IT Project Failures

November 25th, 2009

Update on the Enterprise Irregulars

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 8:09 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues

Tags: Twitter Inc., SAP AG, Member, Naomi Bloom, Dennis Moore, Dennis, Blogging, Enterprise Software, Internet, Software

Long known as a diverse group of top-notch thought leaders, the Enterprise Irregulars has added three new members. Given the turmoil and change swirling around the enterprise software industry, it’s an exciting time for this group of bloggers, investors, industry veterans, consultants, analysts, journalists, and practitioners.

The Irregulars group was founded in early 2006, catalyzed by Jeff Nolan, who was an SAP executive at the time. Jeff was instrumental in bringing a small team of bloggers to SAP’s large user conference, called Sapphire; that group eventually crystallized into the Enterprise Irregulars. Today, the Irregulars group consists of about 60 members.

Many folks have heard of the Irregulars and wonder whether it’s a company, an organization, or perhaps even a sports team. In truth, it’s a loose affiliation of folks who share a common abiding interest in the broad world of enterprise software.

Although some members may share economic relationships, the group itself has no specific organizational structure or hierarchy. The primary criteria for membership are strong enterprise focus, experience, and capability. There’s no membership director, or any other position of authority, so the group makes decisions by consensus.

Given the diversity of members’ backgrounds and positions, it’s no surprise that informed analysis and debate rule group discussions. This debate and exchange of views yields exciting insights and deeper understanding of enterprise-relevant topics. That’s one reason why senior executives from many enterprise companies seek to brief the Irregulars.

You can see a list of participating Enterprise Irregulars on the group’s website, and I urge you to take a look. However, I do want to introduce three new members, each of whom is a leader in their respective field:

• Nenshad Bardoliwalla is an expert on enterprise performance management who wrote a 700-page book called Driven to Perform. Nenshad blogs at Strategy-Driven Execution and is also on Twitter.
• Naomi Bloom is widely recognized as a top analyst and authority on the intersection of human resources and technology. Find her blog at In Full Bloom and catch her on Twitter.
• Dennis Moore is a former senior executive at several enterprise companies, including SAP, Oracle, and other major organizations. Dennis is currently an executive at a startup operating in stealth mode. His blog is called Next Gen Enterprise and he’s also on Twitter.

Come visit the Enterprise Irregulars web site, which aggregates blog posts from members. It’s among the best enterprise content available and well worth a close read.

[Disclosure: I am a member of the Enterprise Irregulars.]

November 24th, 2009

The 'social enterprise' comes of age

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:34 am

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Social Computing, SAP AG, Enterprise, Dennis Moore, Status Update, Social Networking, Sales Force Management, Online Communications, Marketing

Salesforce.com’s flamboyant announcement of Chatter has catapulted social computing to the forefront of discussion among enterprise thought leaders.

First-rate CRM analyst, Denis Pombriant, explains that Chatter surprised many people, which is one reason it has received so much attention:

One thing that impressed me about Dreamforce was Salesforce’s ability to be creative, to invent something completely unexpected to announce in Chatter.  Whether Chatter will be any good when it is released next year is debatable but Salesforce did what it was supposed to do in bringing out a big new idea for its assembled customers.

Although Salesforce has upped the mojo on positioning social computing for the enterprise, we should remember they aren’t the first major software company to embrace social networking in a big way. For examples, look no further than Oracle and SAP.

Oracle’s internal collaboration platform has been around since mid-2007, built by an exciting group inside the company called the AppsLab. This small team is forward-looking and has its ear to the ground, even though its work has not received attention at anywhere near the scale of Chatter.

SAP has also focused thought leadership on social computing. A recent article written by Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President of the SAP Community Network, intrigued me. Mark describes a vision for the strategic value of social computing that he calls the “borderless enterprise.” It’s worth noting that his community has almost two million members.

From the article:

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November 23rd, 2009

Social computing in the enterprise, part two

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:19 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Michael Krigsman

Salesforce.com’s new product, Chatter, sparked a conversation on what happens when social computing hits the enterprise.

This video, filmed by Forrester CRM and customer service analyst, Natalie Petouhoff discusses challenges associated with cultural change and knowledge management when an organization introduces social computing.

The video records a conversation on these issues between Natalie, fellow ZDNet blogger Dion Hinchcliffe, and me. We used Chatter as a starting point, but the topics we discuss are broadly applicable to social computing and collaboration projects.

November 23rd, 2009

Social computing and the enterprise, part one

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:03 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Michael Krigsman

Salesforce.com’s new product, Chatter, raises a variety of questions about what happens when social computing hits the enterprise. In some organizations, the openness of social computing creates tension with established corporate cultures in which resistance to information sharing is a real fact.

This video, filmed by Forrester CRM and customer service analyst, Natalie Petouhoff covers key organizational issues associated with enterprise social networking. The video records a conversation on these issues between Natalie, fellow ZDNet blogger Dion Hinchcliffe, and me.

Although our focus point was Chatter, the topics and challenges we discuss are applicable to any Enterprise 2.0 project involving business or organizational transformation.

November 18th, 2009

Salesforce Chatter: Something to talk about

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:56 pm

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Social Computing, Chatter, PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS Salesforce, Sales Force Management, Social Networking, Sales, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion

In a major update to its product set, Salesforce.com introduced an enterprise-level social networking platform, called Chatter, which was inspired by Twitter and Facebook. I think the announcement is exciting, but the picture is not entirely perfect.

Here are some first impressions, based on conversations with Salesforce executives, independent analysts, and bloggers. I plan to follow up with the company’s customers to gain a more complete view of this platform.

On the surface, Chatter seems rather unexciting. After all, enterprise social computing products aren’t new; for example, an enterprise Twitter-style application called ESME, which was created by developers connected with SAP, has been around for over a year.

Chatter sports some interesting features, such as the ability of Force.com applications to send status messages into the Twitter-like stream. (For an excellent breakdown of Chatter’s features, take a look at Dion Hinchcliffe’s ZDNet post on this topic.) However, the import of this announcement has nothing to do with features; it arises from Salesforce’s level of visibility and its commitment to social computing.

When a company of Salesforce’s size and stature seriously gets behind a particular technology or market, it brings credibility and a halo to everyone in that ecosystem. In this case, Salesforce appears to be making a substantive, long-term commitment of resources and marketing capital to the social computing and Enterprise 2.0 domains.

Of course, an announcement does not carry the weight of shipping real product to customer, so the jury of reality has yet to reach a verdict. With that in mind, I asked Brett Queener, Senior Vice President of products, to describe the company’s level of commitment to Chatter. His comments are unequivocal:

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November 18th, 2009

Dreamforce: Quick first impressions

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:48 am

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Sales Force Management, Sales, Michael Krigsman

Sitting here in the audience at the annual Dreamforce conference of Salesforce.com, a couple of quick impressions come to mind. This post is mid-stream during the first keynote speech, so there will be more later.

A few observations:

• Salesforce.com is indeed a force to be reckoned with. One of the largest software vendors in the world, with an annualized run rate of $1.3 billion in revenue, no one can deny the inroads that cloud computing has made in the enterprise. 19,000 people registered for this conference, an obvious indicator that something serious is going on.
• The company has developed a vibrant ecosystem. Wandering through the expo hall to see the vendors and partners showing their wares, I was struck by diversity. Notably, I spoke with a system integrator implementing large (over 1000 seats) Salesforce projects. At that scale, there’s real complexity, especially around business process redesign and integration with existing systems. I intend to explore this topic further.
• CEO Marc Benioff emphasized “trust” as key theme. In a slide showing aspect of the Saleforce’s infrastructure, trust was right at the center. Here’s a photo:

The trust issue is big and there’s no surprise Benioff positioned it front and center of his first slide on product strategy. Trust, confidence, and reliability are among the key matters of concern to large enterprise buyers.

This post comes while the keynote is in-progress. More soon…

[Photo by Michael Krigsman.]

November 16th, 2009

Resistance to change: The real Enterprise 2.0 barrier

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:29 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy, Research and statistics

Tags: Barrier, Enterprise 2.0, Michael Krigsman

Large organizations continue to embrace Enterprise 2.0 as a viable addition to the corporate business process toolbox. As evidence, look no farther than the rapid growth of The 2.0 Adoption Council, which was founded this past June and currently boasts more than 100 member organizations, each of which has more than 10,000 employees.

Despite clear interest from the enterprise, discussion persists around obstacles to large-scale adoption of Enterprise 2.0 approaches, tools, and methods.

ZDNet’s Joe McKendrick summarized key obstacles in blog post at Fast Forward:

Resistance to change	52%
Difficulty in measuring ROI	42%
Integrating with existing technologies	41%
Security concerns	32%
Budget	25%
Product knowledge	23%
Tools not enterprise ready	22%

It should not surprise us that the top issue is resistance to change. Readers of this blog know that business projects of every kind suffer from issues related to poor communication, conflicting agendas across information silos, and related organizational causes of failure.

A recent study from The 2.0 Adoption Council also describes resistance to change as the significant barrier. This compelling slide clearly summarizes that message:

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November 9th, 2009

Enterprise unplugged: Riffing on failure and performance

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:39 pm

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Cultural issues, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy

Tags: Performance, Outcome, Naomi Bloom, Nenshad Bardoliwalla, Nenshad, Podcasts, Performance Management, Business Intelligence, Financial Accounting, Enterprise Software

My favorite part of blogging is the opportunity to learn from fascinating people who are at the top of their game. I recently chatted about enterprise issues and IT failure with Naomi Bloom and Nenshad Bardoliwalla, two articulate folks whose expertise is matched only by their willingness to share what they know.

Listen to the podcast to hear how their conversation ebbed and flowed like a great jazz improvisation.

Nenshad Bardoliwalla is a creative entrepreneur who most recently was CTO for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) at SAP. Nenshad is author of the book, Driven to Perform, a 700-page reference on managing performance with systematic metrics. When I have questions about BI, metrics, and related topics, you can guess to whom I turn for advice.

Naomi Bloom is a top consultant, analyst, writer, and thought leader throughout the HRM delivery system (HRMDS) industry. Her specialty is the application of HR technology and innovative service delivery models to achieve breakthroughs in organizational business outcomes. Check out her formal bio–it’s pretty darned impressive.

Pulling these two folks together for an IT failures podcast presents an interesting challenge because their backgrounds and areas of professional focus are so different. However, they share an abiding interest in improving business transformation with technology-related projects. In other words, these guys understand how technology and business interact to produce useful results (or not, as the case may be).

The podcast recording session was informal and fun; really, three friends getting together to chat about the drivers of business success and failure. If that means I hang around with geeky friends, then guilty as charged.

Here are a few excerpts from the podcast, just to give you a flavor of the discussion. These are notes and not meant to be a transcript.

Naomi: Business outcomes and achieving the mission matter most. In today’s world, the vast majority of the work we do to accomplish these goals is technology-enabled. So, if we don’t get the technology part right, then we fail.

To define success, ask people in the business whether a new system helps or hurts the day-to-day effort to accomplish their job. Looking at this way, there’s a lot of failure out there.

Nenshad: The discipline of performance management is meant to align the people in an organization with the outcomes they are trying to achieve. Failure often results when an organization implements technology without first deciding on the outcomes. If you don’t know the target, then it is difficult to design technology that will achieve your goals.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 6th, 2009

18 truths: The long fail of complexity

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:55 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy, Research and statistics

Tags: Accident, Failure, Enterprise System, Richard Cook, Complex System, Human Practitioner, Policies And Procedures, Human Resources, Michael Krigsman

Enterprise systems are inherently complex, often involving many business processes, people, and organizations across a company. Given this built-in complexity, it’s no surprise that failures abound; it’s amazing these systems function at all.

We could make these same comments about any complex, mission critical system. For example, look no further than the space program or health care delivery. In both cases, massive complexity is connected to a need to get things right: failure means potential loss of life.

To say that complicated systems are more prone to break down than simpler systems is obvious. But there are also other, more subtle truths regarding failure and complex systems.

A paper copyrighted in 1998, called How Complex Systems Fail and written by an M.D., Dr. Richard Cook, describes 18 truths about the underlying reasons complicated systems break down. On the surface the list appears surprisingly simple, but deeper meaning is also present. Some of the points are obvious while others may surprise you.

THE EIGHTEEN TRUTHS

The first few items explain that catastrophic failure only occurs when multiple components break down simultaneously:

1. Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems. The frequency of hazard exposure can sometimes be changed but the processes involved in the system are themselves intrinsically and irreducibly hazardous. It is the presence of these hazards that drives the creation of defenses against hazard that characterize these systems.

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November 4th, 2009

Please vote: Shortlisted at Computer Weekly

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 8:15 am

Categories: Blog annoucements

Tags: Information Technology, Computer, Strategy, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Management, It Operations, It service Management, Michael Krigsman

UK-based IT news site, Computer Weekly, shortlisted this blog for an award in the 2009 Project Management category. Being shortlisted is an honor because Computer Weekly offers some of the best IT insight anywhere.

In addition, the magazine’s Executive Editor, Tony Collins, is one of the top journalists covering IT failures; Tony takes no prisoners but is always fair and impartial. His work has served as an inspiration to me.

SHAMELESS, UNREPENTANT PLUG

Yes, I want you to vote — for my blog! To make it easy, please follow this little guide.

Step 1. Click the voting page

Step 2. Scroll down to number 7, the Project Management category, as shown here:

Step 3. Do the right thing….