I'm writing this because
@SusanneMadsen suggested that I should do it.
Susanne was talking on Twitter about why do projects continue to fail
and what can we do about it?
I wrote my masters
dissertation on project success, taking that success was the opposite of
failure and post Chaos and others we seem to be pretty clued up about how
projects fail.
So, Susanne posted and I
responded with the following reasons:
- · People and politics
- · Rushing into delivery
- · Lack of need
- · Poor requirements
- · Delivering a thing and not change itself
I will attempt to break these
down further in the next few paragraphs.
This post is not a reflection
of my masters research, or an in-depth response, but more about what I feel are
some of the reasons why projects fail right now.
People and politics
People
are necessary for projects to succeed. They are also a major reason
for failure. When we embark on a project, we should only do so after
having engaged with stakeholders. So, if you're engaging with stakeholders,
nothing can go wrong, right? Actually, yes. People in business are
often like little warring tribes, all trying to score points off each other,
battling out and messing each other around. As the BA/PM you walk
into all that and stir it up. So, people will sometimes misinform you, feed you
false information and generally make nuisances of
themselves. They'll use control of resources at their command to
pull the rug out from under you, tell tales to try and get projects stopped and
generally just cause absolute mayhem. In this respect, being a PM is
sometimes an absolute nightmare. The only thing that I think you can truly do
to ensure that this doesn't happen, is to change in such a logical way that
no-one can really dispute it. You have to have a really robust argument
and be able to explain it fully. You also have to communicate
constantly throughout the change. People will always create waves (NIH, etc)
but you can try and do things to reduce the effectiveness of their undermining.
Rushing into delivery
Often,
once someone has "sold" the idea of the project to someone senior,
it'll be a mad scramble to get on with things and show movement. It's at this
point that we need to just pause and take a breath.
Sure,
the idea is great...but should we really do it? We need to thoroughly
investigate what we're doing and plan it properly. Only then should we get on
with it.
I
recently saw a pretty reasonable sized effort that had been wheelspinning for
around 12 months for this very reason. People were just getting on with doing
"stuff" that they thought would contribute, but really they were
getting on with a number of disparate legacy stuff that aligned vaguely with
where they thought it should go.
12
months on, and everything is only now starting to actually gain traction and
move forward.
So,
you might say "yeah, sure but at least they were moving forward".
Indeed, but there was little link between things, and that meant that they were
potentially investing without much thought. Benefits, benefits, benefits. Look
at how things need to change structurally, then move things to suit. Don't just
say "we need a new time management system", because you can probably
do what you need with the old one and if you've not thought about what you're
doing, then the new system probably won't be right either.
So
you'll deliver on time and in cost, but it'll be the wrong thing and therefore
you'll have 100% failed.
Lack of need
Often,
people just buy and upgrade things without thinking "Do we need
this?" We need to develop systems thinking. Do we sweat the
asset that we already have? What benefits does upgrade
bring? Why are we changing?
Perhaps
it all seems like I'd rather stay the same, with my bakelite TV, pipe and
slippers. No way, change can't happen fast enough for me...but it
has to be the right change. We can't just invest in things wildly,
spray and pray.
We
need to think what we need to be doing and ensure that we hang investment off
that.
Poor requirements
The
problem with this is often that stakeholders don't know what they want.
But why should they? In my Business Analysis work, I ask people to
talk about what they do and try to improve how they do things, then within that
looking at how they interact with technology. This is not
shoehorning them into a solution - often it's about prototyping and getting
them to work with simple systems to "mock up" an interim
solution. During that journey, they become a better, more informed
customer for a final solution.
The
other thing that has become evident is that the more you think about how to
streamline things and mock up prototypes, the more that people start to get why
we're trying to change things. They start to engage and get involved. The
change that is finally implemented is much more successful because people have
thought about it in depth.
So,
rush ahead at your peril.
Delivering a thing and not change itself
Here,
have some ICT.
6
months down the line, "why aren't you working better?".
Well,
that new ICT didn't come with any training and you didn't explain why you
needed us to use it, so it's over there in the corner under the pile of coats.
We have some great video conference equipment. The quality is
fantastic. But it doesn't deliver the benefits.
Why?
Well, in order to reduce travel, you have to cut out lots of travelling.
But video conferencing only cuts out about 5 meetings a day for the whole
organisation. Everyone else still has to travel.
Culturally,
most people like to go and see the person that they're talking to, buy them a
coffee and perhaps they also get chance to see some other colleagues for a
catch up while they're there. So video conferencing works for a
small number of staff per day, but not the vast majority. So, small
benefits realisation.
If
there had been some number crunching, you'd work out that having meetings
slightly later in the day would save more money than anything
else. Also, giving people a connected laptop allows them to pull up
the relevant info during the meeting and therefore have less meetings.
So,
look at the change itself. What do you need to
achieve? Plan the delivery to include training, staffing,
communication and handover (with suitable service levels). Then keep
revisiting things post delivery to ensure that it's all getting used as
planned.
So, with all that in mind,
it's not really surprising that we don't have the success that we crave.