IT Project Riskier Than you think?

Michael Adams Solutions Architect| LANL Los Alamos, Nm, United States

I recently read this article from the Harvard Business Review:
https://hbr.org/2011/09/why-your-it-project-may-be-riskier-than-you-think/ar/1?cm_sp=Article-_-Links-_-Comment#comment-section

IT is a good article, but seems a little light on some details. I left the following comment requesting additional information from the author/s.

I'm curious for your thoughts on this article.

(my comment):

This is an interesting article. I'm curious and surprised to see that you didn't identify a lack thorough business analysis and definition of requirements. Particularly the Levi Strauss story, seems like a classic story of having missed critical requirements. I'm also curious about the status of risk management in these projects. Were the overages based on risks that had been identified, were there risk triggers in place, and people managing for those? It seems that perhaps there could be more that leaders could do than ensure that they can absorb a huge black swan. I recently saw a statistic that fewer than 50% of project managers are certified. Certification isn't a cure all, but it does put PMs into contact with other PMs and it makes resources available through PMI or through local PMI chapter, where folks can get a good grip on best practices, and get input from other experienced PMs as to what they might be overlooking. I'd love a follow-up on this to see the maturity of PM process in these projects that you listed.

Posted: Jan 26, 2015 12:50 PM

Sort By:

Tim PM Project Manager| NHS Yes, United Kingdom

Hi Michael, yes I do rather agree your thoughts about this (pretty old) article. Perhaps the real isues at Levis were around the lack of business project management and leaving the implementation in the hands of the supplier.

I also have some considerable doubts about techniques such as "reference class forecasting" that are advocated. The basic approach there is to identify a relevant reference class of past, similar projects and then produce a comparison evaluation of the data. In the fast changing world of IT however would one find an old similar project that was aimed at making the same changes to a similar complex environment, and also then get access to all the financial data for that project (which would still somehow be up to date & none of the commercials or licencing would have changed meanwhile)? I think yo'd be better off spending that resource on engaging with your own business community to really understand their needs and priorities.

Posted: Jan 27, 2015 4:48 AM

Michael Adams Solutions Architect| LANL Los Alamos, Nm, United States

Thanks Tim for your comments. I would certainly agree with your qualms about reference class forcasting, at least on a large and complex project. It might be appropriate for a small implementation, where the SMEs are familiar, in a detailed way, with what will be involved and confident of the similarity to a project they performed within the past 12 months or so.

On a project like the Levi project, however, it seems that they needed a much more robust analysis of their business requirements, they needed to engage their stakeholders (WalMart in particular), to find out about those requirements.

They needed a huge and comprehensive risk plan with a complex network of triggers and individuals responsible for those triggers. They may have needed a PM and a Business Analyst Mgr working together as peers.

I really didn't like HBR's conclusion that the only path forward is to plan on being able to absorb a black swan.

Posted: Jan 29, 2015 5:57 PM

Michael Adams Solutions Architect| LANL Los Alamos, Nm, United States

Thought I'd try to get some additional discussion on this. I'm an incoming PMI chapter president in New Mexico's Otowi Bridge chapter, and our incoming president elect is the deputy director of NM State's IT Enterprise Project Management Office. According to the PMO's director, that office achieves better than 80% success in their large IT projects.

I've had the pleasure of attending presentations made by the PMO's director and deputy director. I can see why they're successful. They have a methodical, analysis and structure driven approach.

I guess, having seen some more large IT projects run successfully, I stand by my earlier assertion that the case studies in this HBR article failed at doing a good job with requirements and stakeholder engagement.

I think risk analysis is a good job, but I also think it can be taken too far...meaning people focus on applying various tools they learned, rather than on figuring out the best questions to ask.

A different HBR article suggested the use of a "pre-mortem" where project team members are asked to imagine that the project is over, and it was a spectacular failure. Everyone is being fired. Then each team member explains, from their perspective, what went wrong, how did the project fail. https://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem

Project Management dot commers, Please chime in with your thoughts...

Posted: Dec 29, 2015 11:25 AM

Please login or join to reply

IT Project Riskier Than you think?

Sponsors

Vendor Events

Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data

Newsletters