Michele HermanDirector, Project Management| Voya FinancialEast Windsor, Nj, United States
Are the challenges of an IT/systems implementation project different than those of a non-IT project? What are the biggest challenges of such a project, and how can they be overcome? Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
The first point is typical to almost any other projects in other domains - i.e. domain knowledge. You will need to get someone into the project team that has the domain knowledge in order to help you to review the sanity of the project. The second point is on communication. It is strange somehow that business people hardly able to understand the the lingua franca of IT and it is important to have someone in your team that is able to speak both IT and business languages to act as a bridge between the two worlds. The third point is on change management. Never drive an IT project for the sake of IT (e.g. it is cool to have this new notebook that can transform into a robot). Always base all your propositions and justifications on the value that the project can bring to the organization and this message has to be articulated clearly to all the stakeholders and everyone that will be affected by the project.
The last point which is very unique to the IT project is time vs. technology. If your project is going to last longer than 3 years, you need to plan ahead on the technological landscape and changes you will be in when you hit the end of the project. This is because technologies advances very fast and 3 years could mean a lot of things will be different from day 1 of your project. Expect to have changes near the end of your project and allow provision for adjustment to fit your project into new IT environment. Saving Changes...
Ah that’s an interesting question to which I would answer most definitely yes having managed both IT and non-IT projects.
Concrete sets, Contracts are set and Contractors are set in their ways is the civil engineering mantra. And just like the concrete, once set there is very little or no movement either way.
IT projects are far more malleable in that with good replanning there are many more alternatives and options to reach the deadline.
And that is where domain knowledge comes in. I am a great believer in having knowledge of the process / industry that you are project managing. The more alternatives, the more choice comes into play here. IT projects are all different, each and every one of them, but there can be more repetition in areas such as Civil PM. Add to this the rapidly advancing state of technology and I would conclude that IT projects require a somewhat greater degree of domain knowledge and scheduling skills.....not that I would say this to the Builder working on my extension right now?!
Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
There are very few purely IT projects. They are nearly always projects to deliver a product to another area of the business, with the associated impacts on work processes, job change, fear of being made redundant by the new computers and all that change brings. Can you reframe your IT project as a business project that just happens to have an IT element? Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
I believe pure IT projects are those that do not involve any business user at all in the requirements gathering stage of the project. Some of these are like infrastructure upgrade and server migration, where we just coordinate with business users to ensure there is not interruption to their daily work. Anyway, there is no strick rule on this and I believe different organization might have different ways of classifying this. Saving Changes...
