IT project failure – will it always be with us?

Firstly, many so-called IT Project Failures of the time were not failures of technology to work but of organisations to change the way they worked through effective use of the technology.  The National Audit Office produced a report for Government, analysing various sources.  As the industry body of the day, Intellect, was quoted in this document, “There is no such thing as an IT project in isolation from its business change programme.”.   “This was about the “Programme” of projects that had to fit together to redesign processes, build systems to support them, train people to use them, provide support to resolve problems and make sure the intended improvements in performance and costs savings were delivered.  We did a lot of work to try and embed that philosophy and I chaired a group that delivered the thought piece on how Government might do it better – read it here.

Mark Jones’s treatment of strategic change in Financial Services, below, though, illustrates the challenges of getting senior management to take such a holistic view.

Drilling down to the project level, it must be recognised that often there was a simple failure to plan and manage the implementation of new technology.  In this respect, it is my opinion that the problems are not confined to IT – see for example the Channel Tunnel, Jubilee Line, “The Dome”, Portcullis House, Scottish Parliament and so on.  There is no shortage of thinking and guidance on how to manage complex engineering projects and there are many excellent systems for planning, monitoring, accounting, managing risk and so on.  However, when we were developing and selling programme management tools that worked with the leading project management systems it was ever apparent that 90% of the project management software never made it out of the box onto the computer and that of the project plans that were developed with good intent, 90% were never consulted or updated after work started.

Little wonder then that not many projects delivered on time, scope and budget, and that the impending failure was not identified until it was too late to fix.  Such situations were often allowed to occur because of the eternal optimism, in the face of contradictory evidence, that the carefully identified risks would not materialise and the costs would turn out at the low end of estimates.  Alas, I fear projects will continue to fail because it is human nature to expect the best.  Doing things differently requires a more cynical, hard-bitten, strong leadership: a project-culture, perhaps?

Stephen Baker’s story then is a case study in how to do it right.  Although there is perhaps a moral here that one management style does not fit all?

Well, of course we weren’t (and Stephen Baker’s excellent article describes just one example of someone else doing things well).

I don’t think it was arrogance on our part either, but more that it felt like we were trying to push water up hill. This was in the early 2000s, I suppose.

I was working for a consultancy firm which specialised in tools and methods for running projects and programmes. To distinguish ourselves from some of the others doing this we also managed large programmes – money where the mouth is, and so on.

We would come across broadly two classes of client: those who didn’t know how to do it and didn’t want to find out, and those who did know how to do it but nevertheless chose not to do so. Neither would take on board what seemed to us well-established best practice and this was what made preaching about the right way to run programmes seem like an exercise in futility.

I think the causes of our frustration were many and varied, and Tom Abram’s thoughtful comments talk to some of these. But two situations in my personal experience stick in my mind.

I spent several years working as a consultant at a US-based investment bank. Like many banking organisations, this one made staggering amounts of money (according to their own PR) but never had anything like enough money to spend on technology services (according to my boss).

It seemed to me these were ideal conditions for promoting the science of benefits management: ruthless appraisal of the quantifiable contribution of programmes to strategic benefits, leading to a clear sense of priorities and the ability to flex programmes with budgets, knowing that you were always optimising your spend. Investment banks were known at that time for their ruthless approach and I thought the rigor and straight-line thinking might appeal. (I was managing a building move of one of these banks once and on cut-over Sunday I was patrolling the floor when I heard a senior manager talking to one of his staff. “Why have they given you so many screens? You were a <rude word> trader when you joined and you certainly haven’t got any <rude word> better, so you don’t need that many. Rip ‘em out.”)

But I was wrong, the concept withered before the first shoots had even made it out of the ground and I think that’s because the human dynamics turned out to be much too strong. My boss did a bit of sounding out and it seemed that the last thing senior management wanted was someone shining a clear light on their budget decisions. In essence, it was a macho contest and the one who shouted loudest and could claim – whether true or not – that his or her business “deserved” the most investment won. And of course, it was a positive feedback loop: the more the bank spent on a particular business the more money they made and the head honcho could claim success, thus justifying even more next year. No-one really wanted to find out that if the dollars had been spent a different way then overall the bank would have made more money.

The other occasion was also to do with human nature, but very different: it was about timidity rather than boldness.

I was speaking at a seminar and I’d talked about the programme I was running at the time, which was the radical re-engineering of a retail bank’s credit-card platforms. For various reasons an incremental approach was never going to work and we won approval for a complete clear out and the introduction of a (mostly) packaged solution replacing years and years of patchwork and incremental changes. This programme would slash their operating costs by about 60% in one go: a big bang, indeed.

I could see that someone in row 2 of the audience was looking uncomfortable as I talked about the work and in the Q and A session at the end he asked: “What advice would you have for someone who needs to make a major change such as you describe?” My talk was really about how we were doing the job rather than what we were doing and I wasn’t sure what he meant at first. I thought perhaps he was talking about programme offices, change management and so on. But he asked the question again a different way and I realised it was a more emotional challenge. I replied “Be bold. There’s no point fiddling about with the stationery contract if you’re trying to slash costs – that won’t cut it.” He looked mildly offended so I wondered whether that was in fact his current red-hot initiative. I learnt later that my opinion (which I accept is easier to give when you’re not the one with an exposed neck) was not followed and his organisation tottered along doing bits and pieces here and there. I presume the questioner didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of going for broke.

I suppose what my two memories say to me is that while there was a space for rigour, method and the confidence that comes from knowing you’re doing things the right way, this was often not a sufficient counterbalance to the obstacles that personal circumstances and inclination can throw in the way. There are many factors to consider apart from adopting what might logically appear to be the “best” approach.

Are things any different now? We need a current practitioner to tell us for sure, but I bet I know the answer.