Cutting Through the Chaos

Combating high-profile IT project failures

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By Duncan Haughey, PMP

Over the years, IT project management has gained a reputation for failure, with many high-profile projects being abandoned mid-stream, costing millions or even billions of pounds.

Governments are not good at running IT projects because of the committee structure and too many vested interests. Labour's disastrous NHS computer scheme lost an estimated £12.7 billion when The Coalition decided to scrap it in 2011. The FireControl project was scrapped in December 2010, wasting £469 million after failing to deliver a new IT system, which aimed to replace 46 fire and rescue service control rooms with nine regional control centres. Although these are just two of the most high-profile UK government failures, businesses and governments around the world are experiencing similar IT project failures and associated losses. To put some figures on the performance of IT projects, we can look at a decade of Chaos Reports from the Standish Group.

Measure	2004	2006	2008	2010	2012
Successful	29%	35%	32%	37%	39%
Failed	18%	19%	24%	21%	18%
Challenged	53%	46%	44%	42%	43%

Source: Chaos Manifesto 2013. Think Big, Act Small.

As we can see, in 2012 the report showed an improving picture, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. So where should we focus our effort to improve the performance of IT projects?

The Standish Group has identified 10 areas in their Chaos Manifesto 2013, which looked at 50,000 projects since 2002. We can focus on these areas to understand how we can improve IT project performance.

1. Executive Management Support

Experience tells us that it is important to have support from an executive sponsor with enough clout in the business to represent you and your team at executive level during the project. It is difficult to get executive level sponsorship, but important that you have them recruiting other supporters and removing roadblocks and distractions that could negatively impact the project.

The Standish Group discovered that it is important for the executive sponsor to have a good understanding of the project management process. Those who didn't, tended to have projects that performed less well.

Tip: Get support from an executive sponsor at the start of your project and make sure they have a good understanding of the project management process.

2. User Involvement

Do your projects always meet your users' expectations? Involving users early in the project could be the most important factor leading to success. The best users to involve, according to the Standish Group, are subject matter experts (SMEs) who are knowledgeable about their area of the business.

Tip: Encourage users to participate in the project from the start, particularly SMEs, and tune the project team into their needs.

3. Optimisation

Small projects are more successful than their larger counterparts. The European Union defines a small project as having a total cost of €250,000. Scope defines the size of a project, so it pays to make sure every feature and function add value. The Standish Group suggests it is better to have an optimised scope that gets delivered, implemented and used, over a full 'bells and whistles' scope that never gets delivered.

Tip: Keep project scope small and focussed. It is worth remembering the Pareto Principle says, that 20% of the features and functions deliver 80% of the benefits.

4. Skilled Resources

Having the right people on your project may sound obvious, but are they doing the right things at the right time. What kind of people lead to the best team for your project? Consider whether it is worth paying a premium for a small team of highly proficient and experienced people. This might be more cost efficient than using a large number of lower cost resources. The Standish Group suggests, having a highly proficient resource philosophy can return large benefits.

Tip: Employ a small, highly proficient and experienced team to increase the success rate of your projects.

5. Project Management Expertise

Having the best project manager running your project can be the difference between success and failure. A good project manager will steer a project through the project management process to a successful conclusion. According to the Standish Group,the real key to being a good PM is to take a complex process and make it simple and executable.

Tip: Employ highly competent and experienced project managers with good judgement and strong decision making skills.

6. Agile Process

Do projects using agile, iterative processes succeed more than those taking a waterfall approach? According to the Standish Group, agile and waterfall projects have almost the same success and failure rates. However, 'small projects' have a better success rate. Software development projects benefit from small projects, with frequent deliveries and checkpoints. The Chaos Manifesto 2013 suggests, software should be built in small, iterative steps with small, focused teams.

Tip: Keep projects small, using agile principles such as frequent stepping stones to check the project is still on the right track.

7. Clear Business Objectives

All projects should be focussed on achieving a businesses goals and strategy. Think about the product or service the project is in business to deliver, and avoid the trap of being focussed on construction activity. The Standish Group identifies a need to have a concise vision, problem statement and statement of work for projects.

Tip: Make sure the project objectives are aligned with the businesses goals and strategy and that you remain highly focussed on the project objectives.

8. Emotional Maturity

Relationships are an important part of project management. A project team needs the emotional maturity to manage relationships themselves and have a general awareness of the environment around them. The Standish Group point out that it is important not only to manage, the real project's outcome, but the perceived project's outcome. They go on to say that, a lack of emotional maturity has a real negative effect on the project environment.

The Standish Group has identified 30 skills needed for emotional maturity, which can be used to assess the maturity of your project team.

Tip: Run an assessment of your project team's emotional maturity and take steps to improve where needed.

9. Execution

The Standish Group defines execution as, the act of taking a project to completion based upon a plan. It is important to have a predictable and understood process for execution. However, don't let methodology or unwieldy processes get in the way of progress. The best processes and methodologies are those that are kept simple and have clear steps and outcomes.

Tip: Establish a set of rules, standards and guidelines for project execution aligned to the business goals and strategy. Communicate this to your project teams.

10. Tools and Infrastructure

It is important to have the right IT tools and infrastructure to run your projects, but not too many. Having a limited set of tools and clearly defined process can help project teams deliver successful projects. According to the Standish Group, the major problems with tools is that organisations become dependent on them and are slaves to the tools rather than using their own judgement and experience.

Tip: Keep the number of tools and processes used to manage projects low. Experiment with different tool sets and processes until you find a mix that works for you. Concentrate on the following areas:

• Resource Management: deploying resources where they are needed and will be most effective.
• Demand Management: prioritising stakeholder requirements and matching resources to them.
• Portfolio Management: maximising the return on investment (ROI) while balancing cost and risk.
• Financial Management: creating estimates and managing budgets.

Summary

If we want our IT projects to succeed, then we should pay attention to these 10 areas of improvement. Whether we believe the Standish Group's Chaos Report figures to be true or not, they point to areas that should never be neglected when managing IT projects. Cut through the chaos on your next project by focussing your efforts to develop and deliver a truly useful solution for your client.

Note: These findings are interpreted from the Standish Group Chaos Manifesto 2013 and reflect opinions particularly related to the running of small projects, defined by the European Union as those costing €250,000, or less.