IT Project Failure and The Art of Scapegoating

 With Scapegoating still high on the agenda of Executives,  Boards and CEO's I figured it was time to readdress this issue and ask the question:

"Is your organization geared up for IT Project Success or will a Scapegoat suffice?"

IT Project Failure and The Art of Scapegoating

Have you or someone you know ever been the scapegoat for a failed IT project? If so read on. This may give you a déjà vu feeling.

And as the saying goes, “A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem”!

This is often a sorry consequence of derailed or failed IT projects. Everyone is responsible for the project and no one is accountable for its outcomes. This issue will become even more apparent through the project life-cycle. Over a period of 1, 2 or 3 years people will either leave the organization/project or will otherwise forget who was actually accountable for having made the critical IT investment and project planning decisions in the first place. Time has a tendency to blur the facts! So what can project sponsors do when they get that sinking feeling that an IT project is heading into deep waters? Hunt for scapegoats! (shhhhh people don’t readily admit that this is what actually happens). Who wants to be held accountable for a train wreck of that magnitude? Nobody – hence the scapegoating!

Unfortunately, organizations typically identify vendors, project managers and CIO’s as the obvious parties (read scapegoats) responsible for under-delivered and over-budget IT projects.

In actuality, the causes generally lie in the camp of the C-Level, senior executives and presidents themselves. Why? Firstly, because often the business executives lack visibility of critical business architecture information and business intelligence upon which to base vital project planning decisions. And secondly, because strategic decisions to invest in IT systems are always made at the top level of an organization.

They should instead be asking themselves where they messed up and analyze whether, why or how their IT investment and project planning decisions were under-analyzed, under-scoped, under-supported, under-communicated or under-trained. Did they make the critical strategic project decisions and follow through with an execution strategy to establish key project procedures or not? Information cannot be expected to be communicated via osmosis or hearsay.

Ask yourself who was responsible for identifying and collecting project requirements and were they empowered and accountable? Were they the most appropriate people or just the most senior or worse still – self-appointed experts?

The other key question that vendors and customers should be asking themselves is “did we assume that extensive requirements were collected and correctly documented from the most pertinent and pivotal parties?” Most of the time both parties just assume that the important task of requirements gathering has been diligently carried out (which is where the slippery slope begins and scapegoats are sought out).

PS. Do you need to put the "B" back into the business planning for your IT Projects? Then take advantage of our complimentary 30 day free trial to our Profiling-Pro cloud solution at www.profiling-pro.com. 

PPS. Or register here to attend our upcoming Seminar:

"The Path to IT Project Success through Business Architecture Genius!"

Kind regards
Sarah Jane Runge

Overcoming IT Project Complexity with Business Simplicity

Albert Einstein said:

“Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler”. 

However, all too often, organizations seem to ignore these sagely words preferring to “complicate everything as much as possible, and no less so”.

Why is it then when so many industries strive to adopt simplification measures (or a "Simplify and Repeat" process) to create consistent quality outcomes that deliver "stakeholder delight", eliminate superfluous handling, reduce costs, and minimize wastage, when at the same time the IT industry consistently does precisely the opposite?

Meaning that layers of unnecessary complexity applied through methodologies, frameworks and processes that promise to ensure project success rarely ever do so. On top of this, although IT project failure is a consistent outcome, it is obviously not the outcome we seek but it continues to happen consistently.

There are several opinions as to what exactly defines complexity. Roger Sessions focuses on the unnecessary overcomplexity of architecture, or technical aspects.  

Peter Kretzman on the other hand, identifies complexity as more cultural and sociological in that people want too much functionality. There is poor implementation (technical debt) and a lack of leadership. 

More recently, John Zachman has responded to organizations' objections about costs, the time and complexity of adopting EA frameworks for the purpose to which they are not intended.  

These definitions of complexity provide insights as to how organizations are changing their mindset from cumbersome, costly and complex solutions to looking for a more cost efficient, simplified and fresh solution to delivering up corporate information.

In my opinion we have facilitated this complexity by over-specialization of every aspect of IT planning and delivery. Don't misinterpret me. There is a time and a place for specialization but it cannot take precedence over the business planning process for IT projects.  If specialization has crept in, you can bet dollars to donuts that business has crept out and have wiped their hands of any involvement.

Have you ever taken a long hard look at how complex the process of planning and delivering an IT project has become? I am not talking about the complexity of IT systems themselves, rather about the exclusive frameworks, processes and methodologies required for the supposed successful delivery of IT projects that we have allowed to morph from smart simplicity into corporate complexity (or perhaps a better word that I came across the other day is Dumbplexity).

“Dumbplexity” sums up how organizations habitually add unnecessary and dumb complexity when in actual fact what they really need is “Smart Simplicity”. And in the IT industry we have Dumbplexified what were and still should be relatively simple processes.

Unfortunately corporations and government tend to follow suit with a blind belief that complexity is a guaranteed recipe for IT project success. But with this additional and unnecessary complexity comes communication and collaboration issues, poor visibility, no accountability and over-inflated costs (which to most organizations is also another measure for success). But nothing could be further from the truth.

As a key decision maker, CEO, Business Owner etc, you are probably frustrated by the number of people required to pass around pieces of information regarding their views on the facts and accurate status of your IT project. And more than likely, you're up to your eyeballs looking at extravagant Gantt Charts with overdue tasks.  Coupled with the complexity of the above mentioned processes, your time spent filtering through the many versions of the truth still cannot guarantee the successful delivery of your IT project.

In this day and age of cloaking simplicity with complexity, it possibly takes an Enterprise Architect, Information Architect, Business Analyst, Project Manager and an “Information Sanitizer” to provide you with the information you’ve waited days (or weeks) for. And it still may only be the information that they want you to hear.
Unnecessary complexity results in delayed information which in today’s environment does not support a nimble, agile or timely decision making process. Complicated processes and frameworks that underpin IT delivery are unlikely to be a guarantee for success, and they also certainly have little chance of putting you and your colleagues on the same page.  Particularly when everyone is singing from a different Hymn book and speaking in jargon related to their own particular specialization.

Another key issue for CEO’s and business enterprises when there are various IT specialists is that it also fosters a culture of "Kingdoms", Silo’s and disparate entities that pride themselves on sole proprietary and exclusivity of information that is not readily shared or made accessible to business. When in actual fact business are the people that absolutely need it, and it is them that need it in plain business English not in some jargon that they cannot understand.

How do you cure “Dumblexity”? By applying “Simplicity”. See the process for what it is and remove the additional layers that have made the process unnecessarily complex.

The three key pillars for IT project success that you need in place are:
•    Visibility across your organization upwards, downwards, right and left;
•    Accountability for quality information and decisions, and empowerment;
•    Collaboration with the appropriate people, parties and layers of your organization.

When you have these pillars in place you can remove the majority of unnecessary complexity that strangles successful IT project delivery as well as your business's profits. You will have your finger back on the corporate pulse, timely access to accurate information, open communication, bi-directional feedback and one organization pulling together to achieve the vision – IT project success, instead of “Us and Them”.

If you are serious about the success of your organization and your IT project outcomes,  ensure that you take measures to mitigate against dressing simplicity up as complexity, "Prima Dona’s" masquerading as "Self appointed experts" and jargon that business executives cannot understand and therefore feel that they don't need to be involved because it belongs in  IT's domain. 




Kind regards
Sarah Jane Runge

 PS. Do you need to put the "B" back into the business planning for your IT Projects? Then take advantage of our complimentary 30 day free trial to our Profiling-Pro cloud solution at www.profiling-pro.com. 

PPS. Or register here to attend our upcoming Seminar:

"The Path to IT Project Success through Business Information Architecture Genius!"

Taking the risk out of IT Risk and Governance

,Do IT Risk and Governance measures really help organizations to avoid IT Project failures?

To coin a phrase used by a fellow Twitterer “No process at all is better than a bad process”.

So how many resources, either dollars or human, do organizations invest in establishing IT risk and Governance frameworks? How much time is spent administering, managing and monitoring these processes and what is an organization’s ROI for their IT governance investment?

For all of the above, most organizations would probably respond “Too much”!

It is surprising to find that many large organizations and government bodies that claim to have or would be required by stakeholders to have stringent IT Risk and Governance frameworks still have rogue, run-away or failed IT projects. The following are some of the many examples of organizations and government bodies who experienced the chaos of rogue IT projects:

• The USA Census bureau $2bn in IT project overruns for a project that will probably need to be scrapped!

• Avis Car rental –Europe ERP Project - €45m IT failure as ERP Project is cancelled.

• Melbourne Transportation Authority Australia – Myki project$1bn later and 18 months behind schedule delivering Project “Myki”

• Australian Ports – Integrated Cargo system$217bn cost blowout for a system that still does not work to the extent it was intended to.

• FBI - VCF project $170m for an IT project that had to be cancelled

• Sydney Water – CIBS project estimated $97m blowout and lengthy delays for a project that was scrapped

If an organization’s IT risk umbrella covers IT governance with a comprehensive IT risk portfolio, then how do organizations still get lumbered with runaway and failed IT Projects?

An underlying cause is that IT Risk and Governance frameworks are focused almost exclusively on the “tangibles” of the organization and the direct outcomes of projects giving insufficient attention to the important “soft” intangibles of their organization. This is most critical at the crucial “pre-investment” IT decision making and process planning phase when identifying and determining how to achieve these project outcomes needs to take place.

IT governance will take into account the amount of human and financial resources required for the project and an IT risk portfolio will monitor IT projects, IT service continuity, service providers, information assets, new and emergent technologies, software applications and infrastructure to ensure they are integrated with management, the business benefits and their alignment with strategy.

As critical as these governance and risk measures are to the success of an IT Project, they will fail to deliver if left to act in isolation. Simply put, IT risk and governance measures do not address the internal psycho-analytical aspects of an organization, including its decision making process. Nor do they analyze the “What”, “Why”, “Who”, “When” “Where” and “How” decisions needed in investing in or undertaking IT projects.

These key decisions are fundamental to organizations in determining whether projects will succeed or not and are the foundations and key drivers for determining IT project success. They must therefore be diligently made by C-level executives and senior management *before* projects commence.

In short, all of these key decisions are uncovered and addressed when applying Corporate Profiling to an organization before initiating an IT Project.

Indeed, Corporate Profiling can assist organizations in achieving their expected ROI and other benefits from their IT and Risk Governance processes in delivering IT projects.

“Nothing and nobody fails as badly as when undertaking something that someone else has failed to plan” (Sarah Jane Runge).

Kind regards
Sarah Jane Runge