October 26th, 2009

Can open source software stop IT failure?

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 9:19 am

Categories: CIO issues, Devil's Triangle, IT issues, Open Source, Project strategy

Tags: Software, Information Technology, Open-source Software, Failure, Dana, Custom Software Development Project, Devil, Tools & Techniques, Open Source, Strategy

In a post today. ZDNet open source blogger, Dana Blankenhorn, says the primary value of open source software is transparency rather than low cost. He then argues that open source software offers at least a partial solution to the problem of IT failures. Let’s examine that view.

Dana argues that open source code transparency aligns the interests of customers and vendors, which can have a positive effect on IT project outcomes:

With code visibility, you and your vendors become partners in trying to make something work. The vendor can’t over-promise, but you can’t over-assume either. This may be one of main hidden reasons for IT failure, the two sides of the transaction not being on the same page.

From an IT failures perspective, this logic consists of two primary components:

1. Shared visibility into open source code reduces hidden assumptions and makes explicit what the vendor is actually selling to the customer.
2. Such transparency can reduce failure by forcing alignment between vendor and customer goals.

Although Dana raises an interesting and important question, I do not share his confidence that implementation projects based on open source software should more successful than those based on commercial software.

In my experience, most failures associated with packaged software arise from expectation mismatches in the business, rather than technical, domain. Custom software development projects are even more complicated, since these situations include creating something that does not yet exist.

This diagram summarizes my view regarding why many IT projects that are late, over-budget, or don’t deliver planned results:

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October 4th, 2009

Scholarly interest in IT failure and waste

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:44 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Devil's Triangle, Financial impact, Governance, IT issues, Project failures

Tags: Information Technology, Failure, Strategy, Management, Michael Krigsman

The non-technical academic world has become interested in ethical issues surrounding IT failure and wasted resources. Previously, academics that focused on this set of problems generally came from an IT or project management background.

I’m thrilled the non-technical academic community is examining IT failure. Considering both public- and private-sector IT projects, the scope and magnitude of failure is huge.

On Monday, October 5, 2009, I’m giving a talk on this topic for the Center for Global Business Law & Ethics at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School in Boston. Professor Lydia Segal, who coordinated this program, is a top authority on cutting public and private sector waste. She therefore has a natural interest in this subject:

Ethical considerations demand that we turn our attention to areas in business where mismanagement may cause serious waste. Given the importance of IT to both business and society, there is opportunity for researchers to explore the roots of failure and to formulate directions for improvement.

I’ve embedded the presentation below. Please let me know what you think.

September 24th, 2009

Pay to play: The vendor / analyst mating dance

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:12 am

Categories: CIO issues, Consulting, Devil's Triangle, IT issues, Vendor relationships

Tags: Analyst, Games, Enterprise Software, Personal Technology, Software, Michael Krigsman

Certain elements of the enterprise software ecosystem contribute directly to failed IT projects. For example, I have written extensively about the Devil’s Triangle, which describes conflicting relationships among enterprise buyers, technology vendors, and system integrators.

• Related: Exploring the Devil’s Triangle

Industry analysts can also contribute to failures by creating mismatched expectations between customers and vendors. This happens when analysts slant coverage toward a specific vendor in hopes of later securing a lucrative consulting contract or retainer.

I put together a diagram to illustrate:

CMS Watch founder, Tony Byrne, details the process in a blog post titled The vendor-analyst echo chamber game. Here’s a quote:

[S]oftware vendors typically don’t spend money with analyst firms to bribe them outright. Rather, they purchase attention through which they can try to get an analyst to define the marketplace and customer challenges according to that particular vendor’s approach.

It’s the vendor-analyst echo chamber game, designed to manufacture artificial demand.

Although the diagram describes a fundamental conflict of interest, many analysts have integrity beyond reproach. The best analysts play an important role in helping buyers make wise strategic decisions. Those excellent folks provide substantial value and contribute to project success by aligning expectations between technology buyers and sellers.

What do you think about this issue? Please share your thoughts.

September 7th, 2009

Exploring the Devil's Triangle

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 12:16 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Consulting, Devil's Triangle, Governance, IT issues, Implementation, Project strategy, Vendor relationships

Tags: Software, Consultant, Software Company, Customer, Triangle, Devil, System Integrator, Tools & Techniques, Management, Michael Krigsman

The Devil’s Triangle describes a basic set of dysfunctional relationships that push many projects toward failure. Although I’ve written about many facets of this important topic previously, today’s post summarizes the issue succinctly.

Three parties participate in virtually every major software deployment: the customer, system integrator or consultant, and the software vendor. Since each of these groups has its own definition of success, conflicts of interest rather than efficient and coordinated effort afflict many projects.

The Devil’s Triangle explains how economic pressures can drive software vendors and system integrators to act in ways that do not serve customer interests. It also offers insight into the ways some enterprise software customers damage their own projects.

Devil’s Triangle relationships are a short sighted and self-interested way of life for too many participants in the enterprise technology landscape.

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September 2nd, 2009

Video: Defining IT failure

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:51 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Devil's Triangle, IT issues

Tags: Information Technology, Video, Failure, Corporate Communications, Strategy, Marketing, Management, Michael Krigsman

Folks often ask for a definition of IT project failure. This video from the Strategy Lab blog offers a somewhat simplistic, but still accurate, explanation.

I’m paraphrasing, but the video says that projects are considered a failure when they are over-budget, late, or do not deliver expected planned results. Perhaps most importantly, it correctly points out how differences in measures of success between customers and vendors influence perception of failure.

The video is only a few minutes long and worth a view.

#IT Fail - Defining IT Project Failure from Waggware on Vimeo.

August 27th, 2009

CRM failure: An ounce of prevention

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:28 am

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Devil's Triangle, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Implementation, Project failures, Project strategy

Tags: CRM, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Michael Krigsman

This week I spoke at the CRM Evolution 2009 conference held in New York City. It’s a premier event in the CRM world, bringing together buyers, practitioners, vendors, analysts, and journalists.

My presentation explains underlying reasons why CRM projects do not achieve expected results and describes how to overcome these problems. I spoke at length about harnessing the “wisdom of crowds,” or collective intelligence, to improve software implementations.

Finally, the presentation explores risks inherent in the new world of Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

August 4th, 2009

Managing vendor performance: An IT failures virtual town hall

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:39 pm

Categories: Blog annoucements, CIO issues, Cultural issues, Devil's Triangle, IT issues, Project portfolio management, Project strategy

Tags: Town Hall, Performance, Information Technology, Vendor Performance, Jason Coyne, Strategy, Management, Michael Krigsman

The business and organizational complexity associated with many IT projects sometimes causes difficulty for customers, system integrators, and technology providers.

For the next IT failures virtual town hall, we will discuss practical tips to help you better manage vendor performance and increase project success.

We’ll examine issues such as:

• Why managing vendor performance is a challenge
• Improving requirements analysis and the business case
• The role of misaligned expectations in IT failure situations
• Conducting an effective vendor selection process
• Avoiding failure by setting clear objectives
• Tactical interventions to avoid meltdown

I will be joined for this event by Jason Coyne, a UK-based IT failures expert who has served as mentor, expert witness, and negotiator on some of Britain’s largest IT disputes.

Jason recently started a new organization, Evolution Project Consulting, to provide dispute management and resolution services to government and private sector IT projects. Jason’s knowledge of IT project and program management issues is deep, broad, and highly practical. Having provided advisory services to more than 500 projects, he is like a walking encyclopedia of UK failures.

Please attend this interactive discussion and participate in an important conversation about vendor performance management.

The event is free, but you must register in advance.

Title: Managing vendor performance: An IT failures virtual town hall

Date and Time: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 11:00AM -12:00 PM, Eastern Daylight Time. The registration page lists international telephone numbers.

Registration: Click here to register for this online session

July 30th, 2009

Software pricing and the Devil's Triangle

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 11:10 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Devil's Triangle, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy, Vendor relationships

Tags: Michael Krigsman

Conflicting and interlocking agendas between enterprise vendors and customers contribute to many failed projects. In an insightful blog post, long-time vendor executive, Dennis Moore, identifies an economic model to address this issue.

• Related: The Devil’s Triangle concept

Dennis’ model describes enterprise software pricing as a function of customer behavior. His initial post on the topic explains how software providers should view this aspect of the world:

Customers should also think about why vendors behave the way vendors do…. Is vendor behavior driven by customer behavior? 100 percent.

Still, many customers feel that they are being “taken advantage of” by vendors. From a vendor perspective, this is hard to understand…. Customers are able to network, demand references from vendors, and read industry news and analysis to understand what they’re getting into. And no customer should make a major purchase without undertaking such efforts.

The model discusses four dimensions driving enterprise software pricing:

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July 13th, 2009

Evaluating the enterprise software buyer's 'Bill of Rights'

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 4:43 am

Categories: CIO issues, Devil's Triangle, IT issues, Research and statistics, Vendor relationships

Tags: Bill, Vendor, Customer, Life Cycle Horizon, Tools & Techniques, Enterprise Software, Management, Software, Michael Krigsman

Complicated relationships between enterprise software buyers and vendors contribute to late, over-budget, or otherwise painful IT projects. To help customers bring greater transparency to their relationship with software vendors, Forrester Research analyst, Ray Wang, has developed a detailed framework covering the ownership life cycle.

A document called An Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill Of Rights, V2 describes this framework. Although the bill of rights does an excellent job explicitly highlighting issues that can become points of contention between software buyers and vendors, it does not address customer roles and responsibilities in achieving project success. This gap is significant, as I discuss below.

Software Ownership Life Cycle. The report defines a software ownership life cycle and provides a checklist of issues keyed to different life cycle phases.

The life cycle horizon extends out over a decade, accurately reflecting the long time spans over which some enterprise software contracts extend. One of its most valuable features is raising concerns about intangible considerations that don’t come into play until years after a large software contract is signed.

This graphic shows the life cycle:

Bill of Rights checklist. The bill of rights guides customers to raise key points when negotiating with vendors. The next diagram organizes this checklist by life cycle phase. The first step, general rules of engagement, outlines overall expectations of vendor conduct across the entire term of the software business relationship.

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June 4th, 2009

Reviewing Sapphire, user interfaces, the Devil's Triangle, and IT success

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 2:37 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Devil's Triangle, IT issues, Interview, Project strategy, SAP, Uncategorized

Tags: Information Technology, SAP AG, ERP, Jon Reed, Asuret, Michael, BBD, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Podcasts, Tools & Techniques

This guest post was written by Jon Reed, an accomplished blogger, SAP expert, and author of the website jonerp.com. Jon interviewed me following SAP’s recent Sapphire conference, and we discussed a variety of topics that are of interest to readers of this blog. Listen to the recording by clicking the player at the top of this post and read Jon’s summary of our interview. Jon originally posted this as an article on his blog.

SAPPHIRE 2009, BUSINESS BYDESIGN, AND ERP PROJECT FAILURE (AND HOW TO AVOID IT)
Written by: Jon Reed
Interview Date: May 22, 2009

In the first installment of his “Sapphire in Review” podcast series, Jon Reed of JonERP.com welcomes special guest Michael Krigsman, President of Asuret and popular ZDNet blogger and Tweeter. Michael’s focus is evaluating the keys to IT project success and failure, so during this twenty-eight minute podcast, Jon gets Michael’s take on how project failure applies to ERP vendors and SAP specifically. Jon also gets the skinny on Michael’s investigations of Business ByDesign at Sapphire, and why he sees SAP’s focus on UI improvements and BI enhancements as important to ERP project success. In closing, Michael shares an inside view on what it’s like to be part of SAP’s Blogger Relations Program, mixing it up with SAP executives.

Podcast Timeline:

1:01 Michael’s work at Asuret and ZDNet, and how it all ties back into examining the dynamics of IT project success and failure. Asuret provides consulting and software on business transformation projects; on ZDNet, Michael analyzes case studies of IT project failure and evaluates why they aren’t achieving project objectives. He also looks at related issues pertaining to organizational dynamics, business and IT communication breakdowns, and the cultural issues that contribute to project success or failure.

2:32 The highlights of the keynotes from Michael’s perspective. Two things stood out: first, Michael got the sense that SAP was making an attempt to bring in more consumer-oriented, end-user interfaces into their software. This is way overdue, but an essential area of improvement. A more human-oriented enterprise will yield more successful projects. Michael also enjoy Hasso Plattner’s keynotes - all his years of experience have put him in a position “beyond reproach” where he can speak his mind and cover topics that interest him.

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