Making IT Happen

I reckon the 80 20 rule looks something like this …

80% of projects are doomed to fail from the outset.

20% are over budget bet get there in the end.

Reason? Management!!

The 80 20 rule applies here too!

80% of Project managers have no real IT experience – They never fully understand end to end architecture and have no real idea on how to deliver an IT project. A lot of PM’s come from “other” areas within the business and assume IT projects can be managed in the same way – well yes it can but you need someone who actually understands IT to deliver it. Sadly this does not happen 80% of the time.

80% Programme managers – Same as above – But somehow feel they are above all the detail and are more concerned about just getting it done – even at the expense of the original functionality and / or best practice, end result is the same … failure to deliver what the Board thought they had purchased.

80 % Senior Managers/ Dept Heads – most have little up to date knowledge and what little they do know is what they have read on publications like this or (yes this is true) on Wikipedia and on Google!! Most don’t have a clue on how to manage budgets (mainly because they have had no financial training) or what most of the lines in their budgets are for … erm it was in last year’s budget so we it will be in next years budget too …! Clueless! And most try to hide delays and overspend from the CIO as they would rather try to cover their own butts than to tell the CIO they messed up.

80% of CIO’s / IT Directors – most of the above. They assume that their senior management team are technical and competent enough to understand the complexities so they don’t bring anything into question. More concerned about keeping a project within budget than going back to the board to ask for more money, further enhancing the prospect of failure. In fact in my experience 90% of CIO/IT Directors have no IT experience at all, not even in a consultancy type role, well let me rephrase that. Most of them have done some form of consultancy in the past – just never in IT!! Another popular choice for companies is to promote one of there cronies in Finance as IT director – we all have suffered from this scenario hey boys!!
So 80 – 20 does not quite fit here… 90 – 10 it is!!

And the 20%?

20% of projects get the subject matter experts (SME) on board before the project even starts. With the SME on board you are more than likely to have project delivered on time, within budget and within the original scope – this is fact. I’m not making this up – in my 15 years IT experience I have yet to see a massive overspend or a significant time delay when SME’s are involved from the outset but sadly this rarely happens. How can you over spend when an expert who understands the requirements, understands the technology or the solution that will meet the requirement, understands the existing infrastructure/environment, has experience in implementing projects and the amount of man hours it takes to deliver them, seriously, how can your projects go so badly wrong if the SME’s are there from the outset? It can’t, you know it, I know it, and everyone knows it.

And who gets it in the neck when it all goes wrong? The people who are left to deliver and implement the project, that’s who!
With no money in the budget left to meet the requirements they have had to re-engineer existing architectures, move away from the original scope, have worked night and day to deliver it in an impossible time frame and for some reason its all their fault, not the CIO, not the senior managers, not the PM’s, ok most of us blame the project manager too even though its not his fault he has no IT knowledge, Not the programme manager – no the poor old gopher at the bottom of the ladder gets all the flack … go figure?

Hmmm I wonder what CIO you are Mr B ….