A robust information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure is the cornerstone of most medium and large enterprises. Off-the-shelf ICT business solutions are still a mirage for such organisations.
While business schools have traditionally prepared prospective managers to be competent in managing human resources, marketing and finance, much more needs to be done to prepare business leaders for the daunting task of ensuring success in complex ICT projects.
Success or failure in ICT projects is not much different from most other business projects. A successful project means timely completion of deliverables within the approved budget and meeting the desired quality standards. There are, of course, many reasons why some ICT projects fail. My experience is that some causes are more common than others.
Undoubtedly, one obstacle to completing an ICT project successfully is the lack of interest from management. Some senior managers today still underestimate the complexity of implementing significant ICT projects. They harbour the wrong impression that they cannot understand the IT issues and leave the ICT projects to the technical team. This thinking leads to a dangerous abdication of leadership.
Risks of project failure become even more severe when project essentials are decided ‘top-down’ rather than ‘bottom-up’. Requirements include the selection of technologies, contracting processes, resources allocation and communication policies. Top-down projects are those done for political reasons. This can be both genuinely political with a capital ‘P’, in the public sector or shareholder-inspired projects in the private sector.
Internal politics often leads to a flawed contracting process where the risk of failure is shifted to the weaker links in the procurement chain. When project managers are faced with a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ option for the implementation of an ICT
system, legal remedies against service providers are weakened to the extent that they become useless. When things start to go wrong, enterprise managers have little negotiating power, and enforcing accountability for project success becomes difficult.
Surveys regularly confirm that more than 30 per cent of ICT projects fail due to poor strategy and business planning. Rarely is a project just an IT project. It often requires changes in work practices and business processes to add the value linked to the technology transformation. When end users are only treated as passive stakeholders in an ICT project, buy-in is challenging to achieve. User resentment and frustration can lead to passive resistance to a successful implementation or, even worse, outright opposition to change.
It takes courage and unshakeable honesty to decide when to pull the plug on a failed ICT project
Poor communication is another common reason for ICT project failure. This problem is linked to inadequate project management skills. Companies that outsource the project management function must understand that ultimately they are still responsible for the success or failure of a project.
An effective project manager must keep the board constantly informed on progress.
They must avoid hiding bad news in order not to shake senior executives from their comfort zone. This requires excellent ICT technical skills but also a strong-willed commitment to honesty.
Twenty years ago, a massive £6 billion (€7.2bn) National Health Service project was launched in the UK. Yet, nine years later, the NHS IT system failure was national news.
Marred by implementation issues, stakeholder opposition and timeline delays, it was finally scrapped, but not before a massive fallout. Though it never launched, the project ultimately cost the British government (and taxpayers) more than £10 billion.
The technical complexities of ICT projects for medium and large companies must not be underestimated. Many senior executives are familiar with office IT applications that are relatively easy to use. They often fail to understand that implanting a complex IT system requires a set of skills that few companies can provide from internal human resources. The solution to this challenge is to rope in various service providers.
Data migration skills, for instance, are among the scarcest technical resources required in many ICT projects. A common flaw in data migration is that too few or less skilled resources are assigned to this task. Some ICT projects fail when the data migration challenge is addressed with unskilled resources.
It takes courage and unshakeable honesty to decide when to pull the plug on a failed ICT project. Too often, some senior executives prefer to kick the can down the road by throwing money at a project destined to fail.
Business leaders need to plan an ICT project properly, prepare realistic estimates for schedules and budgets, establish a change control process and adopt best project management practices.
Put simply, onerous management functions, like effective oversight on complex projects, can never be delegated.