for their project work, ie meeting deadlines, adhering to budgets and delivering benefits. If they were they would be more likely to ensure projects are properly initiated, benefits documented and most importantly the documented benefits realised. Project managers in the IT industry often have little experience or formal training in project management; they are often moved into project management having been the best developer or the best business analyst. There is a tendency for IT project managers to see a new technology and then decide on a project to introduce the technology. This is not how project management should work. Business objectives alone should drive a project and not technology.
A good project manager in any industry is one who spends the right ratio of time planning a project as they do delivering a project. Fin Goulding, CIO at lastminute.com, worked with Corporate Project Solutions to implement an Enterprise Project Management environment in order to improve project quality, visibility and value. Fin described a good project manager as someone who knows when to stop a project. So many project managers’ CVs promote the number of projects they have completed and delivered on. Very few have ever cancelled a project through time spent researching, testing and monitoring.
Project delivery relies on five key elements; People, Process, Technology, Organisation and Strategy. If all five elements are in place and are effective then businesses will be far better placed to deliver the right projects and to deliver them on time, to budget, to quality and with the right benefits.
People: Experienced project management and project support staff, trained in techniques, processes and tools with a structured career path and recognition of achievement. Training and awareness of the process should extend outside of the traditional project staff and encompass all project stakeholders
Process: A standardised set of processes encompassing portfolio, programme, project and resource management. Processes should be owned and maintained and monitored by the project organisation.
Technology: Appropriate technology to underpin the other four elements. The technology should enable project delivery providing automated guidance, control, governance and reporting. The right technology should provide support to the organisation to enable effective decision making.
Organisation: An organisation structure that supports project delivery encompassing elements such as portfolio and project management offices, project reporting structures and decision making processes.
Strategy: Defined at the CXO level the business strategy needs to ensure organisational-wide understanding of the entire project management process and culture. The strategy will determine how an organisation will succeed in managing project delivery.
When starting new projects always undertake a formal initiation process as part of an overall portfolio management framework. Organisations need to clearly document what it is the business wants the project to deliver ie, the scope, what the costs and timescales will be, the quality measures, the benefits expected and what risks are involved in implementation. If there is a large amount of risk involved in delivering the benefits, businesses should balance their appetite for risk with the business benefit measures.
Once the business has started spending money on a project it is very hard to stop. Organisations need to understand this at the beginning, in the planning stage and ensure there are specific break points at key stages at which to measure performance and benefits. If these aren’t being met and there are no clear and feasible plans to get back on track the project needs to be cancelled before further budget is spent.
I have seen huge demand for our services since the recession, as organisations realise the cost and efficiency benefits of well managed projects. The best advice is to tackle projects in achievable steps. Many businesses still try to do too much without realising what the main problems are and tackling them individually.
We aim to deliver the maximum benefit from the minimum change. Culturally change is always difficult so if you can break projects down into smaller elements of change, ensure each element is embedded and then move to the next, you are far more likely to succeed than embarking on a huge change in one hit.
