Dead on Delivery: How A Successful Project Failed

There are those rare projects that move along perfectly; they achieve every milestone, stay within budget, meet every defined requirement, exceed stakeholder expectations, and are fully successful by every measure of cost, quality, timeliness, functionality, and usability. Yet, after delivery they wither into oblivion, unused and forgotten. A look at the rise and fall of just such a project can help identify the missing ingredients needed for real success.

The Background Story

An internal consulting group had long struggled to develop a reliable method of preserving its institutional knowledge, the results of projects, and analyses developed for their clients. Products ran the gamut of formal reports, cost analysis spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, mathematical models, code libraries, and process simulations. Over one hundred skilled analysts mined a massive archive of corporate data to enable high-level executives to objectively assess policies. Their work has influenced decisions on transportation networks, stock levels, purchasing, pricing, and staffing across the enterprise.

Leadership recognized the value in maintaining long-term knowledge across these areas. Primary goals included ready access to completed work when similar projects were requested, ability to quickly update results when new data became available, and preservation of …