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Project Management

Is it the Right Project?
 
A lot of IT projects fail, but the failure is not always evident right away, and often cannot be seen until the IT system has been successfully built, implemented and is being enjoyed by users wreathed in smiles. Yet it is still a failure.

We have seen a company spend roughly £200 million – when you spend that much the exact number of pounds is hardly important – on a new administration system for all of its products. Much of that money was spent integrating it in with their existing legacy systems. After considerable time the system ‘went live’; so this was not a failure of implementation. The problem is that now, a couple of years after the project delivered, the satisfaction rating given by the customers has actually fallen from its pre-development level. The company, to all intents and purposes, has spent £200 million in order to upset its customers. There were probably cheaper ways of doing that!

This is an extreme case. More likely – and this we have seen on many occasions – is an IT development being completed and making not the slightest ripple on the pool of customer consciousness. Nobody cared.

If a system is being developed solely for purposes of cost savings, then maybe that is acceptable; although we would always seek to identify other benefits before embarking on such a development, because opportunities are surely being missed. But for the most part systems are being built because those systems which they will replace are seen to be affecting some internal notion of customer service. They are slow, or they lack functionality, or they are just plain annoying. New technology is seen as the perfect answer. It almost invariably is not.

At least, not in isolation. Before any IT development is sanctioned, it is vital to determine exactly what the business processes are which the new system is to support. Priorities should be determined by the contribution of those processes, and IT developments should enable those prioritised processes. By all means take into account the internal moans about the existing system, but ensure that their resolution is targeted at delivering stakeholders’ expectations, rather than spending money on something which will have no external effect.

Never mind a ripple – when you develop a new IT system, make a splash!