December 15th, 2009

Why projects fail: Obstacles and solutions

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:32 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues, Project failures, Project management, Project portfolio management, Project strategy

Tags: Story, Strategy, Content Management, Management, Enterprise Software, Software, Michael Krigsman

Troubled IT projects remain a challenge for organizations of all sizes.

With this in mind, I recently presented an educational session, on understanding and preventing IT failure, to 30 senior project managers at Babson College’s Center for Information Management Studies (CIMS). The session involved two parts: a presentation lecture followed by an interactive workshop.

It was fascinating to hear the war stories from this group of project veterans. Participants shared many common issues and challenges, despite differences in organizational size or industry.

For me, it is particularly valuable to hear the stories, challenges, and successes of IT practitioners. Those stories and experiences ensure that this blog remains practical and useful.

Here’s a copy of the presentation slides. Let me know what you think and how to make them better!

September 21st, 2009

Six types of IT project failure

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:39 am

Categories: IT issues, Project portfolio management, Project strategy, Risk

Tags: Information Technology, Project Failure, Failure, Blogging, Strategy, Internet, Management, Michael Krigsman

Projects fail for many different reasons, so I took notice when reading a blog post that describes six specific categories of failure. I thought the list worth sharing because it’s a clever way to view the problem.

This list comes hot off the press from the Preventing Project Failure blog (gotta love the title) written by Michiko Diby, Principal at project resolution firm Sealight:

• Intent Failure – Occurs when the project doesn’t bring enough added value or capability to beat down the obstacles inherent throughout the process. This suggests the original intent of the project was flawed from the beginning.
• Sponsor Failure – Occurs when the person heading up the project is not actively engaged and/or does not have the authority to make decisions critical to project success.
• Design and Definition/Scope Failure – Occurs when the scope is not clearly defined, so the project team is unclear on deliverables.
• Communications Failure – Occurs when communications are infrequent or honest discussion of project problems and issues are avoided.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 17th, 2009

CRM success: An IT failures virtual town hall meeting

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:18 pm

Categories: Blog annoucements, CIO issues, CRM, IT issues, Project portfolio management, Project strategy

Tags: Information Technology, ACT!, CRM, Customer-relationship Management Project, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software, Marketing, Software, Michael Krigsman

Customer relationship management projects are notoriously difficult to get right. This IT failures town hall meeting examines why CRM projects fail and presents practical tips to help make you successful.

We’ll discuss issues such as:

• What makes CRM projects so difficult
• Sales people and their relationship to CRM
• Crossing the CRM chasm to success
• Social CRM

I will be joined for this event by CRM industry guru, Mike Muhney. Beginning with the co-invention of ACT! Mike has been recognized as a global visionary and powerful speaker on the subject of effective business relationships. He has publicly spoken to over 150,000 people worldwide on improving the way they do business, and he has often been interviewed and written about in numerous global publications on the topics of entrepreneurship, market creation, penetration and leadership, global expansion, and motivational speaking.

In 1986 Mike and a friend co-founded the company Contact Software International and they co-invented ACT! which is credited with creating the category of Contact Management applications. ACT! also has been frequently credited with pioneering today’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry. Released in 1987, ACT! went on to win over 100 awards globally, including numerous PC Magazine Editor’s Choice awards (the “Oscar” of any and all PC Industry Awards), and is still, after 22 years, the predominant Contact Manager with an extremely loyal following, now estimated to number in excess of 10 million users worldwide.

Please attend this interactive discussion and participate in a valuable conversation about success and failure in CRM. There’s no cost but you must register in advance.

Topic: Achieving CRM success: An IT failures virtual town hall meeting

Date and Time: Wednesday, October 7, 2009, 12:00 noon -1:00 PM, Eastern Time. The registration page lists international telephone numbers.

Registration: Click here to register for this online session

September 17th, 2009

7 fundamentals of IT project success

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:56 am

Categories: Governance, IT issues, Project management, Project portfolio management, Project strategy

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

Many folks think large projects usually fail for technical reasons–software that doesn’t work as advertised, bugs, and so on. In reality, that’s not the case.

In my experience, the most serious project issues come down to misplaced expectations among participants. Fundamentally, problems in human communication lie at the root of most failures.

These expectation and communication mismatches are difficult to detect systematically, because they aren’t quantitative or technical in nature. Failures persist despite fancy project management methodologies, precisely because traditional approaches do not isolate and address hidden problems.

These seven points of project success touch on conflicting agendas, multiple perspectives, and a broad range of business-oriented conditions that drive projects to succeed or fail:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

June 22nd, 2009

HP connects IT investment, value, and transparency

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 3:39 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Governance, Hewlett Packard, IT issues, Project portfolio management

Tags: Hewlett-Packard Co., Information Technology, IT Investment, Project Portfolio Management, ROI Analysis, Brian, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, It Operations, It service Management

Last week, I attended HP’s Software Universe 2009 conference to participate on a panel discussion around success strategies for deploying project portfolio management (PPM). I used the opportunity to speak with HP executives about their vision for the future of PPM and its relationship to enterprise value creation.

To understand the company’s PPM product direction, I spoke with four folks representing HP’s views on features, strategy, and customer implementation:

• Paul Muller, VP for Strategic Marketing
• Ken Cheney, Director of Products, IT Financial Management
• Bruce Randall, Manager of Product Marketing, PPM
• John Wills, Practice Principal for HP’s Business Intelligence Solutions group

HP’s primary strategic message about the future direction of PPM involves helping IT departments improve their ability to quantify project costs, benefits, and derived value, which Paul described this way:

We automate the spreadsheet Kung Fu that IT often uses to analyze financial data. Our goal is reducing decision-making cycle times and creating transparency that quantifies the business value of IT operations.

Ken Cheney elaborated on this message:

Many organizations find it difficult to get an accurate handle on IT costs. We link IT with the business services it delivers and assign value to help IT appropriately price these services. The future of PPM is helping organizations clearly see the total cost of ownership of all IT services.

HP’s strategy positions PPM as a building block in a broader IT financial management offering, as the following diagram illustrates:

Read the rest of this entry »

May 5th, 2009

CA releases packaged services for project portfolio management

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 4:58 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues, Project portfolio management, Tools, Uncategorized

Tags: On-demand, Project Portfolio Management, Computer Associates International Inc., Best Practices Edition, IT Governance Edition, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, It Operations

As part of a broad strategy to deliver on-demand project portfolio management (PPM) applications, CA announced two new “productized” implementation service offerings.

In a discussion with Carl Landers, VP Marketing for CA Clarity PPM, and Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist, the company said the on-demand product is “100 percent feature-complete” with respect to its on-premise counterpart.

Here’s a screen capture of the Clarity browser-based product; click the image to see a larger version:

The Essentials edition is suited to organizations with little experience or maturity in managing a portfolio of projects. Folks in this category need a low-risk, relatively uncomplicated way to learn about and adopt PPM. Essentials implementations last five days and cost $15,000.

The Best Practices Edition adds functionality, along with complexity, to the Essentials version. This middle tier is best for organizations that already possess some experience with formal project management processes. CA implements the Best Practices edition in 30 days with a fixed-price of $75,000.

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April 13th, 2009

Interview: SAP's global head of project operations [podcast]

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:39 am

Categories: CIO issues, Devil's Triangle, Governance, IT issues, Interview, Podcast, Project management, Project portfolio management, Project strategy, SAP, Uncategorized

Tags: Project, Podcast, Information Technology, Project Manager, SAP AG, Paul, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, It Operations

Sound business strategy and solid execution are the foundation stones of all successful IT projects. For organizations running multiple projects, execution means consistency across an entire portfolio.

As one of the largest enterprise software vendors, SAP’s core competency includes precisely this kind of portfolio management. To better understand SAP’s strategic thinking on managing complex IT projects, I spoke with Paul Ritchie, the company’s Head of Global Project Management Operations.

Paul’s team is responsible for the project management processes, tool, methodologies, and training used by 1200 SAP project managers around the world. He’s also Chairman of the Global Corporate Council at the Project Management Institute (PMI), which suggests the broad importance and influence attached to this SAP role.

The podcast (see the player at the top of this post) offers an intimate glimpse inside SAP’s work on project portfolio management, governance, and project delivery strategy. Here’s a summary of key issues Paul and I discuss in the podcast:

What does “project management operations” mean?

Project management operations (or project management office, also called PMO) represent the critical link between a company’s strategy and it’s actual project delivery.

Four pillars support SAP’s PMO:

1. Process, such as project management methodologies that describe how to run projects and programs

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April 10th, 2009

Balancing IT innovation investment in a recession

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:51 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues, Project portfolio management, Research and statistics

Tags: Financial, Information Technology, Investment, IT Investment, Strategy, Management, Michael Krigsman

As the weak economy continues, many organizations have blindly cut costs to reduce IT’s footprint. Unless managed carefully, this strategy may backfire and eventually leave IT weakened and uncompetitive.

A recent research note from The Hackett Group on IT value and portfolio optimization touches this issue. The report states that IT leaders plan to invest substantial resources in innovation, despite the bad economy:

Over the next few years, top performers project that they will allocate no less than 60% of their IT capital to innovation and improvement, compared to the peer group’s 35%. Infrastructure and utility constitute the balance of the investment budget.

The report underscores the importance of continuing to make strategic IT investments at this time:

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December 11th, 2008

Study: 68 percent of IT projects fail

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 9:27 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues, Interview, Project portfolio management, Research and statistics, Risk

Tags: Project, Information Technology, Analysis, Skills Gap, Michael Krigsman

According to new research, success in 68% of technology projects is “improbable.” Poor requirements analysis causes many of these failures, meaning projects are doomed right from the start.

These are staggering numbers, hitting the high end of the Standish Chaos Report and presenting a far worse picture than Sauer, Gemino, and Reich.

• Related: Requirements and failure: Interview with CA’s SVP of IT Governance

Key findings from the report, The Impact of Business Requirements on the Success of Technology Projects from IAG Consulting, include (emphasis added):

1. Companies with poor business analysis capability will have three times as many project failures as successes.
2. 68% of companies are more likely to have a marginal project or outright failure than a success due to the way they approach business analysis. In fact, 50% of this group’s projects were “runaways” which had any 2 of: taking over 180% of target time to deliver; consuming in excess of 160% of estimated budget; or delivering under 70% of the target required functionality.
3. Companies pay a premium of as much as 60% on time and budget when they use poor requirements practices on their projects.
4. Over 41% of the IT development budget for software, staff and external professional services will be consumed by poor requirements at the average company using average analysts versus the optimal organization.
5. The vast majority of projects surveyed did not utilize sufficient business analysis skill to consistently bring projects in on time and budget. The level of competency required is higher than that employed within projects for 70% of the companies surveyed.

This chart illustrates the requirements skills gap most companies face:

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