A call for radical change to improve the poor success rate of IT
projects and gain more respect for IT people has come from the
leaders of three bodies for specialists in this field, writes John
Kavanagh.
BCS chief executive David Clarke, David Taylor, president of the
Certus IT directors association, and David Rippon, chairman of the
BCS Effective Leadership in IT Group, told a packed BCS seminar
that the failure rate would not be tolerated in other professional
fields, such as health, air travel and civil engineering. They also
warned that companies are looking harder than ever at their IT
spending.
Clarke said the major BCS drive in the next five years will be in
promoting information systems as a profession.
"There is no reason why IS should not be seen in the same light as
health and law," he said. "We have not tried to become that
profession in the past, we have not set the standards and ethics
that other professions have.
"Professionalism means delivering what we said we would, on time
and to budget. It means having the right skills available,
commitment to continuing professional development, following a code
of practice, and recognised qualifications."
IT bodies have stood back on this, Clarke added, and it is time for
bodies such as the BCS to take a lead. "We are no longer prepared
to sit back and wait," he said. "We need to start making a noise on
this, then other bodies will take up the cause with us."
Taylor applauded Clarke's determination and said, "We have spent
billions globally on IT, consultancy and change initiatives, yet
most organisations have stood pretty still. If we carry on doing
the same old things, expecting different outcomes, we will get what
we have always got.
"If we really want different results, we have to do something
different."
Taylor said the hype must end. "We have got away with it because we
have had something up our sleeve: the promise of the paperless
office, the year 2000, the Internet. But what is up our sleeve
now?" he said.
"We invent our own language, we hype up the technology. With the
hype comes mystery, and we like that: it makes us feel special. We
run what we call IT projects, but there is no such thing: they are
business projects."
Taylor suggested a range of ways to improve things. For example,
project manager job adverts emphasise things such as knowledge of
particular project management software, when the emphasis should be
on skills such as communication, leadership and business
understanding.
User perception of IT is critical, said Taylor - people always
remember what went wrong, so IT needs to stress the
successes.
He suggested that "skill teams" should replace project teams. "Here
you put together a project team knowing what each individual's
strengths are and telling them they are in the team because of that
strength, and that they should use it," he said.
"One reason projects fail is that they have been over project
managed. Just get a team of committed people together, with a very
clear vision of what they are going to achieve and what the
boundaries are, and leave them alone."
Taylor pointed also to a new form of job contract, aimed at getting
people's loyalty to the organisation rather than to IT. Employers
promise skill development, involvement in decision making and
career opportunities; and employees promise to develop and apply
skills, take responsibility, behave in line with the organisation's
values and be committed team workers.
Rippon, like Taylor a former IT director, said failure to invest
adequately in staff development is an overriding issue in IT's poor
success rate. He said it led to failure to integrate IT and the
business, failure in project management, and failure to manage
suppliers properly, as partners rather than enemies.
Rippon added that staff motivation depends on people being given
responsibility - but they must be developed properly to take on
that responsibility. "Investment in people will be repaid many
times," he said.
Rippon emphasised that users need to be given "a pivotal role" in
IT projects. "IT can propose and facilitate change but only users
can achieve that change," he said. "The success or failure of an IT
project depends on the user owning that project."