How to Handle Project Failures

Many organisations plough on with a project in the hope that the solution being delivered by their external IT partner will eventually meet their business requirements.

For IT partners or suppliers on the other hand they are faced with the challenge of trying to deliver the solution defined in the procurement phase and all too often clients with evolving business requirements.

The scenario then develops where the project team manage a complex change control process which sadly will have built in ambiguity as to which party will pick up the costs for changes, modifications, enhancements etc

Sadly at some point the relationship between the two parties deteriorates and the project is stopped and the respective parties call in their legal representatives. There is rarely any arbitration or cooling off process and at this stage the project is dead but the legal effort and associated costs is about to snowball

As a practitioner I have always assumed the outcomes of legal cases are kept out of the public domain as organisations rarely 'wash their dirty laundry in public' and so valuable lessons learnt are not available for the project management and business community therefore to review.

Having been involved in a recent legal dispute and acting as a project management witness for a Systems Integrator, I came across an interesting organisation called the IT Group. They specialise in IT disputes and one of their areas of expertise is addressing IT Failures

http://www.itgroup-uk.com/consultancy/it-outsourcing-and-project-failure-s

The IT Group have worked on a number of high profile project failures to help their client seek redress

• NHS Patient Records (NPfIT)
• Building for Schools Programme
• CSC outsourcing of IT for BAe Systems
• BT outsourcing of IT support for Essex County Council Vertex BPO contract for Westminster City Council

What would be useful for the Project Management Community is to identify the underlying causes of the above project failures but I am pretty sure many of us can take a good stab at a few e.g. NPfIT

The Cabinet Office ( I worked in this organisation 2009 to 2011 and was responsible for developing best practice and supporting failing projects) created the Major Projects Authority to oversee and more importantly reduce the risk of further high profile public sector project failures. When they looked at the DWP Universal Credit Programme they found;

'Universal Credit project set out to use agile methodologies, but this quickly foundered and was effectively scrapped'

Which beggars question why such a high profile project was not managed using established and suitable project methodologies such as MSP, PRINCE2 etc and the project gambled on using Agile techniques!

Sadly the public sector never learns the lessons and the following headlines to often appear

Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: "DWP seems to have embarked on this crucial project, expected to cost the taxpayer some £2.4bn, with little idea as to how it was actually going to work. Confusion and poor management at the highest levels have already resulted in delays and at least £34m wasted on developing IT. If the department doesn’t get its act together, we could be on course for yet another catastrophic government IT failure."

Surely there has to be a better way of managing projects and avoiding IT Failures?

Please feel free to post your comments on the BLOG site 

Another Project War Story - Managing Aggressively Led Business Projects

 As an IT Project Manager you are asked to take control for the delivery of a project which has seemingly already been defined by the business sponsor or business team. As you apply your professional approach to project initiation and specifically, start to undertake some due diligence you find out pretty quickly that all is not well. 

Then comes the challenge to meet with the business to explain that despite their seemingly good work to date and  enthusiasm to get things moving there is a whole set of issues that need to be properly addressed if the project is to be successfully delivered.

Common Problems that the Business Team fail to Identify:

·        Role of a sponsor: set out for the sponsor how they will support the project through the various project  stages

·        Establish an appropriate procurement contract with the supplier and ensure references are taken and ideally site visits are made to customers who are working with a similar solution  

·        Identify and name the available business and IT resources required to deliver all stages of the project

·        Create a solution architecture document which will act as a ‘blueprint’ and allow all IT partners to understand their role in the delivery of the solution

·        Invest in detailed requirements gathering workshops which will include the key business users and the suppliers both external and internal. Ensure the sponsor is involved in the gap analysis workshop so that key decisions can be made about delivery options

·        Commit time to documenting business processes

·        Run business led roadshows or conference room pilots to ‘socialise’ the emerging solution and to build user commitment across your organisation

The above guidance is most applicable in organisations where the business teams are driving projects and where the IT department is being treated as an internal supplier. Although I would always advocate that the business owns the project they must do so with due respect to the support and guidance being provided by the IT department. 

Do you work for this organisation? It's time to start your own business

How to break into the Europeon market

Terra Dotta have entered the European market with their cloud based solution for Universities. The University of Manchester are implementing now!

The Company

Over 370 educational institutions and businesses trust Terra Dotta software to manage their application process and streamline their operations. Terra Dotta is committed to effective process automation and the secure management of data. Flexibility and robust features have made our software essential to all types of organizations. Terra Dotta's international education roots and innovative software capabilities serve the complex needs of many educational and business offices.

Terra Dotta software simplifies your everyday processes from the way you access information to the way you gather data and create reports. Risk management capabilities are an integral aspect of the software, providing the ability to locate and communicate with your applicants and travelers worldwide. Simply put, Terra Dotta software allows you to realize the full potential of your data and use the software your way at your institution.

Terra Dotta clients have a strong influence over the evolution of our software. We encourage and embrace client suggestions for new features they need to facilitate their enrollment processes. These suggestions are the basis of
new features added in each new version and over the years have helped make our software strong and flexible.

Our Mission

Our mission at Terra Dotta is to offer the very best products and services in higher education software. We are committed to delivering a user-experience that transforms the way our clients operate and engage with their constituents. We accomplish this through the continual deployment of best-in-class technology, and the focus we place on mutual trust in each and every one of our business relationships. These values form the Terra Dotta difference.

http://www.terradotta.com/

How to Sell a Cloud Service!

Project Managers' finally have access to a proven Business Change Tool

Press Release: APMG launches collaboration with Changefirst

Thursday, 3 July, 2014

 

APMG launches collaboration with Changefirst to offer Enterprise Change Management Platform,        e-change® to ACO's

APMG International and Changefirst Ltd are partnering to deliver the e-change® Enterprise Change Management Platform to all APMG Accredited Consulting Organisations (ACOs). ACOs will use e-change to provide change management consulting to their clients and as part of this will be able to licence clients as e-change users.

“We aim to extend our support to the consulting community by bringing to market a leading-edge toolkit that allows organizations to plan, execute and track their change projects. It will significantly help them ensure projects are in line with the business needs to deliver required benefits”, said Eddie Kilkelly, APMG International. 

The launch event was held on Wednesday 2nd July at the Park Plaza Hotel in London and will be followed by another launch event in Sydney later in the year to promote this collaboration to Australian ACOs and bringing to market this unique enterprise platform.

"This product is definitely different. The value it has for me is that it allows project managers to use this change management tool effectively and implement change even if they are not change management experts. It is practical and can be implemented easily irrespective of the scale of the project- big or small” said Darius Johnson, Pcubed, at the London event.

“One of the biggest challenges for organizations today is creating and maintaining the capabilities to change. e-change® allows them to implement more change, more successfully”, said David Miller, CEO - Changefirst. “For nearly 20 years we have offered face-to-face change management training to clients. We developed e-change because we wanted to make all our training, tools and databases available to a much wider audience. We wanted to offer clients the consistency, convenience, scalability and cost-effectiveness that an online platform can give to organizations. ACOs will be able to win some business with this world-class application”.

e-change provides a cost-effective way of learning a proven change methodology online.  Users can identify project adoption risks and get suggested tactics to manage project risks and can benchmark their change project against a global change database. Project plans can be aligned with the preferred project framework like PMI, Prince 2 or DMAIC. 

“Everything comes together in the e-change planner, where users can track and manage people risks by fetching in data from risk assessments and build robust action plans that can be assigned and shared with colleagues”, explains Nathan Brewer, Operations Manager – Changefirst.

“We’re quite excited because we see a real need for this product with our clients”, said Piotr Kotelnicki, CEO from the Polish ACO, Devoteam.

You can download the full press release here.

The Truth about Cloud Economics

The Truth About Cloud Economics

BY DRUE REEVES AND DARYL PLUMMER

The financial reasons for the huge growth of cloud services seem crystal clear: cloud computing

simply allows us to pay for what we need only when we need it, right?

But the truth is, companies adopting cloud computing often miss the risk and depth of change

needed to embrace a cloud economics model as they embrace cloud services. It turns out that

the financial model for cloud computing has far more nuances for both a company and its cloud

services provider than many people understand up front.

So what is the financial model for cloud computing? Let’s start by saying it’s a combination of

how people make money in the cloud and the risks associated with adopting new payment

styles. Many people assume it’s all about moving to a “pay-as-you-go” (PAYG) model and while

this is certainly a big piece of it, it also involves operating versus capital expenses, subscriptions

to services, and customers paying for outcomes (not technology). The good news is that these

models are already familiar to most businesses.

Companies routinely spend money on items vital to the business. They also trade operating

expenses for subscriptions and services necessary for business operations, but not directly related

to the business. This includes those that would otherwise be too expensive to own and operate

(think electricity). They expense nonessential items to someone else who specializes in offering

these items as a service.

Cloud computing is no different. Why should a toy or cosmetics company own and operate

multiple data centers? It’s much easier and economically sound to pay for a service for a short

time period and then stop paying for it when you’re finished with it, rather than wasting money

on something another company can do better, faster and cheaper. But this can present issues for

both the consumer of the cloud service as well as the provider.

For companies, cloud computing’s new economic model stands in stark contrast to the traditional

economic model of IT where we buy technology from a vendor as a capital investment and

continue to invest in maintaining and servicing it over time. Traditionally, much of the money

allocated to technology has been locked away in capital expense allocations used for buying

physical goods. However, cloud services are just that, a service, and require reallocating money

to operating expense budgets. This can be a big change when your company must still pay to

maintain existing infrastructure. It may even mean that new lines of expenditure must be created

if cloud services don’t replace existing services. (And you don’t need us to tell you how hard it is

to create new lines of expenditure.)

The reward for this potentially painful transition to operating expense is that the business gains

flexibility and the ability to buy the services they need when they need them. But if you’re a CFO,

you’ll have to decide whether you like consistent or variable expenditures. Operating expenses

FROM HBR.ORG

9:48 AM | APRIL 13, 2012

[continued]

ABOUT THE

AUTHORS

Drue Reeves

is vice president

and research director at Gartner,

Inc., and

Daryl Plummer is

managing vice president and

Gartner Fellow, Gartner, Inc.

brought to you by

can be difficult to predict and control because service subscriptions can come from anywhere at

any time. Ask yourself if you have a predictable cloud requisition/governance strategy that makes

future service acquisitions easy.

For cloud services providers, the PAYG model’s flexibility lets customers scale their services up or

down based on their needs. If the consumer can easily add or subtract resources and pay for cloud

services in small increments, the provider has no guarantee of future business. Therefore, to

reduce this risk, the provider must dictate service terms and conditions in its favor. But here’s the

problem: if the consumer assumes most of the risk, then he will never host a critical application

with a cloud service provider. That would limit cloud computing’s market growth to the set of

noncritical applications or to small-to-midsize businesses that would rather use cloud services

than build a $500 million data center in the U.S.

On the other hand, if cloud providers assume all the risk, then in most cloud environments (with

multiple consumers), the amount of liability within a provider’s service could be greater than the

value of the company (which we all know is no way to run a business). And if the service provider

cannot afford the insurance premiums necessary to cover the liability without raising prices to the

level that the service becomes too expensive to consume … well, you get the picture.

So, to combat this kind of risk, cloud providers will enter into what are called “enterprise

agreements,” where the two parties can define the parameters of the relationship based on mutual

risk sharing. Essentially, this ensures that each party has a vested interest in the financial success

of the other party. There’s risk, but there’s also reward for better service.

In the end, providers that deliver better service and better guarantees will ask for — and get —

more money. Consumers, on the other hand, will get the flexibility of “pay-as-you-go.” As long as

they can figure out a way to pay for it.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CLOUD ECONOMICS | BY DRUE REEVES AND DARYL PLUMMER

WWW.HBR.ORG

The PAYG model’s

flexibility lets

customers scale their

services up or down

based on their needs.

 

Interview with Atul Sood, Vice President for

Advanced Technologies, Wipro

We know that the cloud has been great for start-ups. But how are established enterprises

adopting the cloud?

To answer this question, let’s look back in time and reflect on a critical aspect related to high transaction

costs being one of the reasons for the existence of large organizations as postulated by Nobel Prize

winning economist, Coase. But when the transaction costs decrease or are removed, you would find

large organizations being under attack from smaller, nimbler and more agile start-ups. So, we begin to

see the rise of start-ups that set out to become bigger and better.

The established companies on the other hand made note, but they struggled because of the sunk costs

in IT systems which, once served them well, but proved to be an impediment to growth in a connected

world. On the other hand, business leaders within large organizations saw opportunities through the rise

of new-age technologies, but were held back due to locked-down set-ups, processes, and engagement

models that had been built by their company’s IT. In fact, the frustrated executive could not understand

why the IT team would take three months to help launch a new product , when it could be done easily

through the ‘always available’ IT systems through public cloud environment made available with the

swipe of a credit card. And, this healthy tension between business and IT began to change things within

the company. This pressure from the businesses and an understanding that IT needs to respond much

faster to the market; to the external environment; and service the customer in a much faster way

heralded the adoption of new-age technologies within large enterprises.

So, whether you are a start-up or an established company, the economics of cloud makes sense.

Technology has played a big role as a disintermediary of businesses and we have seen examples where

businesses have been totally redefined by new-age technologies like cloud.

How has the cloud helped companies preserve cash for a stronger balance sheet?

In a post-2008 world, companies have been holding onto cash and committing to new projects or to

asset refresh only after much deliberation. To give you a data point, the time for refresh for an IT asset

would run to three to five years in the late nineties. But after 2008, companies are holding on for five to

eight years to refresh. More importantly, start-ups are now formidable opponents who use Pay As You Go

(PAYG) IT from cloud service providers.

So what does it all mean? Businesses on one hand are under extreme pressure to innovate but they do

not want to go down the old route. They are looking at technologies like cloud where a business division

leader can swipe a credit card and get some of the best IT environments without up-front investment.

So, you have a ‘pay and consume’ based cloud model which is defined not only by technology and its

benefits, but also by the economics around it.

We now see complex workloads migrating to the cloud, as the cloud model is maturing even on the

pricing front. This feeds more innovation, and more specifically around industry solutions. So, today,

solutions for a bank could be different from a utilities company or an insurance provider. This in turn

allows solution providers to come up with unique business models that serve the needs of an industry.

For instance, in India, Telecom service providers, working with cloud providers, developed a model

for timely onboarding of customers as opposed to spending millions of dollars to set-up and run the

infrastructure. In the process, new partnerships were forged between the consumer and provider with

new business models. My sense is that we are heading to an age where the ‘art-of-possible’ will define

the intensity of partnerships.

What should companies do in order to take advantage of the cloud?

First, you have to look what is core and non-core to your company; and, not just in today’s context but

say five years from now. Why? Because, what companies define as core might be completely non-core

as we go along. Remember, we agreed that technology can be a great disintermediary. So, companies

need to re-evaluate their models to identify what they want to hold on to, from a competitive advantage

standpoint, and — leverage the forces of advanced technologies like social, cloud, mobility and analytics

to make their organizations more agile, more dynamic and more responsive. A key aspect here is

to look business process downwards to applications and then infrastructure. If you do not optimize

your business processes, there is a high probability that you would fall into what Robert Solow calls

productivity paradox. This is typical of a scenario where technology does not live up to its stated benefits

because archaic processes still define the usage of technology. Post this; you should cut over to an agile,

dynamic and infinite scalable IT. The icing — you consume on a PAYG model!

 

WWW.HBR.