“Technology Trinity” for Project Managers: People, Process, and Technology

SHARE
Request to reuse this
Add to my favorites
Topics: Knowledge Shelf

A large multi-million dollar technology project is initiated and implemented using a standard software development lifecycle (SDLC), with the intention of saving an organization as much or more money over its intended life span. During the course of design and development, compromises were made and some features were not released in the initial version of the product. This is not uncommon, because anyone who has managed technology projects will attest that feature slips happen, and those features are put on enhancement lists for the next release(s) to achieve the intended functionality. The slipped features are typically not “showstoppers” and in theory should not affect the benefits and return on investment (ROI) of the project. The technology project deploys successfully per the delivery scope, but the users are unhappy, the business processes are not properly supported, the projected benefits cannot be fully achieved, and ROI is reduced or is negligible.

Was there an error in implementation? Are the users crazy and ungrateful? Was there an error in the calculation of benefits at initiation? Was there an error in the calculation of the ROI? Should the organization halt the project or continue to pour money into future phased releases to make it better?

In order to know what to fix and how to correct a project or product you have to know what went wrong.…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.