Choose wise – Implement foolish: Why most IT projects fail

“You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” ― Warren Buffett

You can laugh at what Warren Buffet says but ironically, that’s how most projects are planned. Enterprises may take up to a year to pick a system but give themselves only a fraction of that time to implement it.

I am part of several CIO WhatsApp groups. This is how a typical system recommendation chat goes. Assume, John is the CIO of ABC Co.

John: Any recommendations for CRM for retail?

Mark: I recommend system A

Scott: System A did not work for us. We went for system B.

James: I would recommend system C. Have heard horror stories about system B. System A would make a good second choice.

And it goes on till John ends up more confused at the end than he was in the beginning. The truth is, the key to success is more in the implementation and less in the choice of the system.

According to a Forbes article on why technology projects fail, or as per this article on Cloudtp, not one of reasons was choice of product or tool. In fact, if you did a web search on top reasons for IT project failures, you will struggle to find “wrong product choice” as a reason, . Therefore, if tool choice is not a major reason for success, how can you make a quick smart choice and move on to the more important aspect of implementation?

Choose smartly - Move away from feature obsession

I am sure you would have seen curved television adverts. How useful do you think is the curve for the TV? Do you think it’s significantly enhances the experience vis-a-vis flat screen TV? I doubt it is. However, the TV manufacturers would lead you to believe otherwise.

How about TV remotes? Have you seen the fancy one? The one with a thousand buttons? And how many do you actually use? I bet not more than three or four. Maximum five! 

Choice of IT systems is similar. We get lost in the feature and functionality universe. 80% of features in the top 3 systems would be common. And a typical business will end up using only a few of the myriad of functionalities. Therefore, don’t sweat too much on choosing a system.

That said, how do you make a quick and smart choice? My secret is this ― create a Venn diagram of the top three products based on functionality, affordability, and technical features. Naturally, the intersection of the three is your ideal system. You will get it right 80% of the time. For the other 20%, a bit more due diligence may be needed but I would warn you about falling into the analysis -paralysis trap.

Implement wisely: with rhyme and reason

The big conundrum however is that once you’ve chosen a system, only 20% of the battle is won. The rest will depend on implementation. Because the secret sauce lies in implementation diligence of the right tool. Here are my top recommendations on how to get it right.

01. Hickory Dickory Dock: Give enough time on the clock

Unknowns, people falling sick, emergency priorities, defects and their resolution time are common place in tech projects. Yet, most projects are planned for a happy flow. Meaning nothing will go wrong, The reality is far from this Utopian world imagined while planning. Please budget enough time for all if not several bumps you will encounter on the road of implementation. A good rule of thumb is to add 33% additional time to take care of these bumps. Whether you add this time or not, eventually it will take that time because you will encounter obstacles during the implementation. Why not have it as part of the plan?

02. Humpty Dumpty will have a great fall: Never get tech to lead

No matter how fitting or beneficial a project may appear, it is bound to fail if owned and led by technology. Just like a product without any paying customer fails, so does a project without any business sponsor. Do not start implementation without any takers. The belief that business will eventually fall in line, is a costly and hopeless affair. Thou could be Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall and more likely than ever to have a great fall!

Business sponsorship is a must. If there are no takers, IT should work on it. Influence and make a passionate case till one gets business sponsorship and a champion to lead the project. Johnny Johnny, yes papa. Business sponsorship? Must papa!

03. Only two little ducks came back: Define your success criteria

In the above rhyme, all ducks eventually come home but you may not have the same luck with your “ducks”. Another way to put it, if you can't measure it you can't improve it. You must have objective criteria to measure success. Usually, enterprises count only two ducks -- schedule and cost. While these ducks are important, they aren’t enough.

It's great to have financial measures such as revenue, cost, and loss. However, that might not always be possible as most projects may not have a direct impact on these. In their absence, you may need to consider other KPIs such as like TAT, number of documents reduced, number of clicks reduced, percentage of adoption or percentage of digital leads. No matter how subjective benefits seem, there is always an objective way to measure its benefits.

Net-net: Never implement a project without knowing how many ducks need to come back!

04. Diamonds in the sky: Use your best resources

Assign you best people for projects that matter. Tech and business teams need to find their stars so that your project can twinkle and shine. Tech usually does a better job because their full time job is a project role. And though the business function may assign critical resources, they usually have a day job that takes precedence over everything else, leading to sub-optimal outcomes.

It may also be a good idea to assign more than 25% of the business champion's goal sheet to meeting the success criteria of the project. At 50%, the project will rock and shine!

05. 10 little Indians: Handle your project piecemeal

If you try to recite “10 Little Indians” at one go, you will run out of breath. Similarly, teams run out of steam trying to deliver your project as one big chunk.

Divide the project into manageable MVPs (minimum viable products) and deliver them in installments. Use the agile methodology in its true spirit. Deliver in manageable sprints. The big bang approach or waterfall model is prone to schedules and cost overruns. In other words, you’ll accomplish more by eating the elephant one bite at a time.

06. Itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again: Take feedback seriously

Several things will rain on your parade, but you must always bring your own sunshine. Its seldom what you end up implementing what you imagined at the start. Usually, projects are designed in HQs with little or no inputs taken from the field/end users. As the project is rolled out, you start getting feedback to chop, change and add features to your project. Tech calls these change requests/scope creep and it’s a strict NO-NO. 

Markets change, business processes change, needs change and yet the scope remains the same. How can a project succeed when it doesn’t take these changes into account? Field and end users will give you feedback. Agile methodology’s important ceremonies of sprint review, backlog curation, sprint retrospective are all extremely important aspects incorporating feedback as you go along.

Not a child's play

Apologies if the article makes IT implementation sound like child’s play. It is NOT. In fact, it is one of the most difficult things to get right. However, you can make it easy on yourself by following the above recommendations. Make a quick smart choice, get a rock star business champ, define success criteria, dedicate resources, deliver in installments, and keep improving with feedback. In other words, choose smartly and implement wisely.

 I close with another rhyme, which you may now enjoy!

Rain rain go away

Come again another day

For I have learnt how to


Keep IT project failure at bay!

Acknowledgements

There are several people who helped me make this article a finished product. Sanika Samant and Vishal Patwa for the graphics. Mehjabeen Taj Alam for help with content. Pink Lemonade, Radhika Misra and Kanchan Gupta for editing. Last but not the least Sargam Sharma from our very own Fullerton India marketing team. Most importantly, a big shout out to my tech teams and my colleagues, now and of yesteryear, from who I continue to learn every day. Thank you all for your invaluable contribution in helping me bring the article to the fore.